If you told me years ago that I would one day be a morning person, I would totally laugh it off and be in complete disbelief. I was always a night-owl.
I loved staying up late, like super late…like 4am late…
When midnight came around, that’s when I felt more awake, more alive. Years of studying for my undergrad definitely anchored the fact that I would never be a morning person.
Staying up late to study and do homework was totally my forte.
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As I grew older and my younger days were slowly being put behind me, I learned that staying up late was actually detrimental to my health.
Not to mention, you age faster, you gain more weight and your hormones got all messed up.
When I started to feel the effects of getting older and the words “self-care” became a part of my vocabulary, I wanted to change my habits but my circadian rhythm had already been cemented into every cell of my body.
Yet, I knew no matter how hard it was going to be, I had to change.
Honestly, it took me about 3 years to actually change my sleeping patterns completely and have it stay that way without relapsing but I did it!
Now, mornings are a blessing to me and I hate staying up late.
And because it was so hard for me to get to this point, I really take care in protecting my mornings and my mindset as I now know that everything is connected.
Your mornings affect your day which affect your evenings which affect your mornings.
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Here are 5 top things I’ve learned not to do in the morning.
Top 5 Things Not To Do When You First Wake Up
1) Don’t Check Your Phone
Why? Because your mind gets filled with everybody’s crap or junk emails that you swear you unsubscribed to.
When you wake up in the morning, your brainwaves are in theta state; this is a subconscious, dream-like state where you’re disconnected with the outside world and you begin recording information rather than replaying it.
If you are not aware of what you’re recording during this state, you will subconsciously form connections in your brain that don’t serve you.
Not checking your phone in the morning is SO hard to do, I struggle with this one too. Sometimes you win and sometimes you fail but as long as you stay mindful of it.
To increase your chances of winning this “morning phone fight”, leave your phone far away from your bed so you can’t just roll over and pick it up.
Also, instead of using your phone as an alarm, go old school and use a regular alarm clock!
Before you pick up your phone and start answering to all the messages and notifications, get your mind in the right state before you start taking on the world!
Morning is an important time of day because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have
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2) Don’t Snooze
15 more minutes… Ok, 10 more minutes… 5 more minutes… Crap! Now I’m late!!
We’re all familiar with hitting the snooze button one too many times in our lives.
Maybe you’re sleep deprived from work, maybe you went out the night before or maybe you’re just plain tired from life!
When that alarm goes off, you can’t help but squeeze in an extra 15 minutes of sleep thinking that you’ll feel a bit better and more energized when you wake up.
Unfortunately, the opposite is true in this matter and science won’t tell you otherwise.
Your body starts preparing you to wake up about 2 hours before your alarm goes off by raising your body temperature and slowly moving through the sleeping stages.
When you hit the snooze button, you confuse your body and create “sleep inertia” which makes you feel groggy and even more tired.
3) Don’t Drink Coffee
At least not right away! I’m not going to persuade you not to drink coffee at all because I personally love coffee, especially the smell of freshly grinded coffee beans.
Coffee is a part of our culture and it has been imbedded into our routines for hundreds of years, and for good reason too. This psycho-active substance has the ability to spark imagination and catapult creativity to a whole new level.
There’s no doubt that some of the world’s most fascinating discoveries and inventions came to fruition with the help of a little bit (or a lot) of coffee.
Nonetheless, there are some negative side effects of drinking coffee too soon after you wake up and that’s due to a molecule called Adenosine.
Adenosine is a molecule in the body that’s mainly linked to digestion. As the food you eat gets converted into energy, it turns into ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate).
After you’ve used up all the ATP, it decomposes back into adenosine and builds up in your bloodstream, signaling you to become sleepy to tell you to rebuild your energy reserves.
Caffeine blocks your adenosine receptors, basically “fooling” you with wakefulness and alertness. As the caffeine starts to wear off, adenosine kicks back in and you feel drowsy again.
This is why sometimes you experience the “crash” after your first cup of coffee has worn off and you start thinking about having another cup.
In the morning, adenosine is still circling in your bloodstream and if you immediately mask those receptors with coffee, you didn’t give your body enough time to naturally clear it out.
Research has suggested that you wait at least 60-120 minutes after waking up before you have your first cup of coffee to avoid the onset of grogginess and falling into a vicious (yet delicious) cycle!
4) Don’t Keep the Curtains Closed
Sleeping in darkness is so beneficial to our quality of sleep and hormone regulation but come sunrise, it’s important to expose ourselves to natural sunlight to regulate our circadian rhythm. When the curtains are closed shut, it’s so easy to continue sleeping in.
I have blackout curtains and sometimes even if the sun is shining bright outside, I practically can’t tell. The moment I open my curtains, I immediately feel more awake and naturally a smile comes upon my face.
During those nights when you know you’re extra tired and might sleep in, leave the curtains a little bit open on the sides so that when the sun comes up, that light will naturally come into your room which will help you wake up.
If you’re feeling groggy in the morning, get yourself up just enough to open the curtains to feel the light on your eyes even if they’re still closed.
It will also do wonders in helping you fall asleep better when evening comes around.
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5) Don’t Ask Yourself The Wrong Questions
This one is so important! Controlling your thoughts in the morning will dictate your entire day.
Most of us wake up in the morning and immediately start thinking about what bill we have to pay, what’s on our massive to-do list, what time we have to pick up the kids, or obsessively stress about completely unnecessary things that don’t need to be dealt with right at that moment.
The mornings should be all about controlling your thoughts and getting into the right mindset before you even start thinking about anything else.
What really helped me was doing Tony Robbin’s Morning Questions:
- What am I happy about in my life right now?
- What am I excited about in my life right now?
- What am I proud about in my life right now?
- What am I grateful for in my life right now?
- What am I enjoying the most in my life right now?
- What am I committed to in my life right now?
- Who do I love and who loves me?
I do these questions religiously every single morning. I pretty much have to do it to get my mind in the right state or I find my thoughts running wild.
These simple yet powerful questions can really make a big change to your mornings and make them much more enjoyable.
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I hope these tips help you in creating a beautiful morning routine so you can go out there and do all that you were made here to do and be all that the universe created you to be!
What are some things you do in your morning routine? Share them in the comments below!
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