Healthy, simple morning rituals are key to starting your day strong and building momentum. Try these proven morning routine ideas to improve your concentration, energy and mood.
You tap snooze on your alarm clock for the fifth time, haul yourself out of bed and stumble into the shower half asleep. Travel mug in hand, you hop into the car or catch the bus with just enough time to get to work or school. And although the eight hours of sleep you got should have left you well-rested, you still feel groggy throughout the day.
Your normal morning routine might get you out of bed, but always feeling tired will kill your productivity and concentration. These morning routine ideas get your day started on a better note.
Simple Morning Routine Ideas to Start Your Day Strong
The right morning ritual can help you avoid stumbling through your day feeling unprepared. Starting the day off right doesn’t just mean getting up on the right side of the bed. The best morning routines leave you with a clear head when you walk out the door.
For starters, take some time every morning to focus on what you want to accomplish during the day. A proper sleeping schedule, basic tidiness and a well-balanced breakfast all improve your overall well-being. Plus, it’s important to leave time for the things that make your simple morning ritual your own.
Easy-to-implement morning routine ideas allow you to wake up with confidence, plan your day effectively and increase your productivity. And this will improve your overall quality of life.
We have collected some proven tips and tricks to help you perfect your morning ritual. Remember, the most important thing is that it’s motivating, doable and includes activities you enjoy.
1. Get Enough Sleep
The best morning routines begin with healthy nighttime routines. Learning how to go to bed early and sleep through the night without waking up is essential to starting your day off on the right foot. The average adult needs between seven and nine hours of sleep a night. Interested in changing your sleeping habits? Read How to Fix Your Sleep Schedule: Most Effective Tips.
Healthy sleep habits begin with going to bed and waking up at the same time every day. It helps your body develop a natural sleep rhythm and lets you get more REM sleep. Once you get into a rhythm and regulate your body clock, you’ll be able to gauge exactly how many hours of sleep you need a night.
It also makes sense to maintain your regular sleep schedule on the weekends, so your body isn’t overtasked with adjusting come Monday. Your body’s internal clock picks up on even small changes, and these can lead to fatigue and stress. Healthy sleep habits are thus an essential part of a healthy morning ritual.
2. Morning Routine Ideas: Ditch the Snooze Button
Once you’ve hit snooze once, chances are you’ll do it again. Start your day off the best way you can and leave the snooze button out of your morning routine. This is the first step in how to become a morning person.
Constantly waking up and going back to sleep brings your circadian rhythm completely out of whack. In other words, your body doesn’t know whether it should be tired or awake. Fatigue, drowsiness and exhaustion are common midday symptoms of botched morning wake-up routines.
Instead of letting yourself drift back to sleep, do some stretches. This signals to your body that it’s time to get the day started.
Everybody has their own ways of getting themselves out of bed in the morning — just make sure your morning ritual doesn’t involve a 20-minute round of snooze tag. If you struggle with how to get out of bed in the morning, try leaving your phone or alarm clock further away from your bed, so you have to get up to shut the alarm off.
3. The Best Morning Rituals are Offline
We’re awake, we open our eyes, and the first thing we do is look for our phones. Although checking Instagram may feel better than hitting the snooze button and conking out again, your simple morning ritual should be all about you. TikTok, Instagram and Facebook are merely distractions. Plus, considering the negative effects of social media, it isn’t the best way to start your day.
This is why it makes sense to leave your phone or computer off, so you’re not tempted. Alternatively, you can set your phone to flight mode the night before and turn it on once you’re out the door.
Furthermore, you can configure your phone’s settings to only send you emails and notifications at certain times of the day. Simply staying offline in the morning is a great way to use your time wisely and an essential part of a healthy morning ritual.
4. First Thing First: Brush Your Teeth
Before you eat or drink anything after waking up, brush your teeth! Central practices within the traditional Indian system of medicine — known as Ayurveda — center around personal hygiene. According to these traditional approaches, the body rids itself of toxins through the mouth overnight. If the first thing you do is slurp down a cup of coffee, you’re just washing these toxins right back down.
5. The Simplest Morning Routine Idea: Drink Some Water
Half an hour after you’ve brushed your teeth, drink a large glass of lukewarm water. After six to eight hours of sleep, the body becomes dehydrated and needs more fluids. One tall glass of water will replenish your system and wake you up in the morning.
6. Sunlight Helps Wake You Up!
Our bodies have quite an elaborate skillset. They recognize when it’s night and day — though they were much better at it when there weren’t curtains, blinds, lamps and screens blocking or providing light. When darkness sets in, the body releases the sleep hormone melatonin, making us tired. That’s why one of the best morning routine ideas is opening the curtains or blinds immediately after getting out of bed. This sends the right signal to our brains: It’s time to get the day started!
Read more: Seasonal Affective Disorder: How to Conquer Seasonal Depression
7. Tips for Your Morning Routine: Keep Things Tidy
For many of us, our immediate surroundings have a massive impact on our mood and overall well-being. And exactly how you wake up and what you wake up to are important aspects of your morning routine.
Make it part of your routine to ensure that your space is neat and tidy before going to bed. Starting your day off thinking about having to clean doesn’t make for good morning vibes. Clean your room like a pro: Enjoy a clear desk and a clear mind, and you can’t lose.
Check out Utopia’s section on minimalism for a number of helpful tips and tricks on how to live simpler with less.
8. Keep Things Calm
Try to focus at least five minutes of your morning routine on mindfulness through meditation, yoga or personal reflection. Make this an essential part of your morning ritual, and take enough time for yourself. Especially when we have a lot on our plate at work or elsewhere, these five to ten minutes can go a long way. Mindfulness activities are a great way to help reduce stress.
Here are a couple of mindful morning routine ideas to get you started:
- Practice some low-impact exercises with 8 Yoga Alternatives for Mindful Exercise
- Spend a few minutes journaling and reflecting with 12 Different Types of Journals for Staying Mindful
- Benefit from guided meditation in the comfort of your home with these 6 Best Meditation Apps to Calm Your Mind.
Read more: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction: Living in the Present
9. Take Time for Your Morning Ritual
Physical activity is an effective way to start off the day alert and awake. 20 minutes of yoga, mindful walking around the block or a short morning workout are usually enough to get the blood pumping — all without chugging seven cups of coffee as soon as you awake.
If sport isn’t part of your personal best morning routine, take time out for something that you enjoy doing instead, like reading a book you’ve been meaning to get to. Or you can make it part of your morning ritual to jot down some thoughts or make a list of things you want to accomplish.
Plan your day out and collect yourself with some of these morning routine ideas, and you’ll be much more confident and prepared when you leave the house.
10. Breakfast: the Heavy-hitter of Morning Routines
Take time for a healthy and filling breakfast. You can even integrate the act of preparing breakfast into your morning ritual. Make yourself a tasty bowl of overnight oats with seasonal fruit, mix in a bit of homemade vegan yogurt or put together some cozy eggless french toast.
Warm drinks in the morning are refreshing: Make a healthy cup of ginger tea, golden milk (a.k.a. turmeric latte) or any other warm beverage of choice. For cold yet refreshing picks, leave a pot of cold brew coffee overnight to brew and enjoy it in the morning or try a Vietnamese Avocado Smoothie.
If you’re trying to avoid caffeine, try these coffee substitutes or enjoy decaf green tea’s many benefits instead.
We hope these morning routine ideas have been helpful in shaping your own personal healthy and motivating morning ritual!
Read more:
- The Miracle Morning: Principles & Examples
- The 5 Best Pressure Points for Sleep
- Love Bombing: 5 Examples and Signs to Watch Out For
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