Life begins every morning. I know. Profound. But it does. Every morning you get a chance to do it better. Instead of checking out in the morning, rushing around and feeling frazzled or just hating mornings you totally have the power to do you in each morning. Here are some real life tips on having a kickass morning. This totally applies if you are a parent with little ones or teens still at home, single folks, those that work out of the home and those that are always hustling.
How To Have a Kickass Morning
- Set up anything that has to be done the night before. This is unbreakable and I don’t care how tired you are at night. Get your shit together before you get between the sheets. Pack your lunches, figure out what everyone is going to wear, and put together what you need to take with you and have it ready by the door. Bonus if you actually start adding to your to do list and looking at your plan for the next day.
- Get up earlier. This is different for everybody, but I used to be the kind of person who had to be in my corporate job at 7:30AM, my commute was 45 minutes so I would get up 15 minutes before and just slam myself out the door. There is NO joy in that. It felt like a slog where I was exhausted and not totally awake. Then later I would carry on that same behavior trying to get my kiddo to school – getting everything done in 15 minutes and rushing out the door. CRAZY PANTS. Now I know that having an hour (for me) before I have to actually leave the house to do all the things I want to do to ease into my day makes life sane. Yes. I lose a little sleep, but honestly, the calm matters more than those few minutes.
- Make it simple. You do not have to go for a run, write your dissertation, perform for your kids or do anything super amazing in the morning if it doesn’t feed you. Pick out the essentials and just repeat these every single day. Yes. It is a bit robotic to do the same set of habits every morning, but unless you are a total lark (morning person) you need to keep it simple to remain sane.
- Silence is magical. Oh how I wish I had figured this out when our daughter was young. We would, stupidly, put on PBS or NPR and fill the house with noise. We would yell to get her to hurry (she was a born dawdler – not sure if she still is). We would try to have conversations, but we were tired and cranky. Silly silly parents we were! Now my husband barely speak to one another. We kiss and say I love you, drive safe and have a good day – but there is no real conversation. He quietly does his thing and I do mine. I probably don’t really start talking now until about 8:30 or 9AM and it feels like a blessing. There is magic in not yelling or talking. You can go through all of the things with quiet – just doing them. Your kids will think you are like a magic weird jedi (which you are) and just calmly get them from one place to another. Try it a few times and you will see the magic. Note: Don’t demand silence from other people. This isn’t about controlling others. This is about you easing into your morning.
- Make time for the things that matter to you. It is really important to do you. Don’t do things in the morning because you think that is what you should do or what you think other people are doing. You do you. If you want to dance for 10 minutes in your living room – go for it. If you want to read for a bit with coffee outside – do it. If you want to use that time to call your mom and she’s into it – do it. This isn’t a test to see what morning routine is better; it’s about finding the one that rocks your own world.
- Don’t do too much. Mornings are finite and cramming too much into them can ruin them. You can’t do all the things in the morning. You can do some things and you can be enriched by them. That is what you are looking for while you create your kickass morning.
What Do Other People Do To Have Kickass Mornings?
- Marelisa Fabrega of Daring to Live Fully gives you 9 Morning Habits that you could consider for your morning routine.
- Belvita over on Huffington Post gives these tips to creating a better morning.
- Beliefnet is giving 7 tips to Better Mornings
- Balance in Me has 11 Tips on How To Start Your Day Right
- Laura Esposito over on Psychology Today has 4 Morning Success Rituals that you could use to have a better morning.
- Forbes writer, Kathryn Dill, has tips to Hack Your Morning.
- BrainPickings.org has a short post on Hating Your Morning Less and a terrific post about the Daily Habits of Writers.
What Does My Morning Look Like?
My morning is pretty amazing, but I realize even how it is now it could probably use some tweaking. So much so that I am going to track my time for a week and then send that tracking to Laura Vanderkam, author of What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. I’m pretty excited to see what I actually do and how I can squeeze more goodness out of my whole day.
Three things that I really strive for in the morning: silence, alone time and routine. I function better if I can swim in my own soup before diving into trying to communicate with people. I have a few early morning meetings during the month (so I try to get up an hour before I have to leave) but I work really hard to keep the mornings as my quiet work time. I love people, but I just don’t want them to hang out with me in the morning. I also really try to keep the same routine – it just makes the whole day better. This is what it looks like for the most part:
- Wake, shower, get dressed
- Make coffee, drink some water, eat some almonds
- Meditate/sit for 10 – 20 minutes depending on my schedule
- Write three pages longhand
- Write out my to do list and see what my day looks like
- Have an egg and some veggies
That’s it. That is what almost every single morning looks like. If I skip something, I feel it during the day. I didn’t get to process something in my journal. I didn’t get the awareness practice that meditation offers. I didn’t eat. Argh! So that schedule above is pretty much what’s been working so far. I’ll keep you updated as it changes and tweaks over time.
Now you tell me. I’m SUPER curious. What does your typical morning look like? What do you do before you “start your day”? Let’s talk about it in the comments and see if we can help each other have better mornings.
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