Happy Wellness Wednesday and what we like to refer to as your mid-week reminder to practice self care, so make sure that that schedule of yours is including self care! This Wellness Wednesday post is dedicated to discuss a super relative and critical, we feel, to all things wellness– our morning routines! More particularly, it’s one part of the morning routine that I, Maddie, make sure of to do as soon as I am awake and up– a gratitude list. Now lets be clear, I by nature, am not at all a morning person, I much prefer the night so when it comes time for that alarm clock to wake me up, I am more prone to begrudgingly hit snooze as I awake. SO this is a highly doable, simple, yet effective part of my morning routine, which is why I am sharing it with y’all today on the blog, because it has been a game changer in allowing a more mindful, positive outlook on starting my day.
Each morning, I have a routine that I try my best to follow and there is one thing I MUST do (besides the basic necessities of course)– that being the gratitude list. This is mandatory, as in I keep a pen and a pad of paper on the bedside table so that before I proceed in my morning process, I write down the top things that come to mind that I am most grateful to wake up to that day. It could be anything, really, it is whatever comes to my mind first and usually reflect the things I care most about. I do this before bedtime too, but the difference being that at night I will single out one part of the day that I was particularly most grateful for, to reflect on what happened that day and too to recognize that even on a not so great day, there is something to appreciate. This just works for me but being mindful of what it is that I am waking up to that I have to be grateful for is the morning affirmation my anxious self needs. My anxiety has a way of creeping in from the start of the morning and when it consumes me enough, it can turn into a negative/ depressive state of mind. It’s been a long journey of working on coping skills — to which I owe a lot of gratitude to the source that suggested the gratitude list coping skill, as this has been one of the most effective coping skills I have taken up this past year. So whether it be a list you conduct in your head, said out loud, or it’s old school like myself with a small pad pen and paper ( don’t worry I write very small to avoid waste), or it’s keeping a list on your phone in your notes files, these lists can become one of the easiest skills to incorporate into your day to day life and little by little, can make a difference.
