Tweak your morning to improve your day and your life
It’s been a while since I decided to chase productivity on a habitual, daily-basis. And the challenge has always been to remain true to my goals on days when things aren’t going great. To keep myself motivated through a headache, a flu, a bad day at work or a fight with a loved one. These were the times when my productivity would plummet dangerously close to zero.
So I turned to the one place filled with advice that transcends age, gender and culture — the Internet.
I blazed through a bunch of blogs, reddit threads, social media, some self-help videos, compiled a list of books to read, made a productivity playlist and generally ended up with way too many solutions to actually follow one. But what really struck me was how many of these productivity hacks focused on what you do with your mornings. And it got me thinking about my own mornings.
“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.” — Lemony Snicket
Most mornings I wake up in a state of resistance. Resisting the sleep weighing down on my eyes and resisting the incredible gravity of my warm, fluffy bed. And once I‘m up I simply go about my morning like an android —with the unfeeling mechanical manner of a robot combined with the moodiness and haste only found among humans. Sure, as the day progressed I’d become much more active. But the thought that I start off resisting the very day I want to make the most of didn’t sit too well with me. So I experimented with various morning rituals. And here’s what I realized.
You can engineer happiness by completing a simple task
One of the major markers of happiness is self-satisfaction and it’s something that is generally thought of as either beyond one’s direct control or tied with achieving daunting long-term or short term personal goals. But there is great capacity for self-satisfaction in task completion. So the first thing to do after waking up is to make your bed. Simple enough right?
But here’s what’s amazing, you’ve been up for hardly a minute and have already completed a task! May not seem like much but you’ve already got something DONE!
This feeling of accomplishment actually releases the hormones serotonin and dopamine which leaves you feeling satisfied, motivated and elevates your mood. So the next thing is to do what everybody does when they’re happy and smile! To reinforce the good feelings, walk up to your mirror and watch yourself smile. It’s a thing of beauty to see a smiling face first thing in the morning and if it’s your own, there can be nothing better!
Besides, the simple act of smiling itself gets you happier! The key takeaway here is to start off with a simple, routine task to get yourself going. Once you get that tiny whiff of accomplishment you’ll be hungry for more throughout the day, keeping you happy and productive.
Engineer growth by overcoming a small challenge
Happiness requires growth to sustain. It is in the pursuit of growth, in embracing change and in remaining in a state of perpetual motion that we remain truly happy. But most of us are resistant to change and easily scared by the prospect of stepping out of our comfort zone to face life’s challenges. Here again our mornings can be used to condition ourselves to take the plunge and come out on top. The key is to overcome a tiny challenge right at the beginning of the day. Having had scalding hot baths throughout my 23 and half years of existence, taking an ice cold shower in the morning was my challenge. Cold showers have a host of health benefits. It gets your blood circulation going, helps burn fat, boosts immunity, is great for your hair and for guys it helps increase testosterone levels too! The transition from pure dread as you stand beneath the shower just about to turn it on to the feeling of freshness and excitement once its over is what primes you to overcome obstacles throughout the day.
The beauty of the cold shower challenge is that it only requires a minor tweak to your existing daily routine (assuming you do usually take showers).
Of course any other activity that challenges you or scares you will work just as well! Think of your mornings as the initial push on a steep slope to success. Once you get the day rolling things will only pick up pace. Take control of your mornings and take control of your life!
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love — then make that day count!”
-Steve Maraboli
