Start a heavy day with a few minutes that actually boost your emotional energy, physical energy and your psyche too. These 7 habits help significantly & some can be done on the way to work. Find a way to fold time and build these habits into your days so you can go home more rested and peaceful after work.
Silence (4minutes) – Lay in bed and enjoy the quiet for a few minutes (or turn the sound off on the way to work). Focus on the lack of activity, expectations, needs, demands. Allow the silence to wrap you up in it’s own sense of love. Take 3 slow breaths, if the silent continues, smile and keep going (if not, smile and greet the new day). Once you get to 5 breaths, stop smiling you’ve made it to the breakthrough point! Woohoo! If you can stay there and get to seven breaths in total, you’ve enabled your mind the restful awareness it needs to greet the demands of the day peacefully.
Visualisations – (you might be getting into or out of the shower by now if you’re about to start work) See your greatness, see your patient self, your tolerant self, see your strong self. See yourself achieving something you really want. If nothing else, see you are recognized and appreciated by all the angels above who have to work just a little less because of your beautiful efforts of caring and helping people here on this amazing planet.
Eye Medicine (1-2minutes) – take a glass of water or cuppa or break outdoors and have it there. If it’s raining go outside anyway for a moments or two (you don’t need to get wet, you just need to let the daylight into your eyes so your brain registers it needs to turn off your melatonin better and to turn on your serotonin). Do this within 15 minutes of waking for best results. It’s a great mood boost because it stimulates serotonin production which doesn’t happen effectively when melatonin is still coursing through your veins. So turn off melatonin and turn on serotonin for an easier time waking up and starting your day.
Affirmations (1-2minutes) – What are you affirming or re-affirming at this point in your life? Make your affirmative statement using the following simple formula – “I am now freeing my life of ..(name something you are moving on from)… I forgive (is that’s warranted) myself/other/god/serendipity. I give thanks for all previous life situations. I now choose to move towards ….(whatever you’re choosing to move towards, like healthfulness, love, a new car, easier workload or what-have-you) and am developing my (name this) skill so I can move gracefully towards my (insert new life goal/ambition/experience/etc.,)”
Exercise (10+minutes) – If you don’t have it in your to do anything else then simply stretch your body. Put some fav music on, or the morning news if you like, and stretch your thighs, your arms, shoulders, back, neck and your face too. If you can do a workout, even better, but if you can’t don’t stress, stretch!
Reading (4minutes) read something inspiring like your fav blog, a mag article, a page in a book, some news items on your phone, anything. The idea is to open your mind to possibility and newness to stretch the possibility thinking skills you’ll need for your day of solving everyone’s problems!
Scribing – (5minutes) Write something – a blog item, a diary entry, that dream you had, the thought you woke up with, a daily mini goal, a reminder of one of your strengths (put this on a piece of paper and swap with someone at work who is also doing this so you can help each other build your strengths). Write anything – a grocery list, a musical score, some lyrics, it doesn’t matter – you want to build the hand-brain-mind connection because boosts resilience and open thinking patterns (who’d have thought hand writing was so useful!!?) If you can’t write some stuff, pick up a musical instrument and play it for a few minutes. Get your hands drumming on the kitchen bench or the steering wheel or anywhere really if you don’t have the option to write or play music.
If this exercise is going to help reduce your stress levels you’ll know once you’ve done it daily for 2-3 weeks, so get into it and let me know how you went with it. ❦
