A morning routine can make or break your day as it literally creates your mindset and sets you up for the day ahead. We all have heard about lemon in hot water to reset your system in the am, but what about resetting your mindset and outlook. When you first wake up, before you reach for your phone and start scrolling through Instagram or emails, it is key to set your intentions for the day. If you start your morning by reading emails or checking Instagram it immediately puts your brain into receiving mode, and in a reactionary state. Ideally you want to be in a creative and productive mindset.
So here are the three rituals you can include each morning to ensure you optimise your day.
Meditate
Whether it’s Vedic meditation, transcendental, using the Calm app, or just focusing on your breath, meditating changes the way we process information, our physiology and our outlook for the day. The benefits are well known at this point, and well documented. Sara Lazar and her team at Harvard found that mindfulness meditation changes the structure of the brain. If you want to geek out on the science behind it, the findings are in. Eight weeks of daily mediation increased cortical thickness in the hippocampus, which governs learning and memory, as well as areas of the brain that play roles in emotion regulation and self-referential processing. There were also decreases in brain cell volume in the amygdala, which is the part our brains that are responsible for fear, anxiety, and stress. These changes matched the participants’ reports on their stress levels, indicating that meditation not only changes the physical brain, but it changes our perception and feelings as well.
Be Grateful
When you wake up, do your absolute best to leave your phone on airplane mode (it’s the best way to block out EMFs while you sleep), and instead start the day by listing three things you are grateful for. Gratitude is a catalyst for happiness. It creates a state of being that trains our brains to seek out the positive, and reinforces our ability to be optimists and seeks solutions. Spiritually, gratitude is a powerful emotion that opens you up to receive and enables you to be connected and in-flow with the world around you. Internally, when we deliberately focus on and feel deep gratitude, as a result, our perceptions change and our senses are heightened. There’s a reason both business and spiritual gurus say gratitude is the best way to create better outcomes, and manifest the results you want.
Like meditating, regularly expressing gratitude literally changes the molecular structure of the brain. According to UCLA’s Mindfulness Awareness Research Center, and a 2008 study by scientists who used fMRI to study gratitude, gratitude restructures the brain. In the study the researchers measured brain activity of participants experiencing different emotions, and found that gratitude lights up parts of the brain’s reward pathways, boosts neurotransmitter serotonin and activates the brain stem to produce dopamine. In short, you feel awesome.
Set Your Intention
The practice of setting your daily intention can change your life. It creates a sense of purpose, direction and meaning. In a world where we are inundated with information, and often anxiety inducing multitasking, one of the best things you can do for yourself is creating your daily intention. Whether its experiencing more joy, being creative, or simply finding time to connect with others around you, your intention shapes your outlook and sense of purpose for your day ahead. So skip the Daily Mail and Instagram and instead focus on what you would like to achieve that day. It will help you get out of bed faster, and means that as you take on tasks, your mind is honed in on an optimal experience, and your values.
In 2020, we recognise that human consciousness has an effect on everything from the molecular structure of water to the wellbeing of those around you. As we know, our bodies are made up of 90 percent water. Dr. Masaru Emoto proved that water can be influenced by intention and thought. Imagine the changes that can take place within your body as you begin to consciously give intention to positive choices and values each morning. And the other great thing about intentions? They have no limits.
