GOOD MORNING? - Why a good morning routine is key to your happiness

MindsetHealthHappinessRoutinesGoal settingHabits

May 17

Having a routine in the morning can be a huge starter to building healthy habits for a lifetime. It’s also a proven way to set the tone right for your day ahead, helping you to be more focused, motivated and productive. It’s as simple as having the same things that you do in the same order and way each morning.

When you get up immediately after hearing your alarm in the morning, it’s a fantastic tactic to avoid starting your day with a slow, lazy, avoidance attitude. I know how it feels to keep hitting the snooze button, telling yourself it’s fine to hide away for another nine minutes, then another nine more. When you do this, you truly are avoiding starting your day. You’re putting off facing the fact you’re alive and have the opportunity to do something great that day. It really does play into a negative mindset and can lead to a low mood for the rest of the day.

Many people who opt for the snooze option or delay getting up out of bed, pick up their phone almost instantly after rousing from their sleep. It’s there right beside your bed and has probably become the last thing you look at on a night before sleep and the first thing you look at and engage with when you wake in the morning. The things most people do on their phones in the morning immediately fill your brain with noise, and most likely a lot of negativity too. Scrolling through your phone when you’ve not even properly opened your eyes, or given yourself a chance to think about anything positive in how you feel or what you want from your day ahead, really does start your mind working in a harmful way.

It’s much easier to avoid these unhealthy habits if you immediately rise once you’re awake or as soon as your alarm goes off - avoiding the snooze option! This also helps you to establish new healthier habits that will feed into you making more healthier lifestyle choices throughout the rest of your day. When you’re up and motivated to get your day started in a positive way, you carry this mindset forward to the day and will find you have more energy and often are less stressed. There are so many benefits that the impact of healthy morning habits can reap on the rest of your lifestyle.

For example, getting your mind and body moving early in the morning, can help to reduce symptoms of anxiety and stress. As I’m sure you’ll be aware, when you’re highly stressed, the impact can be widespread across other areas of your life - relationships, parenting, work, social interaction, food, motivation, energy levels, and much more. By starting your day with activities, even for short amounts of time, that focus your mind and body in a way that works for you, your stress levels can be significantly reduced, resulting in improvements in many of these areas.

I know through my journey the many things being stressed out on a morning played into throughout the rest of my day and week. Monday’s were always a biggie for me. Starting a new week, often after a hectic weekend packed with chores and overindulgence, would have me feeling so low and stressed at the thought of having to get through another long, busy working week with very little time to recover once I lifted my head of the pillow. The instant I started to come round from sleep, the worry, anxiety and dread kicked in. This negative mindset created blocks around how I felt so it became impossible to lift myself into a more positive, open flow state.

Now, after doing a lot of work and research into building a more resilient and positive mindset, I avoid this full-on almost depressive Monday morning state. I still have times where I feel pretty tired and would have liked another hour under the covers, but most days, I know the faster I get myself going when I’ve woken from sleep, the better I will feel for my day ahead. I encourage this positive outlook more by practising several habits I’ve gradually put in place. Some I have been doing for many, many years now, others have been established much more recently. Together they do play a huge role in giving me the right start for the day ahead; something I know matters so much to making the most of my life and feeling driven in what I get to do each day.

Here are a few tips for getting started with your morning routine and how you can start to build some new healthy habits to help you get the most from each day:

Think about what you don’t like right now about your mornings - what stresses you out or has you rushing around each morning? Is there anything that always seems to push your mood into a bad place?
What is the main thing you want to feel like when you start your day?
Get clear on why feeling like this matters to you.
What’s the biggest obstacle to making this happen and how can you start to overcome this?
Think about one thing you could start building a habit for to help lift your mind and body first thing in the morning.
Start with something small and think about how to tag it onto an existing habit. This is called habit stacking and is a really effective way to help build new habits. For example, if you want to start journaling and know you put the kettle on every morning, leave a notebook beside the kettle so it triggers you to pick it up and write in it whilst the kettle is boiling. Soon you’ll not even need the prompt as it will build into a successful habit of its own.
Don’t let the issue of time get in your way. Putting some habits in place in your morning routine that benefit how you feel, can help you get efficient with your time because you will feel so much more energised and motivated as a result of these new habits.
Try some visualising soon after waking. Think about your day ahead and play it out the way you’d ideally like it to go - picture yourself succeeding in your tasks and stepping into how it feels when you’re having these incredible results in your day. This practice can massively impact your self-belief and confidence to do what you might be putting off or dreading in your day.
Mindfulness is a great tool to build into your daily routine and is especially effective when included in your morning routine. Try a meditation or breathwork exercise to boost your mind and help find your get-up-and-go. There are so many different ways to put mindfulness techniques into your day, even if mediation isn’t something for you. Mindfulness is about being more present and aware of how you feel through your day, so it can fit alongside other parts of your routine easier than pure meditation.
Now for the biggie - leave your phone alone! Not picking up your phone immediately upon waking will be a game-changer in both your mindset and being able to build these new healthy habits. Avoiding negativity through the media or other sources will mean it’s not the first thing your brain encounters in the morning, allowing you to put more positive thoughts and messages into it. You’ll also get back the time you would normally lie in bed scrolling to implement some of these new habits, all of which will get you starting your day with so much more vigour and purpose.

Feeling stronger in your health and wellbeing is an accumulation of all the small things you do overtime, which if done consistently, will form as habits. It is these powerful habits that can transform how your feel, resulting in you living well and feeling more happiness. You need to work out what habits will have the most benefit to you and help get your day started in the right way.

It might take a little planning and preparation to get started - especially when it comes to the last tip on not using your phone! The effort and consistency will be worth it, especially if you know you need to improve your mental health and lower stress. The more control you have over your day, which is an outcome of the way you start your morning, the better you can become at controlling how you feel. If you can choose more positive thoughts and have a better awareness of your emotions and feelings, the greater your happiness will be. As your happiness level is linked to your health, it will lead to the better quality of wellbeing you are striving for.

“You must come up with a morning routine that puts you in control of yourself and your day.”

— Mel Robbins

I’m all for putting a morning routine in place that meets your goals and fits into your overall lifestyle. It’s proven that a morning routine has many benefits for your mental and physical health, and it’s cited by many of the worlds high performing and successful people as being key to how they live the way they do. Think about how you can get started putting yours in place, or tweaking the one you have now, to make your days get off to the right start. Don’t overthink it, and don’t feel you have to get it nailed straight away. Test what works and what doesn’t, then adjust it until you can feel the benefits.