Morning rituals enable us to connect with ourselves for a little while before the busy day really kicks off. They keep us grounded, give us some perspective, and set the tone for the entire day. These healthy habits are also essential for our emotional and psychological health both now, and into the future.Setting up a beneficial morning routine today will see us stay the course throughout our lives, even when times get hard.Because habits persist even when we’re tired and lack self-control, the establishment of a healthy daily routine is more important than most people think.Your morning can be that make-or-break time that sets you up for a good day or a bad day.In order to prime yourself to think creatively in the day ahead, your morning shouldn’t be a thoughtless drag.
The author Annie Dillard once wrote that “how we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives,” but she might have been being too general. Recent studies show that it’s not how we spend our days that’s most important to our lifelong happiness and creativity but how we spend our mornings.Our mornings set us up either to be primed for creative insights or to be numbed and mindless, merely trudging through our day. Here are 11 habits you can establish that will put you on the path of stringing together good day after good day.
1. Wake Up Earlier
This is priority one because in order to fit in a fantastic morning you’re going to need some extra time compared to your current routine.If you’ve turned into a night owl because of the peace and quiet it affords, you’ll be equally satisfied by the same peace and quiet an early morning provides, and it’s simply a matter of shifting your personal time to the wee hours of the morning rather than late at night. The difference to your body is noticeable.If you’ve turned into a night owl because of the peace and quiet it affords, you’ll be equally satisfied by the same peace and quiet an early morning provides, and it’s simply a matter of shifting your personal time to the wee hours of the morning rather than late at night. The difference to your body is noticeable.Hopping out of bed at dawn is seen as a key ingredient to both success and health.Research tells us that morning people are more proactive and do well in business – they get better grades in school, get into better colleges, and therefore enjoy better job opportunities. Morning people also anticipate problems and try to minimize them.As morning people are so successful, proactive and better able to deal with life’s problems, we shouldn’t be surprised to discover that these early-risers are also happier than night owls.Unfortunately, we don’t get to choose whether we are a night owl or a morning lark – it’s passed on from our parents.
2.Drink Lemon Water
This is an easy and refreshing habit that everyone should try. Upon waking, squeeze the juice from half a lemon into a glass of warm water and sip. Lemon water offers some fantastic benefits – it boosts digestion, increases iron absorption, and benefits both the heart and blood. Plus, drinking water is proven to boost metabolism – just what you need upon waking.You may also enjoy a stress-free start to the day thanks to this tonic as the smell of lemon can actually reduce levels of stress and depression.
3. Stop telling yourself you don’t want to go to work
You don’t have to drop everything and give one hundred percent of your focus to your creative pursuits to improve your creativity. Not only is there nothing wrong with having a day job and coming home in the evening to follow your creative passions, in fact, the structure and organization of time provided by day jobs can actually make you work more efficiently and creatively than if you had tried spending your whole day being creative.
4.Meditate
After rising, take just ten to fifteen minutes (or less while you’re starting out) to practice the ancient art of meditation.While once seen as kooky and bizarre, study after study is now showing that meditation is an incredibly beneficial mental exercise which can lower blood pressure, ease chronic pain, reduce anxiety, boost immunity, improve concentration and resolve pregnancy problems.What’s really great is that you should begin to see the effects within just a matter of weeks. After just six weeks of daily meditation, participants in a study were found to experience less emotional distress when put in a stressful situation. Their immune systems also showed less activation.Many mindfulness teachers recommend you meditate first thing in the morning as the mind is still relatively quiet after leaving ‘the sleep state’.
5.Work Out
Now that you are changing your sleep pattern, what better way to spend this new-found time than working out?It’s a fantastic energy booster, imperative for a healthy heart and strong bones and a proven stress reliever.While you may not exactly jump out of bed relishing the thought of a 6.30am run, many studies show that an early exercise routine is best for success. Not only does morning exercise increase your energy for the rest of the day and rev up your metabolism, but research suggests that, in terms of performing a consistent exercise habit, individuals who break a sweat in the morning tend to do better.Another study found that morning workouts are preferable if you want a better night’s rest. In a separate study, the same researchers discovered it can also benefit your heart better than evening exercise. All of the participants who exercised at 7 am experienced an overall 10% reduction in blood pressure and a 25% drop in blood pressure at night.
If you live in a sunny climate, take your early exercise routine outdoors! According to a Northwestern University study, people who are exposed to bright morning sunlight for just 20 to 30 minutes a day have a lower Body Mass Index than those who are not.
6.Eat Breakfast
Study upon study has shown that breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day.There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea! Those who skip breakfast are more likely to be obese. They’re also more likely to have type 2 diabetes, heart disease and lower immunity to infections. A balanced breakfast is a fantastic way to boost both energy levels and cognitive function while helping you fight junk food cravings throughout the day.While there are many healthy breakfast options, green smoothies are one of the best. These swamp-like shakes are ready in minutes, are packed full of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber, and provide a myriad of science-backed health benefits.
7.Set Your Goals for the Day
While eating breakfast or sipping on your coffee, take a few moments to set your most important goals for the rest of the day. It may be something as simple as making your bed or decluttering your wardrobe or it could be that you aim to finally write that first chapter of your book.Whatever you want to achieve, completing these tasks may bring you more energy, make you happier and even help you live longer, according to research. After all, if you don’t have a plan, how will you get there?Even if financial reward isn’t your aim, it’s clear that goal setting works. Give it a try and see what a difference it makes to your life.
8. Make time to be mindful
Making time for mindfulness in the morning is one of the most important habits a person can form for her creative progression. Recent studies show that taking the time to meditate makes people more creative and increases mental clarity.Specifically, “open-monitoring meditation” — a meditation of clearing your mind, thinking not of a single concept, person, or object, but instead being open to anything that flits through your head — is particularly conducive to creativity. People in the study who engaged in open-monitoring meditation were significantly better at generating new, creative ideas than those who either did not meditate or meditated differently.
9.Create a routine and stick to it
It’s relatively easy to create a routine or a goal for oneself, but then sticking to it is a different story.
There are always excuses to break habits like proper sleep, morning exercise, or staying disconnected in the morning, especially when we’re on holiday or on a business trip, but breaking habits “just once” is a slippery slope that can erode the creative habits we’ve worked hard to form.
10. Plan your morning the night before
Making to-do lists and designing your morning routine before your alarm clock goes off can go a long way in getting you up and out of bed and into your routine without wasted time. It also cuts down on the amount of analytical thinking we need to do in the morning, which frees us up to think more abstractly and creatively. By spending a block of time figuring out a routine for the next week or two, we can simply get up and execute rather than spending our morning's dallying, trying to figure out what we want to eat or who we need to call or coordinate with in the day ahead.
