Every morning is a blank slate. This is an opportunity to change one of your days for the better. And these days make up our lives. If you want to achieve your goals, ask yourself this question: What do you do when you wake up and how do you feel?

1. Don’t reset your alarm

We are used to hating the sound of the alarm clock, so we press the reset button or pause it: we feel good, we don’t want to get out of the warm bed at all. Although 10 extra minutes of sleep make us feel worse.

Evolution is a slow process, and humanity as a species is not yet accustomed to waking up to artificially created noise. So we’re just ignoring it.

When we wake up, our bodies start producing dopamine, a chemical that suppresses sleepiness. Its effect is comparable to drinking a cup of coffee or energy. When we sleep, serotonin, a hormone of pleasure, is produced.

After the alarm clock is reset, two hormones with the opposite effect begin to be produced simultaneously. Because of this load on the body, we wake up disoriented and inhibited.

2. Consider more than just the reward

To motivate ourselves to do certain things, like waking up early in the morning and taking a shower, we use rewards. But as Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, argues, reward alone is not enough to make a habit stick.

It is necessary to identify the signal that leads to undesirable behavior and replace it. For example, instead of pressing the end button on your alarm clock and falling back to sleep, you can reward yourself with a cup of aromatic coffee. The smell of coffee in the room can be a signal for this action. If you live with someone, ask them to brew a drink every time they wake up.

3. Follow the right strategy

The average adult needs 7—9 hours of sleep, but some get enough sleep in 6 hours, while others don’t get enough sleep even 10. One person needs a shower to cheer up, while another person needs a cup of coffee. Determine what category of people you are, so it will be easier for you to create your own strategy and understand what tips to follow.

Gretchen Rubin writes in Better Than Before that all people can be divided into four groups depending on how the reward motivates them:

Adherents of rules and procedures: they always follow rules — both external (established by their superiors) and internal (which they come up with themselves).

Bound by promises: they work well only under pressure from authority and when they feel justified obligations to other people.

Common sense seekers: they need internal motivation for every job, some sense for themselves; if they find it, they do the job.

Rebels: Every mission makes them want to do the opposite.

4. Wake up to natural light

In one experiment, a group of adults suffering from insomnia were sent on a one-week hike. After a few days without artificial lighting, the participants in the experiment not only began to fall asleep faster, but also easily got up in the morning. The inertia of sleep has almost completely disappeared.

The study’s organizer, Kenneth Wright, came to the following conclusion: to get a good night’s sleep and wake up easily early in the morning, you need to wake up in the sun.

It is quite possible to do this in a city: sleep in a room with a window, or rather put the bed closer to the window in order to get the maximum amount of light in the morning.

5. Meditate

Meditation is for everyone. At the same time, everyone should have their own way of doing it. There are dozens of its varieties — conscious, transcendental, yogic. But no expert can say for sure which one is right for you.

On the other hand, the benefits of meditation are quite obvious: anxiety decreases, labor productivity increases, and memory improves.

For example, using MRI, scientists found a decrease in beta wave activity in the brain after a 20-minute meditation session. This means that during meditation, the brain stops processing distracting information, so we calm down.

6. Minimize decision making

We are all subject to decision fatigue. This process takes our energy, so it becomes more and more difficult for us to make choices in the future.

As you can see, I only wear grey and blue suits. I’m trying to make fewer decisions this way. I don’t want to waste my energy thinking about what I’m going to eat or what I’m going to wear. Because I have too many other things to solve.

Barack Obama

To simplify the process, Obama uses special notes that are divided into three piles on his desk: “I agree”, “I disagree” and “let’s discuss”. This method significantly speeds up the feedback cycle, which means that things are completed faster.

To spend your morning more productively, consider what decisions you can make automatically every day. Here are some simple steps that will help you: choose an outfit before bed, eat the same thing for breakfast, get up early to avoid traffic jams.

7. Eat a frog

Psychologist Brian Tracy in his book Eat a Frog! 21 Ways to Learn to Be on Time” writes that each of us has our own frog — the biggest and most important task we procrastinate on.

If you eat a frog in the morning, the rest of the day is going to be wonderful, because the worst is over for now.

Mark Twain

writer

So the first thing in the morning is to eat your biggest frog, even if you don’t feel like it at all. Our will reserves are limited, so we should start the day with an important thing while we still have the strength.

In addition, creativity levels are higher in the morning. Research confirms this: after waking up, people experience increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for creativity.

8. Do one important thing

Psychologist Kevin Kruse, studying the habits of millionaires, Olympic champions, and entrepreneurs, found that none of them mentioned a to-do list.

There are a few drawbacks to keeping a to-do list:

Time is not taken into account. When a person sees a long list of things to do, they start tasks that will take less time. Therefore, tasks that require consistent, long-term completion remain unfinished (about 41% of the tasks on the entire list, according to iDoneThis).

There is no distinction between urgent and important things. Again, when we give in to the impulse, we rush to do the urgent and ignore the important.

Stress levels are increasing. The to-do list is provoked by the Zeigarnik effect, known in psychology: unfinished tasks cause annoying uncontrollable thoughts to appear in your head. That’s why we feel tired all day and have a hard time falling asleep at night.

Instead of a list of tasks, choose just one thing you should finish today. After completing it, you will feel satisfied and will easily deal with the remaining minor tasks.

9. Get ready in the evening

How you feel when you wake up and throughout the day will depend on how well you slept.

Numerous studies show that electronic devices contribute to disrupting sleep cycles. If you have regular problems, try turning off all devices 2-3 hours before going to bed (this also applies to e-books).

The cold glow on screens makes it difficult to produce melatonin, the hormone that coordinates our internal clock.

In the evening, you need not only to get enough sleep, but also to decide how to spend tomorrow.

Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism. The path to simplicity”, recommends that before planning the next day, you first write down in your diary how your day went today. If you don’t understand what you did right and what you did wrong today, you won’t be able to create a productive plan of action for tomorrow.

How do you plan things? We’ve already mentioned that successful people rarely use a to-do list. However, Cruz noticed that almost all of them use a calendar.

The method of scheduling tasks in the calendar is devoid of all the drawbacks of the to-do list that we talked about earlier:

you can manage your time

you can plan your most important things to start the day when you still have willpower

you will avoid overexertion, as you can include scheduled breaks in your calendar.

10. Take a shower to wake up

Misogi, or awakening souls, was a ritual practiced by Japanese samurai. They would pour a bucket of cold water over their heads every morning.

The domestic analogue of misogi is a contrast shower when we alternate streams of hot and cold water.

Research shows that such hydrotherapy has a positive effect on health: stress is reduced, the immune system is strengthened, the body begins to burn fat better and fights depression more effectively.

If you decide to try a contrast shower on yourself, follow this order:

First, wash in the shower at normal temperature. Then turn the faucet handle so that the water is icy. Stand under a cold shower for 30 seconds.

Now turn the tap so that the water gets very hot. Under such a shower, capillaries open and blood circulation improves. Stay under it for 30 seconds.

And switch back to cold water, under which you stay for another 30 seconds.

It seems very simple, but at first you might be really shocked.

Every morning, Benjamin Franklin would ask himself, “What good can I do today?” Before you get to work, you must regain your strength and prepare for the new day. This is the only way you can do something significant.

Everyone will have their perfect start to the morning. Some people like to listen to music in the morning, some like to read and check the schedule. Create an ideal routine for yourself. We hope that our recommendations will help you with this.

Source: https://lifehacker.ru/10-utrennih-ritualov/

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