My Morning Routine

Hey guys!  Welcome to Mindful Counseling’s first blog!  I am glad you found us.  When deciding to blog and then thinking about where to start, my morning routine immediately came to mind.  Why you ask?  Because my morning routine has been a work in progress for over a year now.  At the beginning of 2016, I decided I wanted to focus on better self-care and self-growth.  This came about from the immense work I had been putting into my practice toward the end of 2015.  I was go, go, go, with little in between time.  I also am married and have a beautiful two and a half year old.  Ensuring quality time with family and starting up a business left little time for me to focus on myself…and I began to feel it.  So I started to take a look at my life, examining where my time was spent along with my priorities I had for myself.  I realized my time and priorities definitely did not match up.  It was time for a change.  I played around with different outlets and self-care ideas, as there are a plethora of things one can do for himself/herself.  I ended up landing on a few that I found were highly beneficial.  One of these was setting up a morning routine that focused on integrating both mind and body care.  Let me walk you through a typical morning for me (remember, this took a year to establish for me):

6:45am-Wake up and let the dogs out.  Take a second to check out the awesome colors in the sky and listen to nature for a bit.

7am-Make a cup of coffee and read something inspirational and encouraging

8am-Drop off daughter to childcare and complete a morning run or yoga

8:45am-Finish up run or yoga and complete a mindfulness meditation on my front porch.

9am-Prepare for the day.

This is my absolute favorite way to start the day.  I know this wouldn’t fit everyone.  Heck, you may look at this and say, “Really? That’s how you like to start your day?”  But for me, it works wonders.  I have always been a runner at heart.  This is an exercise that allows me to have movement everyday and helps me feel that I keep my body strong and healthy.  As well, yoga is something I introduced into my life this year (one of those plethora of things people kept telling me to try out) and found it so grounding and beneficial for my on-the-go mind.  Alternating these two daily has really allowed me to set my intention for the day and move forward with healthy, balanced focused.  Don’t forget the meditation!  Man, that stuff has a way of grounding me and centering me like nothing else.  You can probably guess why I decided on “Mindful Counseling” for the practice name.  Mindfulness was something I learned about years ago that has always helped me face whatever comes my way with acceptance and peace.  Including this into my daily morning routine allows for the rest of the day to go much smoother and more peacefully.  And don’t forget what I said earlier about my priorities.  Doing this everyday has not only helped me, but allowed me to be much more present and tuned in with my family.  I do this for me, but I also do this for them.

Priorities

So there you have it.  My morning routine.  I am sharing this with you because I know how this has changed my life and I would encourage you to examine your current morning routine.  It may look similar or completely different!  An easy exercise you can try out is imagining the perfect morning for yourself.  Get as detailed as possible.  Imagine what you would do, how you would feel, everything.  Then take a look into how that matches up with your current routine.  Don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t line up at all!  Like I said, mine took about a year to work out.  See if there is one thing you can do differently moving forward to begin taking a small step toward that ideal morning you desire for yourself.  I promise you will not be sorry! And keep me in the loop!  I would love to hear how it comes along!