4 Simple Morning Practices to Kickstart Your Day

I can’t say I have a perfect morning routine. But I do feel more “together” if I do the following morning practices.

1. Decide your MIT’s the night before or first thing in the morning.

I first heard of MITs (Most Important Things) from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits.

Granted, there will always be a lot of things on my “to do” list, but no matter what, I get my most important things done. For me they’re usually work-related tasks, however they don’t have to be depending on how busy you are. If not so busy, I keep a good balance of one work-related task, one admin task and one personal task.

When they get done before noon, I already feel ahead of the game. I also limit MIT’s to 3-4 things. Any more than that and I’m all over the place.

2. Do a breathing or meditation practice.

I know some people may listen on headphones to a meditation app like Headspace or the sound of ocean waves for a few minutes. (You can usually find ocean waves or any soothing nature sounds on a white noise app on iTunes.)

But usually, I just go onto YouTube and do a 5-10 minute breathing practice. Alexis Pierce has one energy boost that gets me going. It’s a standing exercise and is great for getting out some of that negative energy.

Jamie Zimmerman has a simple three-minute one I use for breathing. This is great for keeping the overanalytic mind centered. (I’d met Jamie at World Domination Summit this year but sadly found out of her recent passing in Hawaii.)

3. Journal for clarity.

This is a great mind dump as sometimes our monkey minds can make or break us. I know some use Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way for their morning pages. It’s just 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness writing.

Put in whatever you want. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s raw, unedited and you. Here’s a short video if interested. I prefer to free write either in an old school journal or Scrivener app for about 5 minutes or so, whatever comes to mind, like what I didn’t do the previous day, what I need to do for the day.

I may also write down things I’m grateful for, prayers, positive intentions or thoughts from a book I’m reading. Usually this is a great warm-up before I get into my creative content.

4. Write content.

Most often, content comes out from journaling in the form of a blog post, podcast, social media post or story to pitch to an outlet.

When I have an idea or want to flesh out an idea I worked on before, I get started writing for about 20 minutes. I usually don’t have a word count, but on the days I need to push myself I will.

That’s it in a nutshell. These four simple things help me feel grounded at the start of the day and throughout. Even if you were to just pick one of these practices and do it for 5 minutes every morning, having that consistency will allow you to feel more grounded so you could get through your busy day.