My morning routine and how its helped me

I've always struggled to be organised and keep track of things, often feeling overwhelmed and stressed. I felt tired when I got to work and exhausted after work when I was trying to put energy into my other commitments. When you get into a stress cycle like this it becomes really hard to break, and I feel like things often just get worse.

Something that I have found really helpful is having a really set really structured morning routine. When I started watching youtube videos about this subject, all I could think is how on earth do people have the time and the energy for all this in the morning?? All I want to do is keep hitting that snooze button! After over a year of feeling exhausted at work and unable to make most of my commitments through being so overwhelmed, I decided to give it a go. This is just my personal experience and other people might have had a different one so feel free to share below! :)

I decided to start with trying to wake up and get up much earlier than was needed and started setting my alarm for 5.30am. This was something I thought I would find really difficult but it actually didn't take that long to start naturally waking up at this time. I also decided to incorporate yoga into my morning routine as I had more time and lots of videos I watched recommended yoga/journaling/meditation. This has now become something I love doing and something that is really important for me. I only do short sequences usually about 10-15 minutes but I have seen such a positive result from it. The main benefits that I have seen from this are increased energy and better circulation, as I have always had problems with cold hands and feet.

Something else I decided to start doing was making sure that all the boring household chores I needed to do and all the cleaning was done in the morning before I left the house. I think it can feel so overwhelming sometimes coming back from work and having laundry, dishes, tidying etc to do after a long day at the office. Eliminating this by doing it before I leave the house has really helped me! Now when I come home I know I can just relax and get on with other things.

The last thing I have incorporated into my morning routine is making sure every day I make time for a good big breakfast and a coffee. Making time to eat not standing up and not rushing has really helped improve my energy levels, I also have time now to have something hot in the morning which I really enjoy especially in winter.

These seem like quite obvious things to do in the morning but since I routinely made time for them it has really, really helped me.  I think it can massively impact your work too, as you always arrive with more energy and less stressed. At some point, I would like to add journaling into my morning routine and maybe some gardening as long as I don't have to get up any earlier!