Ever gotten up, experience something go wrong and then gone of to watch how each and everything that could possibly go wrong does so? What about the flip side, where you’ve gotten lucky first thing in the morning and your day just carries on getting better and better?
Amongst successful people, it’s well understood that the first hour of your day will completely dictate how the rest of your day unfolds. You can see it as a sort of momentum we get behind us, if we begin our day off well then we keep on going having a good day and if it starts of bad, it just gets worse until we’ve had enough and go to bed.
Knowing that, it’s important to start your day off right. To do so, I’ve complied a selection of practices and exercises one can do to begin their day off right, to get that positive momentum going to make every day a fantastic, energising experience.
Gratitude
One of the most powerful ways to increase your emotion is to stop what you’re doing and look for reasons to be grateful, to be thankful. No matter what’s going on in your life, there is always a whole list of reasons to be grateful.
Start your morning off by sitting up in your bed and being thankful you’ve woken up, that you’re alive. Be thankful you have a bed to sleep in, a room with a bed, comfy bedding, walls around you, a ceiling over your head. It doesn’t matter what you feel grateful for, just look around you and express a moment of gratitude for what is there
Intentions
Setting an intention is a powerful thing. When we intend to do something, we do our best to achieve it. When we set an intention, we wire our brain in a way that begins to look for ways to achieve our intention.
Set the intention to have an amazing day, to have a day filled with excitement and joy. To set an intention, we simply state “It is my intention to…” followed by your chosen intention. You can do this out loud or internally by thinking it, it doesn’t really matter. Once the intentions set, your brain works to achieve it.
“When we set an intention, we wire our brain in a way that begins to look for ways to achieve our intention.”
Meditation
Meditation is the practice of quieting the mind, disconnecting from the reactionary state of mind. If you’ve compiled days, weeks or months of unwanted momentum, it’s easy to remember and pick up where we left of worrying last night.
If this happens, meditation is the perfect tool to break this cycle. It stops all momentum and allows us to reset and start again. You may still attach to yesterday’s thoughts, it’s okay. With practice we can really learn to not get so attached, you can find a guide on meditation here
Affirmations
As with setting intention, using affirmations is a powerful way to wire something as truth into the brain. By affirming something, we tell our brain that the statement we are stating is true or is becoming true. By doing so, the brain begins to work towards making the statement true, or finding evidence that it is true.
To state an affirmation, we simply start a sentence with “I am…” followed by your statement. You could state good health, joyfulness, love or anything else for that matter. For example “I am happy, joyous and wealthy. I love my life and every moment of it.” This sets the brain to find reasons to be happy, joyous and your definition of wealth. It also directs the brain to loving the present moment and any experience you are a part of.
Make Your Bed Straight Away
Sounds too simple to be true doesn’t it? By making your bed as soon as you’re up, you start your day off with a small success. You achieved a daily task and you’ve done it well. Although you may think almost nothing of this, you trigger a dopamine rush within your brain, your reward system is triggered and you feel good.
By making your bed first thing in the morning, you’re less likely to ponder over the tasks of the day and more likely to just get on with them, passionately as you enjoy the release of feel good chemicals in the brain.
Get Up As Soon As You Wake Up!
I left this one a little further down the page because most people would close their browser tab once they saw this. Ever stayed in bed, fallen back to sleep and woke up feeling worse off than the first time?
Although we’re naturally inclined to want to stay in bed and return to sleep in the warmth, by doing so we end up waking ourselves back up later on without a full sleep cycle, often leaving us groggy and moody for the rest of the day. If we can get straight up when our body is woken up, we start the day off a lot more awake and lively than if we had tried to get 20 minutes more sleep.