How can you improve your mental health and happiness by adopting a powerful morning routine?

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week.  Here, gunnercooke Partner and Coach, Hannah Beko, suggests starting the day by taking some time to take care of ourselves in mind and body.

Our thoughts create our reality.  We get to decide how we feel each day. 

In the morning, we don’t have to passively wait and see how we feel and what sort of day we’re going to have. Instead we can decide how our day is going to go, how we want to be feeling.

Every time we form an opinion about ourselves, we are right.  Every time we believe something about ourselves, we are creating it.   So if we are telling ourselves that we are tired, unfocussed, not achieving what we want to achieve, not good enough.. this is how we will feel.

Each morning is a new beginning.  When you start the day positively, you create a new ritual of setting up positive thoughts and habits that create amazing outcomes.

What can you do to create a new morning routine so that you feel positive, enthusiastic, energised and happy at the start of the day?

This is what I do each morning..

Set my alarm for 6am everyday. If you usually get up at 6am, set it for 5.30am.  Do something that stretches you a little.   I listen to a 10 minute success meditation where I visualise something I have coming up going really well.  This might be a presentation or workshop or a meeting or client pitch.

This is followed by a few minutes of gratitude, thinking about what I’m grateful for.

Then I listen to something motivating. One of my favourite youtube videos is called “Win the Morning, Win the Day”. Then I read a couple of pages of a good motivational book.  At the moment I am reading The Millionaire Underdog.

You can also build in a few minutes of gentle exercise, maybe some yoga or stretching.  It’s important to remember that we need to work on our mind and our body to feel our best.

 Why?

 Take control of the morning, take control of the day

But you aren’t just taking control of what happens in the day, you are really taking control of your feelings for that day.  You are choosing to feel positive and grateful.  This can change your entire day.

You already have a routine even if you don’t realise it. You get up, maybe check your phone, perhaps brush your teeth, make a cup of tea, have your shower etc. You probably have a fairly regular routine.

Is there anything you can adapt in your routine?

Maybe start with not checking your phone for at least the first half an hour or even hour after you wake.

You don’t need to try and add in everything I’ve suggested in one go, that’s unlikely to work beyond a few days or a week.  But choose one, add that to your routine and when it’s established add something else. 

They say our creativity is at its greatest just after we wake up.

Can you use this creative time of the day to spend even just a few minutes thinking about how you want to be feeling?

If we simply said to ourselves every morning when we wake, “today is going to be a great day” we create this for ourselves. What statements could you repeat when you wake up in the morning?

The most powerful two words are “I AM…” and it’s what we put after these words that determine our reality.  Determine the way we feel, the way we see the world.   My recommendation is that you start with “I am enough”.  Marisa Peer has some amazing YouTube videos about the power of saying “I am enough” when you wake.

What might happen if you just woke up and said to yourself “Today is a good day”. “Today, I will enjoy my life”.  If you did this every day for a month, how might you feel?

Happy mental health awareness week.  Take this week to think about how you could make yourself happier and healthier in both mind and body..