Empower Your Day And Change Your Life With Powerful Morning Rituals & routine
Now that is one powerful blog post title, RIGHT!? BUT, it is NO exaggeration, deny all you want but our life is essentially a sum of what our everyday life looks like…
Either you control your day or the day controls you and it all begins with ones’ morning routine – setting ourselves up either for success or failure!
Here’s the thing… You had good intentions when you set your alarm for 6 AM as you hit the bed the previous night, but the next morning when it was time to really follow through on those intentions, you snoozed that alarm a dozen times, and suddenly it’s 7:30 AM, how on Earth did that happen?
PANIC!!!
You grab your phone, check your calendar, emails, social media, etc etc all while hating the fact that you didn’t wake up earlier as planned. And suddenly your stress level is through the roof, I mean, you have like half a dozen things to complete by noon, so the arrow pointing towards red on the stress level indicator makes total sense.
Now, tell me, is that how you begin your day!? Does your morning look quite similar to what I describe above?
If yes, yikes, and here I am asking you about your Morning Routine, and you say, what Morning? and what Routine?
In case your mornings currently look like the above description then it might as well be your morning routine, but not one that is remotely empowering – neither empowering your day nor changing your life…
Food for thought: Does your morning routine energize you or drain you even before you start the day?
But let’s do some damage control here before it’s too late…
That is exactly why I am sharing these morning routine tips and giving you a glimpse at what my morning routine and rituals look like.
It’s not to say that you should follow my routine, this is NOT for everyone and it shouldn’t be. What works for me won’t work for you and vice versa, so pick and choose as you deem fit.
The best morning ritual is the one that’s perfectly tailored to you. Just like everything else in life, there is NO one size fits all, so the only trick really is to find out what your best morning ritual and routine is, and that can only happen through trial and error.
Experiment, change, adapt, evolve, repeat…
But whatever your morning looks like, be intentional and mindful about your morning routines and rituals (and how you start your day)!
P.S. I keep updating my routines for optimal efficiency, haha, yes, I hate not making the best use of time… so if you come back here and ask me what my morning routine looks like in 3 months, you might hear a varied version of the below.
P.P.S. Your morning really begins the night before, I cannot stress enough just how important this is. Read all about it here.
Before I dive into sharing what my current (sacred) morning ritual looks like… Don’t be turned off by my elaborate morning routine! I have built up to it over the years. If you have never had a powerful morning routine then start by dedicating 10-15 minutes towards it and slowly build on it by adding what serves you best.
I feel the most productive when I wake up much much earlier than the rest of the world and get a head start, i.e. around 4 AM, and my morning ritual when I do every.single.thing listed below takes me anywhere between 1.5 – 2 hours. The days I wake up around 6 AM or after (which rarely ever happens) already makes me feel quite unproductive, to begin with.
There is nothing more I hate than waking up and going through a list of to-do’s and getting on with the day without being intentional about my mornings. I have trained myself to hate that kind of lifestyle to such a large extent that I don’t have a choice but to wake up early and get a peaceful start to the day.
This is also my me-time and self-care time, and I am not one to compromise on it. Even on days when I feel unmotivated or am swamped with work to follow through any of the rituals (which happens more often than I’d like to admit), it still gives me the me-time that I value so much.
Even when I was 42 weeks pregnant and even during postpartum I’d still wake up early to start my day. That’s just me.
MY MORNING RITUALS & ROUTINE
Wake up: Between 4-4:30 AM
No phone until about 8 AM i.e. no checking social media, no browsing the internet, no checking emails, etc for at least 4 hours after I wake up. Unless I need to get on the phone to access a specific meditation, apps related to my morning routines, access one of the courses that I am enrolled in, or need to tend to something related to the actual work I do (this last bit only happens when I know something needs to get done before 10 AM or if its a part of my morning flow).
I don’t make my bed as the hubby wakes up a little later than I do, and hence it’s his responsibility. Works for me 😉
First thing, drink about 20 Oz of warm water (before brushing). Part of Ayurvedic practice, Ushapana
Breathwork + Meditation
Visualization, Affirmations, and Setting Intentions for the Day
Gratitude Journaling + Journaling + Morning Pages
Read (Audible, Libby, Podcasts, Hard Copy Books, etc)
Surya Namaskara + Yoga (I do not view this as my workout but it is a sacred practice for me, workout happens much later in the morning).
Plank for a few minutes
Brush + Tongue Scrap (while listening to devotional music, i.e. songs I’d listen to when I was a little kid (parents rituals) and some I have picked up over the years. Extremely soothing, also reminds me of my childhood).
Put on my workout outfit (so I don’t miss the workout)
Drink my Morning Elixir aka Morning Detox Cleanse P.S. This drink is NOT for everyone!
Face rolling (with an Ice Roller)
Walking outside on grass barefoot (Earthing)
Head to my office, light a candle, play soothing music in the background as I apply oil on my face, and give me a quick facial massage
Glance over my goals and long term vision. Look at my vision board, pull out a card from my quotes collection, a card from my ‘today I will’ prompts jar and a card from my ‘I am grateful for’ jar.
Review my schedule for the day
Work for at least 1-2 hours. Since early morning is my most productive time of the day I mostly take on tasks that need me to be at my creative best, i.e writing blog posts, IG captions, etc. Or if I am enrolled in any courses (which I almost always am, and if I am being totally transparent, I am currently enrolled in 7 courses) then I go through one of them.
Somewhere along the chain of events listed above, hubby walks into my office as he goes through his morning routine, it’s our time to connect – kiss, hug, say I love you, discuss anything important, and off he goes. If I am in the middle of something (which I can’t be distracted from) then he gets the ‘talk to the hand’, and once I am done with that task I then go meet him.
With the above routine, I get a solid 3-4 hours before my little one has to be tended to.
The hubs and I then sneak into our son’s room together, it’s our little family ritual and our time to indulge/engage/laugh/giggle with our little one for a bit and then whoever is responsible to give him a shower on that day spends the next 30 minutes going through his morning routine.
Our little one is usually up anywhere between 4-7 AM and he is chatting away in his crib. If we didn’t have the crib then he would be in our faces as soon as he wakes up. But thanks to being in the crib he does fall back to sleep at times and when he doesn’t we just pick him up sooner, especially if he is being fussy or cranky. So I am honestly dreading the day when he will outgrow the crib.
My workout happens either before he wakes up (mostly in summer when I go out for a run before it gets hot outside) or after I give him a shower (all other seasons except summer). So my workout schedule is also mostly weather/season dependent. I may at times get on social media in between my workout routine as I take a quick break to post an IG story or post on Facebook.
Then I shower/get ready for the day and am back in my office to get cracking, anywhere between 9-10 AM. Since I do intermittent fasting, I have breakfast between 11 AM – 12 PM.
So that’s pretty much what my morning routine looks like at the moment!
While this might look like a lot to some, this is my ideal start to the day and I actually get a ton done by the time the clock strikes 10.
P.S. Apparently, Steve Jobs did this and I plan to give this a try too so I can kick things up a notch or two. He would look in the mirror every morning and say, “If today was the last day of my life, would I be happy with what I’m about to do today?” If the answer was “no” too many days in a row, then it was his clue that something needed to change.
In short, everyone has the same 24 hours, what you do with it is what makes a difference.
No one can create more time, but we can make more time by learning how to be more productive and manage our time better because unlike many things in life, time-management is mostly in our own control.
And hence it is quite important to establish a healthy morning routine, as it sets the tone for the rest of the day.
Win your morning, win your day, and win your life!
“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”
Namaste,
Kusum
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