Start your day brilliantly
Source: https://chopra.com
Stay Unplugged from Tech
If the first thing you do when you wake up is check your smartphone for messages or work email, you are doing yourself a disservice. You are immediately cultivating a reactive mindset, instead of a proactive one, which will cause you to start your day in a defensive state, rather than a place of inner peace and control.
Instead, try remaining detached from technology for the first hour of your day so you can begin your day with present-moment awareness and a positive focus.
Practice Optimism and Gratitude
Before you even get out of bed, give yourself a few minutes to smile and practice gratitude. When you smile, it signals your brain to release the feel-good neurotransmitters (dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin), which lift your mood, relax your body, and lower your heart rate. Who wouldn’t want to start their day on this positive note?
As you smile, start to reflect upon what you’re grateful for. Studies have shown practicing gratitude reduces stress hormones and improves mood, among other benefits. So, adding a simple daily gratitude practice is a great way to kick-start your morning.
Begin by taking one minute in bed before you rise to reflect on one person and one opportunity you are grateful for in your life.
Make Your Bed
It may seem like a waste of time, unimportant, or unnecessary (you’re just going to use it again at night), but making your bed is a simple action you can take in the morning that makes you start your day feeling accomplished—and what better tone to set than a sense of pride and accomplishment? Taking charge and completing simple tasks will give you the foundation to take on more and more throughout the day.
Meditate to Start Your Day Brilliantly
Incorporating some type of mindfulness practice like meditation into your daily morning routine can help ground you and train your mind and emotions, which then influences how you react to challenges throughout your day.
During your meditation is also a great time to set your intention for the day. When you get clear on how you want your day to go or what you want to feel or accomplish, you can make clear decisions that create the life you truly want to live.
Exercise
Whether it’s a simple yoga routine, a brisk walk with your pet, a quick set of sit-ups and push-ups, or hitting the gym to work off last night’s meal, starting off your day with movement energizes the body and the mind. Determine what kind of exercise is right for you and schedule it. It doesn’t have to be complicated, long, or intense, but having some sort of physical activity in the morning will get your blood flowing and help quiet any mental chatter. You can even switch up what kind of exercise you do every day to keep your routine interesting.
Put Yourself Together
Putting time and effort into your appearance helps build self-confidence. When you feel “put together,” it is one less thing to worry about throughout your day.
So, shower, wash your face, brush your teeth, floss, comb your hair, dress to impress, and apply any other hygiene/grooming habits that make you feel good about yourself. This may involve picking out your clothes the night before (especially if you are short on time in the morning) or ironing your clothes—whatever makes you feel like you are taking care of your health, looking presentable, and feeling confident.
Eat a Healthy Breakfast
You’ve most likely heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. When you make time to eat a healthy breakfast (lean proteins, healthy fats, and whole grains), you’ll have more energy throughout the day and a stronger ability to focus and concentrate.
Have a “To-Do” List Ready to Conquer
Take a few minutes to write down a “to-do” list for the day ahead. Then prioritize it so your day’s list has only 3 to 5 items on it—ranked in order of priority to make sure you tackle the most pressing things first.
Writing down your “to-do’s” instead of keeping them floating around in your mind helps clear mental chatter. You also give yourself a sense of purpose each day when you know what you need to get done. And there is something satisfying about crossing off tasks on your list—it really cultivates a sense of accomplishment.
Get Enough Restful Sleep
This last one isn’t a habit for your morning exactly … however, before you can hope to implement new, healthy morning habits, you should have the foundation of a well-rested body and mind. The way you feel while you’re awake is dependent in part on your sleep habits. If you’ve been feeling groggy, irritable, or exhausted, you may not be getting enough quality sleep.
During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and maintain your physical health. In fact, sleep plays such a vital role in your physical well-being, mental clarity, and quality of life that ongoing sleep deficiency (the amount varies by individual, but typically this means less than 6 to 8 hours of restful sleep each night) can have adverse effects on your health—and how well you think, react, work, learn, and get along with others.
It’s really bad and also interesting that probably 90% of the people don’t have a healthy breakfast, don’t care about Practice Optimism and Gratitude, don’t exercise and…..
But I think that 10% of the people that do this things are or going to be successful in life.
I actually think that exercise and Practice Optimism and Gratitude are 2 of the most important ones.
You’re absolutely right about practicing gratitude and optimism. However, recently there’s been some controversy on whether having a hearty breakfast early in the morning is absolutely essential or not. We can discuss that in our upcoming online class.
I believe the first minutes that we wake up are very crucial and effective on how our day is going to be. For example, I have noticed that on the days that I immediately check my phone after waking up, my mood drops, instead when I go and brush my teeth, open the curtains, and have a healthy breakfast I have a higher energy for my day.
I could not agree more. The way we start our day mindfully has a great effect on the quality of the entire day and how we end it. In fact, we should avoid waking up on the wrong side of the bed.
Starting a day with a good mood and energy with a sharp and clear mind is a gift that not everyone has and I wish I had.
It might be a gift, yet I guess we should not wait for others to grant us this precious gift. Sometimes, we must give gifts to ourselves.
Prioritizing tasks can help us to understand where we go today, and what exactly we are aiming for. Moreover, it allows our brain to concentrate when it is necessary.
Precisely! It can grant us a sense of clear direction, and help us not to be susceptible to distractors around us.
Restful sleep has a great impact on all day. If you didn’t have more than 6 hours of sleep, the probability that you will feel clumsy or illogical is quite high. In addition, it also influences our mental and physical health.
So, I have a question; in what situation will it be extremely dangerous not to have enough sleep ?
That’s right. To achieve optimal consciousness, we need to have sufficient sleep. Sleep deprivation could turn out to be quite dangerous especially in delicate tasks like driving, working with heavy machineries, making an important decision, and so forth.
I think priorities are different from a person to another person. Some of activities maybe be important for a person that they are not as important as activities of another person. For example, exercises maybe be important for some bodies and not important for others.
DO I use correct grammar in this text? maybe be… is correct here or maybe are/is
Corrections:
* from person to person
* some activities might be important
* Have I used correct grammar
Restful sleep has a great impact on all day. If you had less than 6 hours of sleep, the probability that you will feel clumsy or illogical is quite high. In addition, it also influences our mental and physical health.
So, I have a question; in what situation will it be extremely dangerous not to have enough sleep ?
Good point! We will discuss it in the class.
I have a question related to “Have a “To-Do” List Ready to Conquer”, basically what are kind of examples of To do list for dailly basis.
I mean like should I put playing, breakfast, and things like that into the To do list.
Or the meaning of To do list is just for important stuff like some tasks that we shoud be completed it every day, for example study math lesson, go to gym, and etc.
As I see we must rank the order of priority from less important to the most important things, thank you.
It all depends on your personality and workload. I myself like to include some ordinary tasks in my to-do list simply because crossing them off energizes me.
You can write down everything you should do on a piece of paper, then prioritize them in terms of significance. Also i recommend considering some extra time for unexpected events.
I’m personally believe that practice optimism and gratitude everyday will create a good aura for us and that’s called vicious circle if we do it routinely, which is better for us as daily basis.
A vicious circle is something which is in a negative and unpleasant loop. So, it cannot be a vicious circle because it has a positive essence.
You should also write: I personally believe that practicing optimism …
* everyday –> every day because it’s an adverb
Thank you for the correction sir, I thought vicious circle is like a daily basis loop wether is positive or negative that will affect us.
I should be working on my textual interpretation especially for my vocabulary, since nowadays are mostly quarantine for any countries, I have lots of time to study IELTS through your LELB society.
Yeah, these days, when we should stay home as much as we can, are a great chance for us to study and use online resources to the best of our abilities.
1. What about night owls? Can you say they should start their nights brilliantly to them?
Maybe.I think they have differences. but I can say optimism and gratitude thought is benefitly for daily works. we should have a positive attitude and have hope for life.
Agreed. Cultivating an optimistic outlook in life is incredibly important for success and wellbeing. Chances are relatively slim that sleep-deprived people could stay optimistic and vibrant in the face of problems.
well in order to get a fresh start you should be able to have a comfortable asleep on your last night so i really don’t believe that night owls would start their days on the right food when they don’t get enough sleep and relaxation when they want to start their day .
Corrections:
* asleep –> sleep
* i –> I
You should pay attention to this point that night owls’ sun rises in the evening when early birds’ sun sets.