For many, waking up early in the morning is no easy task, but if you want to make the most of the hours in the day, it’s definitely worth the effort. Here are seven tips to get your day started the right way.
1. Get an early night
The best (and possibly most obvious) tip for making the most of your mornings is to go to bed earlier at night. If you don’t have a dinner date or some task that just has to happen at night, then focus on getting to bed early. An early night will ensure that you have more fuel in your tank the next day.
2. Stop hitting snooze
You may have heard this one before, but hitting snooze on your phone or alarm clock makes it much more difficult to get up in the morning. When you hit snooze, you’ll most likely just end up lying in bed and wasting precious hours. So when your alarm goes off – get up. It’s not easy, but it is a more effective way to start your day.
3. Prepare for a new day
Spend time the night before getting ready for a new day. That way you’ll give yourself the best chance of hitting the ground running. Prepare your clothes, clean the dishes, pack your bag for your day out and do all those little things at night that can distract you in the morning and throughout the next day.
4. Have some ‘you’ time
Make the mornings about you and you’ll be amazed at how motivated you become. Do some exercise, meditate, do yoga, play your favourite morning music or spend some time on something about which you’re passionate and you’ll pop out of bed each day with vim and vigour.
5. Affirm, appreciate and act
Start each day with an appreciation for you. Spend 30 seconds looking at yourself in the mirror and smile. Tell yourself you’re a good sort. It’s an easy way to boost your self-esteem and get into a positive mindset. All you are doing is giving yourself some positive affirmation and validating yourself so you can start the day in a happy way. This simple act of encouragement will make achieving your daily goals that much easier too.
6. List your top three tasks for the day
As soon as you get the chance, jot down the three most important things you need to do that day. Don’t list any more than three. Then, when you’ve achieved those goals, you’ll end each day with a sense of achievement and renewed self-confidence.
7. Morning pages
This is one exercise I can’t recommend highly enough. Take 20 minutes or so and fill three pages of automatic writing. You can choose the page size. Do this every day, but don’t spend too much time thinking about what you’re writing. It’s not only a fantastic exercise for unleashing creativity (in fact, this is an exercise from a great book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron), but it’s also a way in which you can get out all the niggly things nagging at your mind. Write like no one is going to read it and treat it as a form of self-psychoanalysis. Don’t be embarrassed at what you write, as you can always rip it up or burn it. The important thing here is to pour it all out. You never know, you may even end up with the makings of a good novel.
Read more about morning rituals.
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