A fresh and good start in a day, starts the night before. Arianna Huffington (https://community.thriveglobal.com/stories/116-sleep-your-way-to-the-top) is a real guru when it comes to the importance of sleep. If you didn’t get enough sleep over night, your next day will be a bigger challenge than you might think. I don’t count this to the five habits I’m going to talk about because good sleep should be something self-apparent. Even though I know it is not yet in our society, we are getting there by many great expamples who teach us how to sleep.
Let’s start with 5 habits that will help you to start the day right. Energized, motivated and with a smile, ready to rule the world.
- Breathing fresh air: Open your window first thing when you wake up and take a deep inhale of fresh air. Alternatively go all the way outside and go for a walk or run, if that is what you are used to or craving. The important fact about this first point it, to provide your body with a lot of fresh oxygen. Especially when you spend most of your time inside, you shouldn’t go to them office without havig taken some deep breaths in the fresh air.
- Meditation: With some fresh oxygen your brain and body will wake up fast and are slowly getting ready to work. The day ahead might be full with many tasks, people and sounds. To balance this before it even started, take yourself a moment of stillness each morning. Choose your favorite kind of meditation, if you’re already familiar with it. If you aren’t new to meditation, give it a try! Sit down in a comfortable seated position with a straight spine. Set a timer for 3-10 minutes. Close your eyes. Focus on your natural breath, for some time. Then start to inhale for a count of three and exhale for a count of three. When the timer goes off, come back to your natural breath. When you are ready come back to your natural breath.
- Intention setting: After the first two exercises, your mind should be refreshed and clear. Now ask yourself “What are the three most important goals I want to achieve today?”. This can be work related or something like drinking 2 liters of water today. Whatever goal is important for you, this morning.
- Spine exercise: Every kind of exercise is great in the morning. Though many people prefer to workout later in the day, which is great because we are all different and should absolutely always listen to ourselves. After not moving for 7-8 hours during the night, it is crucial though to activate your body. The spine is a very important center of our body. There is a saying “We are as old, as our spine is flexible”. The spine’s main function is to stabilize the upper body and to provide flexibility for movement of the upper body. If the spine is straight and healthy, all of our organs have the space they need in our abdomen. That is why I do three movements every morning, before I leave home. A side stretch, a twist of the torso, rounding the spine to the front and the back. You can look up different exercises for those movements. It is simple, doesn’t take much time and your whole body will benefit from those three movements.
- Water: Our body consists of more than 70% water. More than 50% of all headaches that appear after noon, are due to dehydration. Your whole day will be affected by the amount of water you drink in the morning. Let it be something between 0.5 to 1 Liter (16 to 34 oz). Your brain function, heart function, cardiovascular system amongst many others will benefit immensely by you drinking pure water or herbal tea in the morning. Adding fruits or herbs to the water to make it more tasty for you is great, if you are still not a fan of pure water.
One last thing I do before opening the door to step outside, I smile. No matter how I feel, I leave home with a smile and enter the day with a smile.
I hope this will help you to have a happy and energized day, everyday, as much as those habits help me and many of my clients, friends and my family.
Have a happy day!