Have you been struggling to start your day positively? Here I will highlight the 5 best positive ways to start your day to boost your mood and start your day full of energy.
Starting your day the right way can be tough, especially when you had a bad week or are just tired. I know exactly how that feels. I am someone who has always struggled with anxiety, specifically time anxiety, and I feel like it only got worse after having my daughter. For months I have been trying to find the best ways to start my day and nothing ever worked.
After months of trying to find the best positive ways to start the day, I finally found 5 ways. You don’t need to be doing so much to start positive. Keeping it as little as 3-5 steps is not only enough but manageable which I found helped with my time anxiety. This helped with staying consistent – which is so important to feel positive and I will explain this a little more later on in this post.
I also want to highlight before I get into it, that spending some time in the morning to help you start your day positively does not mean that you will never have a bad day. You will because this is life. But I found that positively starting your day can make a difference even during those tough days.
This post is all about the 5 best positive ways to start the day.
Positive Ways To Start The Day
How To Start A Morning Routine
Before we get into the top five positive ways to start the day, let’s begin by exploring some easy tips on how to start a morning routine, especially if you don’t have one yet. These positive morning habits can serve as a source of inspiration to create your own morning routine. But I want to start by sharing three tips that can help you, as they have helped me, start a morning routine. This way you will consistently begin your day on a positive note.
1. What Do You Want To Improve On?
When you’re creating a morning routine, it’s crucial to pinpoint what areas you’d like to improve on. For instance, let’s say your typical morning involves hitting the snooze button, going on your phone first thing, and then rushing off to work without breakfast. This kind of start can lead to high-stress levels for the entire day. According to Dr. Nikole Benders-Hadi, a psychiatrist, “Jumping straight to your phone upon waking can kickstart your day in a manner that’s more likely to spike stress and leave you feeling overwhelmed.”
So, once you’ve identified this, it becomes clear that there are two key improvements you can make to your morning routine: avoiding the snooze button to carve out more time (e.g. for self-care), and going phone-free until you’ve completed your morning routine.
Another positive change to consider is incorporating some morning movement, whether it’s a quick 5-10-minute stretch or a brief 10-minute workout. This can instantly lead to a positive vibe in your day and get your blood flowing.
Once you’ve identified your goals, the next step is habit-stacking and creating a schedule that accommodates these improvements.
2. Habit Stacking
Sticking to small healthy habits in the morning can be tough and this is where habit stacking comes in. This is what is going to help you stay consistent with the healthy habits.
Habit stacking is a simple technique where you attach a new habit to an existing one that’s already part of your routine. For instance, if your typical morning routine follows this sequence: wake up, brush your teeth, have breakfast, get dressed, and head out the door, and you want to introduce a new habit like morning movement, you can seamlessly integrate it with your established routine.
Here’s an improved example: wake up, brush your teeth, dedicate 10 minutes to morning movement, have breakfast, practice gratitude, get dressed, and leave the house. This approach helps you establish the timing for your new habit, making it as natural as your old ones.
3. Schedule Your Morning Routine
Finally, this step is a key factor in ensuring your morning routine sticks. Think about it: when you have a doctor’s appointment or an important work meeting, what do you do to make sure you don’t forget and attend it? You schedule it. You write it down in your planner at the precise time of the appointment. That’s exactly what you should do to stay committed to your morning routine.
For instance, if your planner notes that your work starts at 9, you’ll allocate at least an hour, or even just 30 minutes, for yourself to kickstart your day on a positive note. Here’s an example:
- 7:00 AM: Wake up (No snooze, no phone check)
- 7:00-7:10 AM: Wash face and brush teeth
- 7:10-7:20 AM: Spend 10 minutes stretching or doing morning movement
- 7:20-7:50 AM: Engage in morning gratitude, and affirmations, and enjoy a healthy breakfast
- 8:00 AM: Head out the door
This is just an example, but it clearly outlines when you should complete each task in your morning routine. Alternatively, you could simply block off a time slot, like “7:00-7:30 AM: Morning routine,” if you know exactly what your morning routine includes.
Remember, as I always say, if it’s not on your schedule, it’s unlikely to happen. So, be sure to schedule your morning routine so you can stay consistent.
How To Wake Up Happy And Motivated
Have you ever wondered how some people manage to consistently wake up eager to complete their morning routine without feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or unbothered? Well, the answer is surprisingly straightforward: it’s all about having a calming night routine.
Your night routine is just as important as your morning routine, as it sets the stage for a positive start to your day. A peaceful night routine is your way to recharge, unwind, and prepare for the day ahead. If you don’t end your evening on a serene note, your morning is unlikely to be positive.
If you’re in need of ideas for creating a calm night routine, you can find them by clicking HERE, where I’ve shared some night routine suggestions to help you enjoy a calm and productive tomorrow.
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1. Positive Affirmations To Start The Day
Affirmations have made such a huge difference for me, this is why I wanted to share this so you can add it to your morning routine. As I mentioned above, since having Ayah my time anxiety got worse, and no matter what I did nothing helped. Until I started creating reading and writing affirmations in the morning.
I found an amazing app called ‘ I am ‘ which notifies you with new affirmations every day. I set it to notify me every hour because as I mentioned a bad day can happen even if you start your day positively. However, I noticed that on my tough days when I get a notification and I read the affirmation, it instantly makes me feel better.
You need to be consistent with reading affirmations every morning because it is not just about reading them. It is about really believing in it. Two of my favourite affirmations are ‘Today will be a good day’ and ‘I have enough time to do everything I need to do today ‘.
Start your day by reading an affirmation every day and watch how it changes your mindset! Below are some examples of morning affirmations you can repeat to yourself every day. Choose one or two to do each day.
Morning Affirmations:
- Today is going to be a good day
- I have enough time to do everything I need to do
- I will not stress over what I can’t control
- I am refreshed and full of energy
- I release yesterday’s burdens and start fresh
- Today could be the best day of my life
- I will accomplish my goals today
- Today, I will be gentle with myself
- Today’s possibilities are endless
- I am grateful for all the blessings in my life
2. Start The Day With Gratitude
Starting your day by listing out the things that you are grateful for and what you’re looking forward to the most can help you have a positive day.
This step will take you no more than 5 minutes. It will help you appreciate the little things in life, which we naturally tend to forget about. I found listing out what I am looking forward to on that day and what I am grateful for helps to boost my mood at that moment. This has helped during those tough days. This is because I would remember what I wrote in the morning and it would just help me get through the day.
Filling in a gratitude journal is not only done in the morning but in the evening too. Doing it in the evening can help you start your day positively the next day. How many times have you had a tough/bad day and gone to sleep in a bad mood and woken up the next day feeling low? I can guarantee that this has happened to you many times. Ending your day by writing down at least three good things that happened that day can help you realize that it wasn’t all bad. This can result in you waking up in a better mood.
GRATITUDE JOURNAL (CLICK TO SHOP)
3. Morning Movement
This step took me a while to stick to. Moving your body through exercise does not have to be complicated and long. Spending 20 minutes 5 times a week is way better than exercising for an hour every few days. And this will help you stay consistent. Doing 10-20 minutes a day can release dopamine and serotonin which can improve your mood.
One of the best pieces of advice I took to help me stay consistent is to find the type of exercise you enjoy the most, so it does not feel like a chore. If you don’t enjoy exercising in the morning, | find doing a morning stretch calms my anxiety and makes me feel good. So you don’t need to exercise to start your day with energy, it can be as simple as a morning stretch or a walk.
Try moving your body in the morning for two weeks and watch how good you will feel. The key is to stay consistent. Not only with this step but with all of the steps I highlighted so you can see the results of feeling positive.
4. Healthy Breakfast
This is my favorite part of my morning routine – a healthy breakfast! I am a breakfast person and I can’t skip breakfast at all. Having a healthy breakfast rather than a fatty unhealthy one makes a huge difference in your energy and mood. I am speaking from experience.
A nutritious breakfast can help improve your concentration, boost your mood, and provide you with the stamina needed to tackle your daily tasks. It can also help stabilize blood sugar levels, preventing energy crashes and overeating later in the day. In short, a healthy breakfast sets a positive tone for your day by nourishing your body and mind, helping you perform at your best.
A healthy breakfast does not have to be boring at all. If you need some healthy breakfast ideas that are easy, delicious, and can be meal-prepped too then click HERE where I have a list of healthy breakfast recipes you can try and will LOVE.
I hope you found this valuable!
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Lots of love, Mariam x
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This post was all about positive ways to start the day to boost your mood.
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Claudia says
Love this !! C
mariam__guerrero says
Thank you lovely xx