I am pretty sure your summer routine is far more relaxed than your fall, winter and spring routine. Summer is the time to let go and just have fun! Now that it is back to school time it’s important to re-establish routine into your daily life so that you can manage time effectively, stick to healthy habits, and just create a flow for your daily life. Let’s talk about how to create effective morning and evening routines that will set you up for a successful day
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Common Types of Routines
Two of the most common types of routines that a person will heavily rely on to get through their day are having an energizing morning routine and a relaxing evening routine. These two routines help you to shift into different roles and responsibilities throughout the day. For instance, having an energizing morning routine can help prepare you for a busy and tough workday, while having a relaxing evening routine can help you de-stress and prepare you for a restful night’s sleep. Let’s dive into what makes these simple daily routines so effective and powerful.
Creating An Energizing Morning Routine
A major key component of an effective and energizing morning routine is starting the day early. Waking up just one hour earlier can help you ease into the day. This is especially true if the majority of your morning is spent taking care of children and preparing them for the day. Finding time to take care of your will help to make you more efficient, more energized and less stressed. Healthy habits that you can include in your energizing morning routine could be spending 30 minutes to an hour working out, yoga, praying and meditating, preparing a balanced breakfast, spending quality time alone with a cup of coffee reading the newspaper before the hustle and bustle commences, or even using this extra time to devote to taking a shower and enjoying the process of getting ready for the day. As little and insignificant as these things may seem they go a long way of preparing you for all that is to come in your day. For instance, if you know you have a big meeting at work spending some quiet time alone in the morning can help you prepare.
Another benefit of creating an energizing morning routine is that you can leave for work early and beat a lot of the traffic. Perhaps you’ll have time to stop by Starbucks on your way to work or maybe even stop by the park near your office just for a bit before you start the workday. Start your day on a positive happy note. Create little spaces in your morning to take care of yourself and nurture your spirit.
Creating A Relaxing Evening Routine
The purpose of the evening routine is to do the exact opposite of what the morning routine does. While the morning routine should be designed to wake you up and get you fired up for the day ahead. The evening routine should calm you down and help you transition to a more restful and relaxed environment. Your evening routine should have equal amounts of quality time with your family and loved ones as well as quality time with yourself. Some components that make up a relaxing evening routine are cooking/eating dinner as a family, taking a walk after dinner, journaling, praying, stretching and restorative yoga, reading, taking a bubble bath. Any of these delicious activities are great to include as part of your wind-down process during the evening. Making sure that you leave any stress or anxiety associated with work at work will aid you in becoming more relaxed and conscious of the moments at home.
A Few Tips for Implementing Routines
#1 Where is your time going?
Now that you know what morning and evening routines are how exactly do you implement them? I know you’re thinking that this sounds all fine and dandy but you’re BUSY. You have kids to feed, animals to tend to, homework needs to get done bags need to get packed for the next day etc. etc. Yes, I totally get it responsibilities are unending, but where exactly is your time going? Are you losing time to any activity or pursuit that perhaps isn’t serving you for your highest good? For a majority of us (myself included), I lose a lot of time in the evening because I’m either glued to Netflix or I’m attached to my phone scrolling social media. While none of these things are bad inherently, they can quite easily add to our “busyness” and prevent us from actually participating in healthy habits that nourish and nurture our health and well-being. Taking an honest assessment at where your time goes and making little tweaks is the first place to start.
#2 Create Routines for the Whole Family
What better way to teach responsibility and discipline than to have your children create their own individual morning and evening routines. Help them come up with activities they can do during designated times in the morning and evening that will help them prepare for the day.
#3 Prepare for the Day Ahead
Instead of waiting for the morning when you are in a fog and trying to wake up get all that you need for the day ahead in the evening. An integral part of your evening routine should go to picking out your outfit, packing lunches, signing papers, checking homework, packing backpacks, gym bags etc. so that in the morning all these time stealing tasks are done and you get more time to enjoy a fresh new day.
#4 Leave Work at Work
Many jobs will tell you to leave your personal problems at home and to not bring it to work and the same should go for home. Don’t bring the stresses of your daytime job to your family. It’s not fair to them. If you’ve had a particularly rough day take a long way home and work through those issues, spend extra time in the car when you get home decompressing whatever you do don’t bring a sour attitude to your family.
#5 Slow and Steady
While it may seem like a good idea to jump into creating these routines and doing all the things it’s actually not the best way for you to develop a solid routine with habits that you can easily commit to and stick to. Focus on adding one thing to each of your daily routines each week building and flexing that muscle until you have created the routine that you wanted to create.
Creating solid morning and evening routines can be something new that you try this year that can become really helpful in managing time, stress, and improve your enjoyment of everyday life. I hope you give routines a try this school year. While I provided a few examples of things you can do to create a morning and evening routine, there are things that I don’t think of or that I’ve never tried. Help your fellow anti-aging rebels out in their quest to create awesome routines this school year and comment below some of your favorite ways to start and end the day!
