Your Biggest Morning Mistake

Let’s cut straight to the chase. One of the biggest mistakes people make in the morning is… drumroll, please… jumping straight into their day.

 

Engaging in practices like immediately reaching for your phone upon waking up, rushing out the door to the office, diving into meetings, or consuming content first thing in the morning has detrimental effects on your health.

 

During my high-stress corporate job, I would wake up and immediately grab my phone, scanning for any fires. I’d plunge into meetings, multitasking by brushing my teeth while on calls, and juggling emails and Slack messages.

 

I created ZERO space between waking up and exposing myself to the external world. Now, I’ll admit there were many things I struggled with at that job – it was high stress, high responsibility, and involved a lot of fire extinguishing. However, I did myself no favors with how I was showing up to the day.

 

Fast forward to today; I’ve learned firsthand the difference a good morning routine makes. After making major changes to how I start my day, I realize that my high-stress job could have been a completely different experience. I could have shown up with armor on, fully present and ready to tackle challenges, instead of letting them tackle me.

 

Many of us, whether we have stressful jobs or not, fall into this morning trap, missing an opportunity to live our lives as well as we could.

 

When you jump straight into your day, you might experience things like:

– Lack of focus

– Brain fog

– Agitation of mind

– Anxiety

– Restlessness

– Low energy

– Fatigue

– Heightened emotional states

 

I wish I had the words to describe the state of my brain on the days I commit to my morning routine versus the days I skip it. I can feel the difference in every cell in my body. My brain functions differently, my emotional capacity shifts, and my ability to show up in this world more fully changes.

 

Something as small as a morning routine can have profound impacts on your overall health and well-being. It could be the difference between living in wellness or un-wellness.

 

While I understand that coming up with an entire morning routine sounds daunting, I get it. So, to start, focus on two things!

1. Start by observing yourself in the morning. Begin garnering awareness of how your day is beginning. Pay attention to your actions, thoughts, and emotions. Are there things you wish you had more time for? Are you rushing? Are you anxious? Just start paying attention to what’s going on.

 

2. If I had one single biggest piece of advice to start your day off right, it’s this: Stay off your phone for the first few hours of your morning. (Even better, stay off all electronics, including laptops, iPads, TVs, etc.).

 

When we wake up and immediately expose ourselves to our phones, trouble ensues:

– Blue light in our eyes first thing in the morning throws off circadian rhythm and hormonal regulation.

– We don’t give our brains the time to preheat and gently warm up before thrusting them into stressful situations.

– We are energetically letting in the outside world without first tending to our own needs.

– It’s hard to find presence and grounding when we are immediately pulled away first thing in the morning.

 

So, I invite you to take a pause between waking up and jumping into the tasks of your day, especially those work or phone-related.

 

Keep your phone in bedtime mode from 8 pm to 10 am. This means the screen is in black & white mode, and “do not disturb” is on. This allows you to take time and space away from the external world and maintain healthy boundaries. Put away the email, the social media, the texting etc. So you can properly wind down for sleep and awaken for the day. 

 

Stay tuned for our next blog article with more specifics to get your morning routine dialed in!