For those with anxiety, mornings can be difficult.
To wake up immediately feeling intensely anxious and filled with panic is a feeling I’d never wish on any other human being. It paralyzes your progress from the very moment you rise and leaves an imprint on the rest of your day.
However, by adopting one or two effective morning habits, you can reduce your anxiety first thing and put yourself in a much more effective position for the day ahead, leaving you not only happier, but also more effective in your work all day long.
If mornings are particularly difficult as they pertain to your anxiety, you need to do everything you can to manage it, otherwise you run the risk of letting it affect the entire rest of your life– each and every day.
Once you know the emotional building blocks of anxiety, you can influence them.– Chip Conley
Here are four morning habits to help reduce your anxiety:
1. Quiet reflection
You might be a bit apprehensive about giving yourself quiet time, but a little morning silence can be quite valuable because it allows you the time to plan the day ahead and make sure things run smoothly in addition to giving you time to reflect on the previous day.
Clarity and a hopeful energy are powerful when working through anxiety and a little quiet reflection can help you get that.
2. Pre-plan your breakfast and wardrobe
Anxiety takes a ton of mental energy, so anything that helps conserve that mental energy makes a big difference. One of the the easiest things you can do here is to pre-plan aspects of your day so you’re ready to go in the morning without even thinking.
By pre-planning your breakfast and wardrobe, you reduce the number of decisions you need to make first thing in the morning, allowing you to relax and start your day off feeling more in control.
3. Don’t listen to the news or read social
There’s a lot of crap going on in the world right now. Everyone knows it, so there’s no use skirting around it.
It’s important to keep up with current events. However, if you start your day off by subjecting yourself to this information, or anything else less positive, you’ll take the wind out of your sails before you can even pick up speed.
So, do yourself a favor and be very intentional with what you let in first thing in the morning, making it a habit to instead get your day started either in silence or listening to your favorite music.
4. Drink tea
Green tea has been shown to induce calm and improve focus and clarity, aside from increasing your energy due to the caffeine.
Plus, the perfect combination of L-theanine with that caffeine means you don’t experience any of the jitters that coffee typically gives you.
In addition, drinking a warm, soothing cup of tea by yourself in the quiet of the morning just feels good, chemical composition aside, so it does a lot towards helping manage anxiety first thing in the morning.
