A Step-by-Step Guide to Create a Healthy Morning Routine Like a Boss
Struggling to stay consistent with your morning routine? Then the culprit here is not you, it’s your routine.
There is no such thing as a perfect morning routine. Everyone has different needs.
However, the BEST MORNING ROUTINE (for you) is the one that serves your purpose and gives you the results you want.
Here’s a step-by-step guide that will show you how EXACTLY you are supposed to CREATE a healthy morning routine for yourself by taking necessary ACTIONS.
“If you win the morning, you win the day. ”
Let’s Create a Morning Routine
Follow these 8-steps to create a healthy morning routine that will give you desired results:
1. Find your purpose
Put first things first.
You’re more likely to develop and stick to a routine if you know how important your purpose is to you.
DO THIS:
Brainstorm your ultimate goal
Pick out the goals that you want to accomplish through your early morning routine.
Simply ask yourself, “WHY?” and you’ll find your purpose.
For instance, why do you want to create a morning routine? You want to make time for some physical activity? Or want to improve productivity at work? Or just want some ME time?
Whatever it is, this goal will drive you to carry out your wake-up routine every day.
2. Identify your hurdles
If you’re new to following routines, you might find yourself facing inner struggle. Like hitting the snooze button and sleeping in or checking your phone as soon as you wake up.
As a result, you waste your precious early hours without even realizing it.
In short, you’re going to face certain hurdles when you’re adopting new good morning rituals. Therefore it is necessary to RECOGNIZE the root cause of it and TAKE ACTION to steer clear of it.
DO THIS:
Recognizing the causes
Identify and write down a list of negative thoughts and feelings (physical, emotional & spiritual) that you encounter in the early hours (which keeps you from starting the routine).
For instance, the causes may be as simple as – feeling some kind of physical pain, feeling exhausted, feeling unmotivated, your sleep is interrupted, or you could not get enough sleep, etc.
Take action
Find actionable solutions to your problems that you identified earlier.
For instance, if you’re unable to get a minimum of 7 to 8 hours of sleep, then you might need to consider following a night routine. It’ll help you develop proper rituals and get restful sleep.
If you don’t feel motivated, then you definitely need some inspiration to get going.
If you struggle to sleep even when you try, then you might need some actionable sleeping tips that'll work for you.
3. Build better habits
Now that you know your purpose, it’s time to build habits that will SUPPORT your goals and objectives. Also, break the ones that don’t.
DO THIS:
Prepare a list of habits that line-up with your objectives.
For instance, if your goal is to get healthier then your list will look like this -
Drink water first thing in the morning
Perform mindful breathing
Practice physical activities
Go for a run/walk
Maintain a bullet journal
Have a healthy breakfast
Similarly, recognize when a habit is not serving your purpose and immediately break the habit. These include habits like, eating high-calorie food for breakfast or wasting an unnecessary amount of time on your phone.
Adding good habits to your routine and subtracting bad ones is equally necessary.
RELATED POST: 27 Daily Habits of Productive People
4. Include wellness practices in your routine
Along with good habits, it is crucial to include wellness practices when creating a healthy morning routine.
Self-care and wellness practices are important to improve your well-being. Besides, by maintaining a healthy lifestyle you can increase your personal productivity and perform better at work.
DO THIS:
Incorporate habits that expand your energy.
Similarly, it is necessary to exclude habits that drain your energy.
For instance, habits like drinking water or tea, stretching, etc. will make you feel energetic. Try to include such habits in your morning routine.
RELATED POST: Self-Care 101: Daily Self-Care Checklist for Beginners
5. Change one habit at a time
If you try to incorporate new habits all at once, you’re definitely going to fail.
Why?
Well, when you try to change your entire routine at once – you’re trying to change many things at the same time.
As old habits (good or bad) are hard to break, new habits are hard to stick to. Besides, it becomes even more difficult to form new habits without breaking the old ones.
Therefore, changing your routine all at once is never a good idea.
So, what do you do?
Instead of trying to change your routine all at once, change one habit at a time.
DO THIS:
By now you’ll have two lists with you – habits that you want to include and those to exclude from your routine.
It’s time to analyze the two lists and REPLACE the habits that you want to include with the ones you want to exclude from your daily morning routine.
For instance, if your goal is to feel more relaxed in the morning, you’re going to –
Replace ‘spending time on social media in early hours’ with - ‘praying and meditation’.
In this way, one-by-one, replace bad habits with good ones. First, start with the easy ones and slowly incorporate the other activities in your morning ritual.
6. Stack your habits
Human behavior follows a cycle of chain reaction. Your one action signals and triggers your next behavior. This proves helpful to build new habits by stacking them.
How?
HABIT STACKING is a method where you pick out your current (strong) habit and then stack your new habit to it.
DO THIS:
Keep the list you made in front of you –
Analyze the habits.
Arrange them in a workable sequence that will allow you to build new habits by stacking them with the old ones.
For instance, this is how your morning ritual will look like if you start stacking habits -
After I wake up, I’ll make my bed.
After I make my bed, I’ll drink a glass of warm water.
After I drink a glass of warm water, I’ll brush my teeth.
After I brush my teeth, I’ll go for a walk.
After I come from the walk, I’ll take a hot shower.
And the list goes on.
7. Calculate the hours (time) you need
Time is precious, especially the morning hours. Therefore, it is important to calculate how much TIME you’ll need to PERFORM your morning routine so that you don’t have to skip any of the activities.
DO THIS:
Make a list of all the activities that you want to carry out from the time you wake up till the time you start your work (whether you work from home or at your workplace).
Approximately calculate the number of minutes that you’ll need to perform the above activities.
Determine the time you need to wake up so you can perform all of the above activities and reach your workplace on time.
For more clarity, this is how your list will look –
Wake up, reflect, make your bed, and drink water (5 minutes)
Use the bathroom, brush your teeth, face wash, etc. (10 minutes)
Go for a Walk (20 minutes)
Take shower (15 minutes)
Get dressed and ready (10 minutes)
Prepare and have a healthy breakfast (20 minutes)
Complete some household chores (10 minutes)
Commute from home to office (30 minutes)
Walk from parking lot to office (5 minutes)
Here the total time required is 125 minutes (i.e., 2 hours 5 minutes).
So according to this example, if you’ve to reach your workplace by 9:30 am then the latest you can wake up is 7:25 am or before.
BONUS TIP: Always try to wake up earlier than the calculated time, so that you don’t feel rushed.
RELATED POST: How to Use Your Time Wisely at Work
8. Make changes whenever necessary
Last, but not least.
As your goals and responsibilities change, so do routines.
So, what do you do when you feel like your routine is not serving your purpose anymore?
DO THIS:
Keep reviewing and updating your routine.
Once in a while make time to understand which habits are serving your goals and which aren’t.
Go through the process (from step-1 to step-7) again.
Observe and track your morning routine to make sure it is still workable for you.
“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret to your success is found in your daily routine.”
By carefully following these 8-steps, you can create a workable healthy morning routine easily. And once you start incorporating this carefully curated daily morning routine you’ll never struggle with inconsistency.
Also, you’ll experience so many benefits of waking up early that you’ll look forward to it.
Further, if you want to be more productive in the morning, include these simple tips in your routine.
Lastly, after you create a routine for yourself, learn how to stick to it.
Here are some more resources that you might find useful to improve your productivity:
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