A morning routine to set you up for a great day

Start your day right with this easy, one-hour morning routine.

We’ve all had those days where we wake up ‘on the wrong side of bed’. We feel tired and agitated, starting a chain reaction of negative thinking. This can lead us to feel as if everything is going wrong for us on that day.

One way to avoid this and to start each day on a positive note is to dedicate the first hour of your day to a routine that will benefit your health and well-being. Some benefits of this include lower stress levels, increased motivation, better energy and an overall improvement of mood.

The routine described here takes one hour and is separated into four 15-minute segments:

1. Yoga or other form of exercise

To wake your body up physically and get that blood pumping, allocate the first 15 minutes of your routine to exercise. Switch between gentle yoga exercises and high-intensity cardio work to give you an instant energy boost. This will keep your body healthy and will help you feel more accomplished and therefore more motivated for the day ahead.

2. Meditation

This is a great follow-up to physical exercise as it helps you to balance and centre yourself. Sit down for 15 minutes and focus on your breath. Don’t worry if you’re not an experienced meditator – just focus on your breathing and every time your mind wanders, gently bring it back to your breath.

3. Gratitude

The next 15 minutes should be about feeling grateful. Use a notepad or laptop to write down a list of things you are grateful for that morning – this could be your family, the fact that it is sunny or even that you slept well the night before. Reminding yourself of what you have will help you retain perspective for the rest of the day.

4. Positive affirmations

Finally, set some positive energy loose with a few positive affirmations/visualisations. Think about how you would like your day to go, write out your intentions for the day or repeat a positive mantra to get you in the right frame of mind.

To find out how therapies like yoga can be beneficial to your life, please explore our therapy topics.

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