The Second Essential: Morning Routine
|
Your day begins when you wake up. The time between when you wake up and when you begin work is a critical period that impacts your health and capacity throughout the day. Over time, a healthy morning routine keeps you inspired, positive, and healthy. In contrast, a poor morning routine increases anxiety, stress, and undermines your ability to learn and lead.
The goal of this lesson is to help you create a morning routine you can execute with consistency. |
|
The morning routine contains four critical pieces:
Of course your morning routine will include all kinds of other things like eating, getting dressed, etcetera. We focus on these four critical pieces as they are often missing or neglected parts of keeping us healthy and transitioning us into a positive work day.
Self-Appraisal
Self-appraisal is the process of checking in with ourselves. Each morning we need to check in with ourselves and acknowledge the following:
Movement
Grounding
Grounding is the process of cleansing and organizing your thinking patterns. Without grounding, we begin our day with a multitude of thoughts, ideas, and concerns all jumbled together in our heads. Grounding helps us let go of what we cannot control and center ourselves for the day ahead. Primary forms of grounding include:
Intention
Intention setting is the process of transitioning your mind from home to work. Setting a daily intention consists of identifying a specific behavior or thought pattern and being mindful of it throughout the day. Typical intentions include: being fully present, listening to people, asking reflective questions, pausing to consider underlying causes to an issue. Setting an intention helps us work on critical leadership practices.
Tip: Subscribe to my daily email with your personal (not school) email address and read the email each morning before you head to school. Each morning includes an intention. By using your personal email you avoid wading into your work email.
Implementation Strategies
It’s easy to set goals, but how do we execute? There are two primary barriers to implementation: time and state of being.
You can compensate for being in a bad state by:
You can find more time by:
- Movement
- Grounding
- Self-appraisal
- Intention setting
Of course your morning routine will include all kinds of other things like eating, getting dressed, etcetera. We focus on these four critical pieces as they are often missing or neglected parts of keeping us healthy and transitioning us into a positive work day.
Self-Appraisal
Self-appraisal is the process of checking in with ourselves. Each morning we need to check in with ourselves and acknowledge the following:
- How are we feeling physically?
- How are we feeling emotionally?
- What is our creative state?
- How are we viewing the world?
- What do you need today? (Or in the moment)
- Are you needing a moment for yourself?
- Do you need to reach out to your community and get some perspective?
- Maybe you need to have a quick chat with your advocate to help remind you that YOU and YOUR needs are important!
Movement
- Can include working out, but does not have to be a workout
- Five (5!) minutes is enough
- Great morning movements:
- Walk
- Light stretching
- Yoga
Grounding
Grounding is the process of cleansing and organizing your thinking patterns. Without grounding, we begin our day with a multitude of thoughts, ideas, and concerns all jumbled together in our heads. Grounding helps us let go of what we cannot control and center ourselves for the day ahead. Primary forms of grounding include:
- Meditation
- Prayer
- Journaling
Intention
Intention setting is the process of transitioning your mind from home to work. Setting a daily intention consists of identifying a specific behavior or thought pattern and being mindful of it throughout the day. Typical intentions include: being fully present, listening to people, asking reflective questions, pausing to consider underlying causes to an issue. Setting an intention helps us work on critical leadership practices.
Tip: Subscribe to my daily email with your personal (not school) email address and read the email each morning before you head to school. Each morning includes an intention. By using your personal email you avoid wading into your work email.
Implementation Strategies
It’s easy to set goals, but how do we execute? There are two primary barriers to implementation: time and state of being.
You can compensate for being in a bad state by:
- Acknowledging the reality of how you are feeling and trying to identify the cause during your self-appraisal.
- Adjusting (lowering) the effort you expend on movement, grounding, and intention setting.
- Identify a low bar for what constitutes a win for the day
You can find more time by:
- Reminding yourself that how we invest our time is a reflection of our values
- Skip social media and news
- Do not check email unless it is specifically part of your duty (e.g. finding subs)
- Get up 15 minutes earlier (and go to bed 15 minutes earlier 😉)