Maintaining balance leads to peace and levelheadedness which are both critical components to ensuring top-level executive functioning and decision making. If you’re not balanced, then you’re opening yourself up to making emotional decisions, rushing into situations, or being too critical of things. Maintaining balance starts by mastering your mornings. It starts with how you wake up, what you look at first thing in the morning, what you put into your body and mind first thing in the morning, and how you set yourself up for the day. But, what does it look like to master your morning? 

It looks like mastering these 7 areas of your life so that you’re totally balanced; mind, body, and spirit.

Mindfulness – Google says that mindfulness is “the mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.” Truly mindful professionals are very mono-tasking and give their full attention to their task at hand. Doing this first thing in the morning helps your mind begin the day in this state.

Nutrition – According to a Healthline.com article, there are several healthy tips to a nutritious morning. Eggs, a piece of fruit, or oatmeal. While the article states that a cup of coffee is a great way to start your morning, I would couple a cup of coffee with some solid food to help ground you. Personally, I’ve found that if I only drink coffee in the morning (with no food), I get jittery and irritable.

Sleep – More than the number of hours of sleep is the quality of your sleep. Forbes.com published this article that talks about the differences between short uninterrupted sleep and long fitful sleep. Recently, I’ve become accustomed to a solid 7 hours of sleep a night. To ensure I get quality sleep, often I’ll use a sleep aid like ZzzQuil to ensure I get restful sleep and I’m not up counting sheep at 1:00 AM. Whatever you need to do for your own sleep improvement, be sure that you’re focused on uninterrupted sleep with the same bedtime and wake time each day. This will help you maintain balance and get your day off on the right foot.

Focus / Visualizing – Many athletes talk about “mental reps” as a way of visualizing their success. There’s a lot of power that comes from visualizing your success. In this article from Entrepreneur.com, the author gives some practical tips to utilizing this tool. It doesn’t need to take all morning. Even just a few minutes thinking about how you’re going to break the ice at a meeting, what you’re going to say to a potential client, or how you’re going to handle other challenges in your day help your brain be proactive instead of reactive.

Exercise – This is the most important part of your day after eating breakfast and getting sleep. Exercise has multiple benefits to the mind and the body. Perhaps the best benefit is the endorphins that your body releases when it’s sweating and pushing through a workout. Some companies focus on gamification to get people to perform at their best; like Orange Theory Fitness’s splat points, for example. This Founder Institute article says that exercising in the morning has the most benefits for entrepreneurs. It boosts your mood, reduces your stress levels, and sharpens your mind.

Planning / Prioritizing – While we all try to “manage our emails,” this shouldn’t be how we begin our day. Responding to emails / voicemails / texts is a reactive task in nature. It uses a different part of your brain that being proactive and planning. When you’re proactive, you’re more creative, more productive, and usually more efficient. This Medium.com article talks about planning out your day to ensure maximum productivity; “eat that frog” first thing in the morning.

Breathing – As much as we may take breathing for granted, it’s actually a very grounding and useful exercise to focus on first thing in the morning. This Cleverism.com article about meditation for entrepreneurs discusses 11 different benefits of meditation / breathwork as well as details the various types of meditation. In the morning, I tend to utilize the Effortless Presence type of meditation. “In this meditation type, one doesn’t focus his/her attention on anything in particular and is thus known as a state of Pure Being or awareness,” says the Cleverism.com article.

In my article, Naturally regulating cortisol to maximize executive functioning, I discuss some advice given to me from a naturopathic doctor who works with a lot of high-level executives and how they manage their stress to maximize their executive functioning. 

So, all this begs the question of “exactly how do I master my mornings then?” It’s much easier than it sounds, but it does take intentionality; it won’t happen on accident. 

1. Sleep. Before you can master your mornings, you need to get the proper amount of sleep and wake up rested. It won’t do you any good to worry about the rest of your day if you aren’t getting enough sleep. Get yourself a bedtime, make sure you get between 6-7 hours of sleep. I recommend not falling asleep while watching TV or your phone.
2. No Phone! Do not grab your phone first thing when you wake up. Don’t check social media, your texts, your emails. Those can wait. When you start your day checking Facebook or your emails, you are literally training your brain to get into “reaction mode” as you’re checking on what other people have either posted or sent you and then reacting to it. Don’t do that. Instead, start your morning how you want to. Be in control!
3. Prioritize. Make a list of all the things you want to accomplish today. What would make it an amazing day? Make a list. Don’t make a list of 100 things though. You’ll set yourself up for failure this way. You have to be realistic. Try making a list of 5 things and see how you do. You can always increase this as you learn and grow. This will help you be more focused on what you need to accomplish.
4. Eat something. Preferably not something super sugary or super caffeinated right away. Perhaps a piece of fruit, a few eggs, something light. You need to feed your body first thing in the morning.
5. Exercise. Get to the gym, go for a jog, play basketball. Find your thing. The quicker you get your body moving the quicker you will get your body, mind, and spirit balanced and moving.
6. Breathwork. Take a time out and breath. Focus your mind on your breathing to improve circulation, concentration, and give you a more proactive approach to your day.

Taking all these things into consideration helps you maximize your mornings. When you get enough solid sleep, and start your mornings off right, you’ll have an easier time maintaining your balance.

I’m curious though. How do you maximize your mornings? How do you maintain balance? Leave me a comment!