My Morning Routine – That’s How I Kick Off a Successful Day!

Morning routine? Nothing easier than that… The sun shines through the window and you wake up with a huge smile on your lips as well as a lot of energy and hunger for a new day. You wake up  and want to immediately start with your morning routine! Without exception, this is what happens every morning, right?

Are you reading the sentence again? Of course, almost nobody wakes up every morning with good weather and in the best of moods. Probably only a tiny fraction of the population. I will tell you in this post how you can still have a successful start in the day by having a morning routine that you are looking forward to!

First of all, I would like to point out that you should choose the elements of your morning routine yourself. You are welcome to take over everything or parts of my morning routine if you really like them. But you should create it in such a way that you have fun doing it every morning. In case you have to convince yourself every single morning over and over again to do it, the risk is high that you often stop in the middle – and in the worst case, leave it sooner or later.

So rule #1 is: OWN YOUR ROUTINE!

I’ve been adjusting my morning routine over time, and I’m likely to keep adjusting it. That may be because I hear from friends or acquaintances something that I like. Just yesterday, for example, I read an article in which the lady describes her routine of escorting her cell phone out of the bedroom in the evening, where she does not touch it until the next morning. So she creates a completely cell-free space. One of the main reasons is that, for her, the cell phone is connected to work – as well as for me, and maybe for you too. In bed, we want to sleep, let our bodies rest, disconnect. Therefore, I find this routine quite useful! I do not know if I can use it, as I rarely live in a place with two rooms. Maybe when I do house sitting …

So rule #2 is: SEARCH FOR THINGS THAT MAKE SENSE IN YOUR LIFE!

But of course: To find out what really suits you, it’s logical to try different routines first. Therefore, I would like to introduce you to my morning routine.

My Morning Routine

The routine itself consists of three parts, which I usually do in the order I call them here. However, this is nothing set and sometimes I change it according to where I am and what my plans are. In addition, I have to admit that I normally don’t do it directly after getting up and sometimes I also don’t do the three parts in a row but between working sessions. This is because I often wake up with a lot of emails, private messages, and comments in my social media and feel better once I’ve checked my inbox and answered the most important things. Every life hacker says that this is completely wrong and you can do anything, just don’t take your phone first thing in the morning. I tried it… I can not do it. I definitely want to work on it, but right now I just accept that I’m calmer when I know that I definitely have not to do any troubleshooting with a collaboration partner or client.

Gratitude Journal

First of all, I start the day with some positive thoughts. What am I grateful for? It can be general things like „I’m thankful that the sun has been shining for three days!“, Or something profound „I am grateful that I was born in Germany and thereby enjoy many privileges like the German passport!“, Or Recent events such as „I am grateful that I met XYZ!“. I have a pocket diary with about 10 lines a day, which I fill up every morning. I know of others writing a certain number of sentences per day, but I just use the space that I have on that day. There is still room for notes after Sunday, so sometimes I write something more. That depends entirely on my inspiration on this day. The great thing for me is that the calendar fits into any purse and I can therefore always have it with me. So I’ve done this in all sorts of places, including trains and airplanes.

Priming

Then I do an exercise that takes about 15 minutes, which Tony Robbins* (just click if you want to know more about him and his events) calls Priming. He showed this exercise at Unleash the Power Within and since then it’s part of my routine.

Priming consists of the following parts:

#1 Breathing: First you do a breathing exercise in combination with an arm movement. So you kick off the blood circulation and flood your brain with oxygen. Before you move on to the second part, put your hand on your heart and feel its power.

#2 Gratitude: Then you visualize three moments of your life for which you are grateful. This is a much more intense experience than the Gratitude Journal and not comparable with the first part of my morning routine at all. At the same time, I usually think of small situations, which then led to something big and important to me. For example, the moment a friend suggested me to launch a blog and call it Barbaralicious. Or when my best nomad friend Alex convinced me to go to a salsa party in Chiang Mai… that was where I „met“ my biggest love: Kizomba! Or how, in preparation for my trip around the world, a friend mentioned a travel blog called Travelicia – the owner, Feli, is also the founder of the event DNX – the digital nomad conference. That’s how I learned about the digital nomad lifestyle.

#3 Healing & Sharing: That sounds pretty spiritual… but it is nothing more than a meditation technique. Tony describes here how you should visualize a colored light that flows through your body while healing you – your emotions, your body or your thoughts. Then you send this „energy“ and this healing light to all the people you want to send something positive to heal them as well.

#4 Success: Last but not least, you visualize three moments of success. Imagine, you live these moments. You feel them. You hear them. You smell them. So let’s say it’s your desire to build a house. Then you visualize the moment in which you are standing in front of it and finally can move in. You visualize how you open the door and enter the rooms. You visualize what you see when you look out of the window. And so on.

Workout

Finally, I do a workout. I use an app called 7 minutes. Since I’ve been using it for many years, I’ve got many different kinds of training (like upper body, stretching, push-ups, abs, etc.) unlocked. In the beginning, you have only one, I think (full-body workout). For every two months that you stick to it, you get a new workout.

Before I start the workout though, I draw a card from a stack of cards with positive words. They are a bit similar to these: Positive Affirmations Cards*. But mine are made by a friend and she gave me a stack. The positive words are in five languages (German, English, Spanish, Italian and French) and there is a pretty mandala. For example, this week I had humor, goodness, and respect. Then I put the card next to my cell phone that I use to run the app and during the workout, I think about this word. It can be quite abstract, like the meaning of the word for me, or more specifically about the moments in my life when I experienced the feeling. For less creative days and to be inspired, you can check the small accompanying paper with a sentence to every word.

Your morning routine may look similar or different. It can consist of simple things, such as drinking a glass of water, taking a shower and having breakfast after waking up. For me, my routine works well and gives me the energy to start the day successfully!