How you feel in the morning has a huge impact on your mood the rest of the day. A relaxing morning makes it easier to stay positive during your workday. Feeling stressed or angry puts you on edge. Is your morning routine helping or hurting you? Here are five of the worst morning habits to avoid.
1. Checking Your Phone Right Away
Many people keep their phones next to their beds. When they wake up in the morning, the first thing they do is check text messages or respond to work emails. Unfortunately, flipping on your phone first thing is a great way to ruin perfectly good morning:
- Anxiety: The second you go into “work mode,” stress starts to kick in. People who look at their phones right away in the morning have a lot more anxiety than those who don’t.
- Negativity: Instead of the positive feelings of wellbeing you would normally have after waking up from a good night’s sleep, checking work messages turns on your inner critic. This negative voice makes you worry you’re not doing enough or something bad is going to happen.
- Productivity problems: Believe it or not, reading work emails first thing can make you less productive, not more. It can distract you from important tasks with other things that aren’t that urgent.
Give yourself a break! Make your morning routine a phone-free zone. If there’s something truly urgent, co-workers or family members will call you anyway.
2. Skipping a Healthy Breakfast
You wouldn’t dream of driving your car to work on an empty tank of gas, right? That’s exactly what skipping breakfast is like for your body and mind. Breakfast kickstarts your metabolism.
Do you tend to feel drained of energy or sluggish all day? Do you have trouble concentrating? Those are signs you’re not getting enough fuel. A healthy breakfast with plenty of protein is the best pick-me-up!
3. Watching TV
If you work from home, you may be tempted to flip on the TV in the morning while you get ready. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a laugh to start your day, but the problem is that TV shows are purposely designed to take up at least 30–60 minutes of your time. Once you start, it’s hard to stop, and you can end up “watching” your entire morning disappear.
4. Hitting the Snooze Button
"Just five more minutes," you say. Your body doesn't understand what that means. Hitting the snooze button throws off your internal clock, your metabolism and your normal sleep routine. This makes you more sleepy than if you had just gotten up right away!
5. Getting Angry
It’s not always easy for moms and dads (or couples for that matter) to avoid little irritations in the morning. Kids can make a mess or your significant other can leave the toothpaste tube squashed the way you hate again. If possible, push those things out of mind until later.
Create an enjoyable family custom in the morning that everyone likes. It can be as simple as a hug and kiss before leaving, or sharing a cup of coffee.
A Healthy Morning Routine
Set aside time for yourself in the morning. It's worth investing 15 minutes for stretching your legs, eating breakfast, breathing fresh air and making someone smile. The benefits for the rest of your day are amazing.
How do you start your day off right? What makes you smile in the morning?
Great advice. I have never been able to to wake up and eat breakfast. I drink my coffee with cinnamon and home grown honey. With hazelnut creamer. I don’t get hungry for a few hours.
So my question is,; within what time frame should I eat breakfast before my metabolism is affected?
The way I start my morning off right is by saying good morning to family members before I go to work. Also I listen to calming music in the morning also