10 morning rituals for a productive start to the day

Morning is an important start to the coming day.

After all, it depends on him what the day will be like today. Will luck turn your way or will everything go awry? “How you start the day is how you will spend it,” the wise said and they were right. So let's talk about how to start the day correctly in the morning.

After all, you probably don’t know how to do this. We are just used to starting the day in an ordinary way, familiar to most people, as our parents always taught us, without thinking about whether it is right or wrong. But what does right mean, what does it consist of and do we need it?

In fact, you need it if you want to be happy and healthy. And our usual morning pastime does not contribute to increasing health and, on the contrary, worsens it. I assure you, we do not know how to start the day correctly.

The morning hours pass on autopilot, out of habit, often in a hurry, without conscious awareness. We don’t eat right, we drink coffee every day, we don’t take care of ourselves, we don’t pay attention to our body, we don’t know how to think positively in the morning. And then we wonder why we have so many diseases and why every day passes in the same rush and bustle.

Today you will learn where you need to start your day in order to make it good, successful, so that your life finally begins to change for the better.

In the last article, I talked about how to wake up and get out of bed correctly. It also says why everything should be done slowly in the morning, without rushing. Be sure to read it.

And what then? Usually a person goes to the toilet, washes his face, and takes water procedures.

But first…

Don't reset your alarm

We are used to hating the sounds of the alarm clock, so we press the reset button or pause it: we feel good, we don’t want to get out of a warm bed. Although 10 extra minutes of sleep make us feel worse.

Evolution is a slow process, and humanity as a species is not yet accustomed to waking up from artificially created noise. So we just ignore it.

When we wake up, our body begins to produce dopamine, a chemical that suppresses the feeling of sleepiness. Its effect is comparable to drinking a cup of coffee or energy drink. When we sleep, serotonin is produced - the hormone of pleasure.

After the alarm is reset, two hormones with opposite effects begin to be produced simultaneously. Due to such a load on the body, we wake up disoriented and inhibited.

Start the day with a glass of water

In the morning on an empty stomach, it is very useful to drink a glass of clean, unboiled, not cold water. Precisely water, not juice, tea or any other drink.

It has been proven that drinking water on an empty stomach has a beneficial effect on the entire body and has a strengthening and healing effect.

Water will also prepare your stomach for the upcoming breakfast, replenish the lack of fluid in the body, and cleanse it of waste and toxins.

In general, there are a lot of benefits, it won’t take much time, and besides, after waking up you often feel thirsty.

Consider more than just the reward

To motivate ourselves to do a certain action, such as waking up early in the morning and going to the shower, we use rewards. But according to Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, reward alone is not enough to make a habit stick.

You need to identify the signal that leads to undesirable behavior and replace it. For example, instead of pressing the end button on your alarm clock and falling back asleep, you can reward yourself with a cup of aromatic coffee. The smell of coffee in the room can serve as a signal for this action. If you live with someone, ask them to brew a drink every time they wake up.

Remember death

Sounds provocative, doesn't it? But this is not a prophecy and not at all an attempt to ruin your mood. However, we want you to take off your rose-colored glasses. Personal self-development is not an activity for those who are waiting for manna from heaven and think that everything they want will come to them by itself.

Time is running. Days turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into years. This is how our life goes. And at this time we can sit on the couch and do nothing, do nonsense and waste precious minutes. We are closed to new information and new opportunities. This makes us amorphous, lazy and crazy from idleness. What's the end result?

But in the end we risk ending up with nothing. We risk looking back and realizing that we have lived our lives without achieving anything. You can achieve something only through developing yourself - only progress allows you to move forward. And the sooner we understand this, the sooner changes will begin to occur in our lives, the sooner we will begin to become better.

There is only one guarantee given to us from birth - the guarantee that we will all die. And this can happen at any time - today, tomorrow, in a year or in 50 years. By accepting and realizing the inevitability of our own death at a deep level, we will automatically learn to make choices in favor of what is truly important to us.

If you were told you had two weeks to live, what would you do? It is unlikely that they would continue to lie in bed or be offended by a loved one because of stupidity. The most important and necessary things would instantly be prioritized. You would like to do the maximum in your power to become a better person, to bring joy and happiness to those you love.

Death is an advisor, as Don Juan told Carlos Castaneda. Remember about it more often, and you will stop hesitating in choosing between the main and the secondary, you will always want to develop and move forward, your life will become different - more conscious and fulfilling.

Follow the appropriate strategy

On average, an adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep, but some people get enough sleep in 6 hours, while others don't get 10. To perk up, one person needs a shower, while another needs a cup of coffee. Determine which category of people you belong to, and it will be easier for you to create your own strategy and understand what advice to follow.

Gretchen Rubin, in her book Better Than Before, writes that all people can be divided into four groups depending on how they are motivated by reward:

Adherents of rules and order: always follow the rules - both external (established by their superiors) and internal (which they invent for themselves).
Bound by promises: they work well only under pressure from authority and when they feel justified obligations to other people.
Those who seek common sense in everything: for every task they need internal motivation, some kind of meaning for themselves, if they find it, they do the work.
Rebels: any task makes them want to do the opposite.

Useful habits for self-development

These habits don't take much time, you just need discipline and motivation. Simple, fast, but in total it gives a colossal result.

Read 10 pages of a book

How to start reading more ? It's simple: 10 pages a day is 3 small books a month. About 36 books per year. Only a quarter of residents in our country read at least one book per year. Therefore, such a habit will immediately make you stand out from the millions of Russians who do not read.

Get motivated

Learn a few motivating aphorisms , watch speeches from educational forums.

Do something nice

It is extremely difficult to get along with the people around you if you do not feel happy. So start your morning with something that brings you pleasure. For example:

Drink a good cup of coffee, tea or cocoa;
take a walk;
tinker with your pet;
look at some memes on social media;
listen to your favorite music;
eat a piece of chocolate;
read a book.

Learn something new

When, for example, you learn a new word, it will help you:

expand your vocabulary;
will enrich your communication skills;
will stretch the brain convolutions;
will help you become more successful.

Install the “Word of the Day” application on your smartphone or any of its analogues and improve your vocabulary every day.

Make the bed

Small rituals make a difference in daily victories.

Protect yourself from procrastination

If you are constantly distracted from work by messages on social networks, you will not be able to work effectively. A good option is to install an application that limits your time on the Internet.

Engage in self-development

Of course, it is difficult to master any skill or skill in 10 minutes. But it is quite possible to read one article on any problem or fill out your success diary . If you want to learn English, read about one of the tenses in English grammar. If you are an aspiring journalist, read the blog of someone in this field with experience.

Chat with your loved one

Send an SMS to a loved one with whom you are separated by distance. Show him that you value him and remember him. There is no need to write a treatise on your life. You can wish good morning to your mom or little brother, smile and hug them for no reason.

Wake up to natural light

In one experiment, a group of adults suffering from insomnia were sent on a camping trip for a week. Within a few days without artificial light, the experiment participants not only began to fall asleep faster, but also got up easily in the morning. The inertia of sleep has almost completely disappeared.

The organizer of the study, Kenneth Wright, came to the following conclusion: to sleep soundly at night and wake up easily early in the morning, you need to get up after the sun.

It is quite possible to do this in a city: sleep in a room with a window, or better yet, place the bed closer to the window to receive the maximum amount of light in the morning.

What's the end result?

And in the end, we get a ready-made guide to self-development (believe me, these five elements will be enough for you). Start by giving up useless activities and developing your thinking. Periodically remember that life is fleeting and time passes. Add to this immediate action and the right distribution of forces, and you will immediately begin to change and grow.

And if you want everything to be faster:

Write down all your ideas and re-read them from time to time.
Build a better image of yourself
Plan your week
Treat time as a valuable resource
Take at least one step towards achieving your goal every day
Communicate with smart, energetic and developing people
Lead a healthy lifestyle
Learn to live in the present
Be open and honest with yourself
Take criticism well
Don't be afraid to say "No" to people who waste your time.

We don’t want to feed you any illusions: self-development is not a job for the faint of heart, not for the lazy, and not for whiners. At the same time, this is a job for everyone. Anyone can begin to engage in self-development and achieve outstanding results in life. Just try to follow our advice for at least 21 days, and after three weeks you won’t want to go back to your old life.

In short, it's all up to you. If you want to develop, start making yourself the master of your destiny, and don’t remain a slave to the system and a victim of circumstances. We wish everyone to look in the mirror and see in front of them a person who is really worth something. And for more motivation, watch this short video:

We also recommend reading:

Storytelling
Habits that lead to hell
Systems and methods of self-development: a selection of useful materials
Proactive and reactive thinking
5 surefire ways to waste time and regret it in the end
Ten thoughts on negative thinking
Self-development
Lessons of Wisdom from Confucius
Seven Methods for Training Self-Discipline
The best blog materials in 2021: thinking development, brain training, self-education
The best blog content in 2021: psychology

Keywords:1LLL

Minimize decision making

We are all susceptible to decision fatigue. This process takes away our strength, so in the future it becomes increasingly difficult for us to make choices.

As you can see, I only wear gray and blue suits. So I'm trying to make fewer decisions. I don't want to waste energy thinking about what I'm going to eat or what I'm going to wear. Because I have too many other things to deal with.

Barack Obama

To simplify the process, Obama uses special notes that are divided into three piles on his desk: “agree,” “disagree,” and “let’s discuss.” This method speeds up the feedback cycle significantly, which means things get completed faster.

To spend your morning more productively, think about what decisions you can make automatically every day. Here are a few simple steps that will help you: choose an outfit before going to bed, eat the same thing for breakfast, get up early to avoid traffic jams.

Have a healthy breakfast

This has been said and will be said thousands more times: breakfast is the main meal of the day for a person. Especially for those who are trying to live effectively. A proper breakfast fills you up until mid-day, maintains concentration, gives energy and contains the following products:

Whole grain cereals, porridge.

Fresh fruits and vegetables.

Cheese and cottage cheese.

Eggs, omelet, boiled meat.

Lean fish.

Eat a frog

Psychologist Brian Tracy in his book Eat the Frog! 21 ways to learn to keep up” writes that each of us has our own frog - the biggest and most important task on which we procrastinate.

If you eat a frog in the morning, the rest of the day promises to be wonderful, since the worst of the day is over.

Mark Twain

writer

That's why you should eat your biggest frog first thing in the morning, even if you don't feel like it. Our reserves of will are limited, so we need to start the day with an important task while we still have the strength.

In addition, creativity levels are higher in the morning. Research confirms this: after waking up, people experience increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for creativity.

Scientists say: willpower is strongest in the morning, so get down to business actively

You've probably heard this advice: the first task of the day should be something significant and significant - a task that requires high concentration, will and determination.
The reason is simple: our self-control is limited. This concept is visualized using the force model. Self-control is formed on the basis of common resources, which are depleted over time. Willpower can be thought of as a muscle where stress causes fatigue.

At the University of Nottingham and the National Institute of Education, Singapore, researchers analyzed 83 studies on self-control and came to the following conclusion:

Results revealed a significant effect of attenuation of internal forces on performance on self-control tasks. The strongest effects of resource depletion were on effort, perceived task difficulty, negative emotions, subjective fatigue, and blood glucose levels.

For those who work from home, both psychological and physiological factors influence the ability to perform work.
The closer it gets to the evening, the stronger the “fatigue,” weakening willpower. This means that it is all the more important to benefit from early mornings.

Do one important thing

Psychologist Kevin Kruse, studying the habits of millionaires, Olympic champions and entrepreneurs, found that none of them mentioned a to-do list.

There are several disadvantages to keeping a to-do list:

Time is not taken into account. When a person sees a long to-do list in front of him, he starts tasks that will take less time. Therefore, tasks that require consistent, long-term completion remain unfinished (about 41% of tasks from the entire list, according to iDoneThis).
There is no distinction between urgent and important matters. Again, succumbing to impulse, we rush to do the urgent and ignore the important.
Stress levels increase. A to-do list provokes the Zeigarnik effect, known in psychology: unfinished tasks cause annoying, uncontrollable thoughts to appear in your head. That's why we feel tired all day and have difficulty falling asleep at night.

Instead of a list of tasks, choose just one thing you need to complete today. After completing it, you will feel satisfied and will easily deal with the remaining less significant tasks.

Meditate

Start your day with silent morning meditation. It has several positive effects: normalizes the emotional background, reduces stress, increases stress resistance, strengthens the immune system.

It is not necessary to achieve a meditative trance - just relax, concentrate and spend a few minutes in a calm state of mind. Sit down and close your eyes. Inhale for 4 counts, hold your breath for 4 counts and exhale for 8 counts. Try to return to focusing on your breathing if you notice that your mind is “wandering” somewhere to the side. Continue for 3 minutes.

Use meditation apps:

Headspace: Guided Meditation (For IOS and Android).

Meditation and Sounds by Verv (For IOS and Android).

Get ready in the evening

How you feel when you wake up and throughout the day will depend on how well you slept.

Numerous studies show that electronic devices contribute to disrupted sleep cycles. If you regularly experience problems, try turning off all devices 2-3 hours before going to bed (this also applies to e-books).

The cold glow of screens makes it difficult to produce melatonin, a hormone that coordinates our internal clock.

In the evening, you need to not only get enough sleep, but also decide how to spend the next day.

Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism. The Path to Simplicity,” recommends that before planning your next day, first write down in your diary how your day went today. If you don't figure out what you did right and wrong today, you won't be able to create a productive action plan for tomorrow.

How to plan things? We've already mentioned that successful people rarely use a to-do list. However, Cruz noted that almost all of them use a calendar.

The method of planning tasks in a calendar is devoid of all the disadvantages of the to-do list that we talked about earlier:

you can manage your time;
you can schedule the most important things at the beginning of the day, when you still have reserves of willpower;
You'll avoid overexertion because you can schedule scheduled breaks into your calendar.

Morning meditation

And of course, it’s good to start the day with meditation. It is she who will give you vigor, good mood, increased vitality, and good resistance to stress.

What was said above about hatha yoga and qigong can also be applied to meditation. It’s just that meditation is more targeted work with consciousness, psyche and soul. You can read about the benefits of meditation in a separate article; I will not repeat myself here.

But I also want to invite you to start a new day with meditation with open eyes and going out into the surrounding space. This meditation is more aimed at increasing vitality, which will be very useful at the beginning of the day.

A separate article will be devoted to it.

The main reasons to start a new life and change yourself

Surely everyone has had days when he made a vow to radically change his life on Monday, with the onset of the new year or birthday. Even those who seem to be doing well are, no, no, even thinking about starting to live differently.

Why do people suddenly get excited about the idea of completely and completely changing their destiny? This may be due to dissatisfaction with the quality of life, a state of overwork, stressful situations, etc. There can be many motives for the occurrence of such thoughts. However, having decided to become a different person, many do not know where to start and what steps to take.

When a person gets used to living at his own rhythm, based on certain principles and actions, it is difficult for him to abandon established beliefs. After all, a new life is not just superficial changes, it is global, sometimes painful transformations in all spheres of life. Where can I find the strength to rebuild myself and my destiny? And do we need to change anything at all?

3 important steps

which every woman should go through

Anika Snagovskaya

Author and presenter of women's trainings on harmonizing feminine energy. Master of removing limiting beliefs and master of constellations.

I have prepared three lessons for you that will help you better understand yourself, remove the restrictions that prevent you from feeling loved and living happily.

Video lesson with meditation: 5 states of femininity

You will learn about 5 female states that exist in every woman, how they manifest themselves and which archetypes are most manifested in you and which are not developed.

Video lesson + meditation: How to let go of past relationships

I’ll tell you what you need to do to free your heart from old feelings and break the energy threads connecting you with your past partner.

Audio recording: Neuro-af

Thanks to this neuro-affirmation, you can regain self-love and feel sincere gratitude and happiness for every day.

Take your gifts!

The same reasons can lead to different consequences for different people. After all, we all differ from each other in character, fortitude, ability to accept help or not succumb to the influence of others, etc. Therefore, for some, certain circumstances may become an impetus for revising their life values. And for others, the same circumstances will only affect the choice of the color of the socks that they will wear today.

But there are still typical situations that exert strong emotional pressure on the state of psychological balance, not just unsettling a person, but practically turning him inside out. It is in such situations that people begin to think about how to start a new life and change themselves.

1. Divorce or separation after a long relationship. It doesn’t matter whether the breakup was unexpected or everything has been leading up to this for a long time - only a few manage to survive a breakup easily. The rest are trying to comprehend what happened and understand what to do next, because a lot will have to change:

home life will no longer remain the same: it will have to be changed or built from scratch;
your marital status has changed, and you also need to get used to it;
Now you make your own decisions in everything, without the support of a partner.

It is believed that in a broken couple, the one who was abandoned experiences what happened twice as painfully. Consequently, he will need to spend twice as much effort to cope with the consequences of the divorce and start living again.

2. Death of a loved one. This is another serious reason that can push you to want to change something in life. It is difficult for many people to go through this test, because the death of a loved one plunges a person into a depressive state, from which it can be difficult to get out without the help of a specialist. To start a new life, these people must first of all normalize their mental balance, since change requires a lot of strength.

There are other reasons that motivate you to change something in your destiny. For example, dissatisfaction with appearance or awareness of the harmfulness of certain habits. But the two above are the ones most actively pushing for reform.