Oh what a beautiful morning! Doing is believing, that’s what I say! However you approach your morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. What’s the one thing you like to fit into your routine to make your morning ‘beautiful’?
Since the email I wrote you last week, about how much we, our Selves, matter, I’ve been working on ways to create a really positive start the day – the sort of morning that wakes us inside and out and sets us off on the right foot. I’ve been looking forward to sharing with you the seven ways that I think make the best morning ever!
7 Steps to a Beautiful Morning
1) Good night
How often do you lie awake at night thinking about what needs to be done the next day … only to go back over these thoughts upon waking in the morning? The good news is that there is a simple solution. Jotting down these thoughts and tasks in a journal frees your mind for a good nights sleep and a lighter start to the day.
2) Positive waking thoughts and feelings
Upon waking, focus on your breath and spend a moment take in your surroundings. Appreciate the beauty that comes to your attention – and there is always beauty – maybe the sun shining through the gap in the curtain, your loved one lying beside you or you could hang a feel good picture or family photo somewhere you’ll see it as soon as you wake. If you’re lucky enough to hear birdsong in the mornings, indulge in that blissful sound; keeping a music player within easy reach is also a great idea, or even one of those alarms that wakes you to the sound of your favourite CD or playlist.
3) Aromatherapy
Once you’re up, revitalize yourself and the energies of your home with some aromatherapy. Cold air diffusers work best as they don’t damage the healing properties of the oils. Jennifer Peace Rhind, author of ‘Essential Oils’ recommends re-creating the feeling of a woodland walk ‘one of the best antidotes to the seasonal blues’ by using coniferous essential oils – of which there is a vast array of fragrances to choose from, each one infusing the feeling of freshness into the environment and helping dispel anxiety and fatigue.
4) Revitalising exercise
Exercising increases endorphins and tells our body that it’s not time for sleep. It’s the best fatigue buster there is and ironically the last thing we want to do when we’re tired. The good news is that you don’t need to run for miles to gain energy, a short walk will do wonders and there is even a marvellous book teaching highly effective ways to do Yoga In Bed. Yoga has the added benefit of helping you to feel confident, centering you in your heart, focusing your mind and promoting balance … a bright note to start the day on, wouldn’t you say?
5) 10 Mindful Minutes
Meditation can’t stop difficulties and challenges cropping up through the day but it can positively affect the way we respond to them. Following a yo-yo relationship with meditation, I recently watched a brilliant TED talk by Andy Puddicombe and realised I’d been dressing it up to be much more of a process than it needs to be. ‘You don’t have to burn any incense and you definitely don’t have to sit on the floor’ – those words were the magical face palm moment. ‘All you need to do is to take ten minutes out a day, to step back and to familiarise yourself with the present moment so that you get to experience the greater sense of focus, calm and clarity in your life’. I’ve been doing this with the easy to follow ten minute meditations from Jack Kornfield’s ‘Meditation for Beginners’ and it’s making such a positive difference everyday.
6) Smile, though your eyelids are drooping
Smile at the very first person you see – your partner, your child, the postman or at yourself in the mirror. Even if you’re having a grey or grumpy morning, your brain will still react to a smile by producing endorphins; faking it till you make helps to lift the grey and before you know it you’ll be smiling for real
7) Connect to earth
In every way you can, celebrate the natural world; the more aware we are of this constant source of vital energy, the more we naturally tap into it.
We can do this by drinking organic juice and plenty of water, eating organic fruit and whole grains, getting outside as soon as we can, even if just for a moment, rain or shine, or at least opening a window. Just walking to the train station is an opportunity to feel our connection to earth, to look up to the sky, to acknowledge with gratitude the trees that gift us with the air we breathe. This issue of the Cygnus review features an eloquent excerpt from ‘Our Return to Light’ about just this.
Each of us have our own unique morning routines – what’s yours? The one consistent key to a beautiful morning is to take control of it with a deep gratitude for the new day and our place in it.
One love,
