Guaranteed Greatness Morning Routine!

    Mornings. So many people dread mornings. With the combination of loud alarm clocks, leaving your warm bed and weathering the cold morning air to the bathroom, mornings can feel gross. However, having a crummy morning can actually make you less productive through out the day according to this study by the Harvard Business Review. More then decreasing productivity, a foul morning can crush your mood and set you up for an all around stressful day. But you might be saying, "That's all fine and good, but how can you fix mornings? They are inherently stressful." Mornings are inherently stressful...... if you haven't set up a morning routine designed to eliminate anxiety and set you up for greatness. I have compiled all my Monday morning tips, tricks and ideas to bring you the Guaranteed Greatness Morning Routine! While it may not kill the morning blues, it will certainly make them a little more bearable.

    A good morning starts the night before. A great deal of time is wasted in the morning when you are running around to find your clothes, materials and bags. Make your life easier by laying out your clothes, putting all your materials in the proper place and placing all your bags by the door. That way, when you get up in the morning, everything is set up and you don't have to exhaust your time by wandering around looking for your things.

    One of the best ways to ensure a pleasant start to your mornings is by downloading a sleep cycle app, and using it. I used to think these sleep cycle apps were ridiculous. I thought that there was no way that my phone microphone could measure my sleep patterns and wake me up accordingly. I was mistaken. This app is the best thing that ever happened to my mornings. Now, my phone reads my movement and breathing sounds to determine when my sleep is the lightest. You can set the wakeup time to any length of interval, I like to set mine to anywhere between 5:30 and 6am. If your sleep cycle is still pretty deep during your wakeup interval, give it a week and your body's circadian rhythm should shift. Make it a goal to get up between the same thirty minute interval, even on the weekends. Having a very set circadian cycle helps your body to know exactly when to release sleep hormones. Same thing applies to bed time. Try to go to sleep around the same time every night, a wake-sleep routine is key to establishing a pleasant morning mood.

   What is the first thing you do in the morning? I used to pick up my phone and scroll through Instagram for about twenty minutes. DO NOT DO THIS! WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT DO THIS! What you do first thing in the morning sets your default mode for the rest of the day. Checking your phone first thing in the morning is the best way to give yourself a mental fog for rest of the day. Then what do you do first thing in the morning? This is actually very important. If you have a personal goal for yourself, like "drink more water" or "stay active during the day," do that first thing in the morning. What you do right after you wake up becomes your default mode for the rest of the day. I wake up, drink the whole cup of water I keep on my bedside table, roll out my yoga mat, do some morning yoga, and then meditate. This is an ingrained ritual in my head. This way, whenever I have spare time during the day, the first thing that pops into my head is "drink some water" and "take a walk" instead of "look at your phone."

   As I stated before, I do some morning yoga. This is a really great way to wake up your muscles and get your blood moving around. It also eliminates the ready-for-sleep feeling by signaling your brain to release hormones to wake you up and start your bodies internal activities. Now, exercising in the morning many not be your thing, but this morning yoga doesn't have to be rigorous. Just a few stretches is enough to gently tug on those muscles and jump start your body. Pinterest is especially helpful in this way. If you checkout my Pinterest, My Collection of Musings, you can find lots of morning yoga routine ideas on my ~mindfulness journal~ board.

  Meditation has improved not only my mornings but honestly my entire life. Meditation gives you a way to sort through mountains of thoughts in an heathy and productive way. It has helped me so much with handling my daily anxiety and bigger life blocks. I would encourage you to find some guided mediations from an app or maybe even YouTube. I use an app called "Relax Meditation." There are weekly free meditations but I chose to buy a lifetime subscription to their entire library of recordings and sounds. I really am in love with the style of the mediations, the convenient app design and all the amazing sound clips. You can chose your own backtrack to the mediations, whether you chose some defaults or create your own with all the sound recordings ranging from a quiet brook to a playground or urban noise. This isn't even a paid promotion, I just love their app. 😂😂

   After meditation, I eat. Eating is my favorite part of my morning and there is a reason for this! I purposefully think through what I am going to eat for breakfast so that if there is one thing motivating me to get up in the morning, it's what i am eating for breakfast. Planning healthy breakfasts seems like a chore if you think about it, but in practice it is actually lots of fun. Whether you come up with fun combinations of accessible ingredients or mix it up with something new and out of the ordinary, making breakfast should be a fun motivator to get you out of bed and into the kitchen. I am going to be posting some of my favorite recipes on the blog soon, so stay tuned!

   After I have eaten my delicious breakfast, I get dressed, go through my skin care and leave the house! Despite what people seem to believe, I do not actually do my makeup daily. It takes too ,much time out of my schedule and my pores get clogged and infected really easily. Giving my skin time to rest during the week primes it for those fun weekends. I hope this post has been helpful for you! if you have any questions, concerns or stories relating to this post, send me an email at lovesliquidliner@gmail.com!

Love,
Chloe

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