Sara’s Morning Routine for a Successful Day

The beginning of your morning can set the tone for the rest of your day. Some of the most successful people rely on their morning routines to ensure their days are as productive as possible. If you ignore your morning alarm or tend to hit the snooze button once, twice, or even three times… try incorporating these habits listed below into your morning.

Rise with the Sun
Ask any successful person, or read any interview they’ve done, and you’ll find most of them are early risers. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, wakes up at 3:45 AM every day. If you’d like to wake up at a little less of an unreasonable hour, studies suggest rising with the sun. Rising with the sun syncs your bodies circadian rhythm, which helps combat insomnia, and a myriad of other health and psychological ailments. Waking early also literally gives you more time in the day to accomplish your daily goals.  

Hydrate
While you sleep, your body uses its reserves of water during the (hopefully) 6-9 hours of rest, which causes you to wake up dehydrated. So instead of going for that delicious cup of coffee first thing, start with at least one glass of water each morning.

Meditate
A morning meditation sets the tone for your entire day. Instead of jumping straight into your to-do list, daily meditation creates an opportunity to gently wake up and set the foundation for a successful day, in a peaceful way. Most gurus suggest a minimum of 15 minutes of mindful meditation every morning.

Sweat
Studies show that morning cardio specifically improves attention and decision-making skills. If cardio isn’t your cup of tea, studies have shown that movement of any kind improves blood flow. Dance it out, or wiggle a little! That increase in blood flow is key to providing energy boosts, improved focus, and stress relief.

Eat a real breakfast
Why? It’s the most important meal of the day! Eating a balanced breakfast helps get your metabolism going and gives you the energy you need to propel your day to success. Skipping breakfast puts your body into “starvation mode” and causes it to hold on to the calories it consumes later, rather than using them at a normal pace. This can have negative effects long term, and make you feel sluggish on a short-term basis.

Practice Gratitude
We tend to focus more on gratitude in the fall, but practicing daily gratitude can actually extend your lifespan. Let’s practice: take a moment to think of three things you’re grateful for, pause, breathe in, let the joy they give fill you, and breathe out. Do it now… I’m serious.

Journal
Journaling in the morning allows you to empty your mental cache and focus on what it truly important. A study in New Zealand found that adults healed faster while journaling daily about their experience after a medical procedure. Writing about stressful events helped the patients make sense of what had happened and decreased stress levels.

Make to-do lists
To-do lists help plan out the day to ensure that you block out enough time to complete your tasks. Lists also keep you organized so that you don’t become stressed out trying to complete a task last minute, or forget one altogether!

Eat the Frog
Not literally… Mark Twin tells us, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first […] Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

Your “frog” is the hardest, most important task for the day; the one item on your list that you’re most likely to procrastinate. Once you’ve identified your frog, eat it! By eating it first thing in the morning, you’ve eliminated your opportunities to procrastinate on it and reduced your stress level for the day.