I’ll admit that I am not much of an early-morning person. Practicing a mindful morning routine has been one of the best things I’ve done to ensure that my day gets off to a good start. More importantly, having mindful mornings has also helped my overall productivity and well-being.

Maybe you’re like me and do not wake up cheerful and perky and ready to bounce into the day. Instead, you wake up each morning and feel like you need to get grounded before any external stimuli influences you and dictates your mood. This simply means that you need to take some time for yourself in order to feel your best and to tackle the day ahead.

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You might have already tried different morning routines, either intentionally by way of making an effort to practice better habits, or accidentally due to the demands of your schedule. Whether it’s been a conscious morning routine or not, over time you’ve probably noticed that there is a direct correlation to how balanced and in control you feel on the days when you did implement some sort of morning ritual versus how unbalanced and reactive you’ve been when you rushed out the door.

How to Create a Mindfulness Morning Routine

The most valuable thing to remember when you start to implement a mindfulness morning routine is that it begins the night before. You cannot expect to wake up refreshed and ready if you have gone to bed late or have not slept well the night before. There are things you can do to ensure that you get the right amount of sleep you need, such as limiting or eliminating your screen time an hour before bedtime, taking magnesium vitamins, and sleeping with a humidifier in your room.

Once you find what works best for you to get the sleep you need (remember also that the right amount of sleep varies from season to season and from individual to individual), you will have a good palette from which you can then add your morning rituals so you can experience more mindful mornings and subsequent better days.

5 Steps to Mindful Mornings

There are many mindful morning rituals options for you to choose from so you feel supported and nourished. These are the top 5 rituals that have helped me the most and continue to do so. I hope they help you too.

Step #1: Open Your Window

Letting fresh air into your bedroom is an easy practice for you to do that serves two purposes:

1. It helps to get rid of the stuffiness accumulated over night.
2. Studies have shown that it boosts your mood and your brain.

If you can’t get outdoors in the morning, this is the next-best solution so that you are gaining some of the benefits of being outside without having to devote the time to being in nature before your workday begins.

There’s currently a debate as to whether or not you should make your bed right after you wake up, but the general consensus is that if you pull back your bed covers and open your window to let fresh air and sunlight in, it will clean up the air and whatever dust particles have formed inside your sheets. This is a bonus that will affect tomorrow’s morning routine as well.

Step #2: Stretch Your Body

If you don’t have time to squeeze a workout in the morning, then you can at least stretch. Sit on the floor, stretch your muscles, and breathe deeply. This is a great time for you to notice how you are feeling and what you are looking forward to during the day. You can do this for less than five minutes before you leave your room.

Step #3: Practice Saying Affirmations

Louise Hay, one of the founders of self-improvement, has some of the best affirmations that you can start to implement. Hay was a big proponent of positive self-talk and mirror-work. You can pick an affirmation provided in one of her books, or write your own and repeat it. One of Hay’s affirmations that she suggests you repeat daily is:

“I am open to receive all the goodness and abundance the universe has to offer.”

A great time to do this is when you are washing your face and applying your moisturizer and sunscreen. It might seem silly, but try it and see what you think and how you feel.

Step #4: Journal

You can write morning pages, write a lengthy diary or journal entry in your favourite notebook, or just write one sentence. It doesn’t have to be long, nor grammatically perfect, nor logical, but writing down your thoughts on paper will help you find focus, gain clarity, and feel better.

If you’d like a little help getting started, be sure to grab our FREE workbook that gives you 25 journal prompts that are geared towards getting you unstuck.

Step #5: Eat a Pre-Made Healthy Breakfast

Healthy eating is key to our overall health and to feeling good. According to a 2022 study conducted by the National Institutes of Health, 21% of women often skip breakfast and 10.8% always skip breakfast. Not a good way to start your day. Yet, understandably, many women opt to skip breakfast because they are busy and rushed in the morning.

One way to help you to eat breakfast is for you can make a healthy, pre-made breakfast the night before. This way, you can literally grab and go in the morning without sacrificing nutrients your body and mind need and taste you love.

These Overnight Oats Recipes are in constant rotation in my house – the PB&J is my favourite. You can keep this in a mason jar, then grab the jar in the morning and dash off to start your day. I also recently discovered Kale Junkie on Instagram, and made her One-Pan Fluffy Mixed Berry Protein Oatmeal recipe, and now my family asks me to make it all the time. This one requires that you heat in the oven before eating it, but you can do that in a few minutes, then pop it into a Tupperware container and enjoy on the go.

As an aside, drinking a glass of half a lemon and water on an empty stomach has also been proven to be excellent for your overall health. Doing so also forces you to slow down and take notice of things around you. While you sip on your lemon water, you can start to ease into your day.

What’s Next?

These suggestions are not meant to be rigid. The most important thing with implementing these habits into your mornings is that you remain flexible and change anything that doesn’t work for you. There can be an ebb and flow to how you practice these steps. Remember, if you can only do one of these steps, that is better than not doing any at all.

One step today, another step tomorrow.

Let me know what you do as part of your mindful morning routine.

-Marilyn

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