Want to unlock the positive mindset that allows you to be the person you want to be and the mother you want to be? Start with incorporating these 5 pre-breakfast habits into your morning routine.
I’ve been working with parents for over five years, teaching them how to remain calm in the most explosive moments and unlock their inner positivity. I always start by introducing these 5 habits.
Before you continue reading, I’d like to tell you that there are no easy fixes. If you want a significant change in your life, you will need to work for it. Whether it’s becoming a more calm, present, and patient parent or becoming a more positive and happy person, there are underlying reasons why you weren’t one until now, and these reasons deserve your attention. But, and here’s the good news, these 5 pre-breakfast habits that are easy and simple for you to add to your morning routine and support your journey to positivity and peace of mind.
And just another little warning, don’t just scroll through the points because the titles are easily dismissible. Read the paragraph, experience the full meaning of what I’m talking about.
Say Good-Bye to Morning Craze
If you’re a parent, and if you’re here, I guess you are, you know that mornings are crazy, busy, hectic, loud and that it’s much easier for you to join the screaming than it is to find a positive way to navigate all that.
Your self-care routine, and your morning routine, have a much more significant impact on your life than you could ever imagine. The only way you’ll learn this is by trying. Many people would read this article (or scroll through the following points) and won’t do anything with the information provided.
What would you do?
If you want my advice, take a pen and paper, and write these points down, so that you won’t forget to do this tomorrow morning. Then, come back here and leave your comment. I want to know how your morning went after adding these 5 pre-breakfast habits to your morning routine.
So here they are, the 5 pre-breakfast habits of the happiest people and the calmest and present parents.
Smile
I know what you’re thinking. “Oh common…” Right? Let me explain. When you’re happy, your brain produces serotonin and endorphins that bring to the physical reaction we know as a “smile”. Your limbic brain, your emotional brain, can’t recognize whether a smile is a real smile or a fake one, so no matter what kind of a smile it is – this simple movement of your lips and cheeks will tell your brain that you’re happy. It will induce the production of serotonin to make you happier. That’s right. You can “fool” your brain to become a happier person.
So what does it look like? When you wake up in the morning, disregard everything else around you, and smile—so-so simple.
Breathe
Breathing is another tip that is super-easy to diminish, dismiss, and disregard. You breathe all the time, don’t you? So why is it even a thing?
So here’s the thing – breathing to survive is one thing (and what most of us do all the time); breathing TO LIVE, on the other hand, is an entirely different sort of a breathing.
We’re talking about a deep breath that awakens all your senses, all your body. It injects oxygen into your muscles and between your tissues. It expands your lungs and your heart and tells your brain that you’re ready for this, you got this.
And if you take three of those breaths, right after you smiled that smile, you’ll start your morning in a relaxed state of mind.
Want a pro tip? You can do this even when the kids are screaming around you. Moreover – it would be best if you did this every time the kids are screaming around you 🙂
Wash Your Face (not like you’ve been doing it until now)
Washing your face, brushing your teeth, wiping the water off, you do this mindlessly. Every single day. It’s just another task that you need to check off your list to get on with the day and the hectic morning routine.
This sends you the wrong message about YOU. Treating your face that way, carelessly, tells you that you don’t matter, that you’re not worth the time and the effort. And a face that’s not appreciated is a face that looks different from a face appreciated by its owner 🙂
After you’ve smiled and taken those three deep and reviving breaths, amble to the bathroom and appreciate your face. Brush each tooth mindfully, love each wrinkle. It is there because you’re living a life worth living. Celebrate your face – celebrate your life.
Those three little acts of love to yourself shouldn’t take longer than two minutes. That’s all you need to start your morning calm, relaxed, and positive. Think we’re done? Not at all 🙂
Drink a Glass of Water
Many people do, and many people don’t—those who do often don’t experience the full magnitude of what they just did. Just like breathing, we can drink to survive, and we can drink to live. The difference is enormous. When we drink to survive, we don’t feel the life flowing into our body with every sip of water; we don’t feel how refreshing it is, how our senses awake, and how our bodies react to this magical liquid.
If you’re taking this list seriously – tomorrow morning, drink to live; step out of the survival mode that has become the life of so many (especially now, during a pandemic). Start living the daily and mundane actions; these can be much more reviving and exciting than you might think.
Hug Your Children
Now that you’ve smiled and taken a few deep breathes, washed your face with love and appreciation, and had a reviving glass of water, you can approach the following essential part of your new morning routine: hugging your children.
Just like breathing and drinking, there are different ways of hugging, too. There’s that simple hug, the one that you give mindlessly, and there’s that special hug, the one that opens your mind, the one that melts your heart, the one that reminds you WHY you are doing everything that you are doing, the one that lights you up.
As you hold your child, allow yourself to close your eyes, to breathe deep in, to feel your chest pushing towards your child’s chest, feel your heartbeats, feel theirs…
I have goosebumps just from writing this 🙂
Connection – at Your Service
I live by one sentence: connection is everything. Disconnection is the source of all the fights and the power struggles, discomfort, and miscommunication. Disconnection is the source of everything that makes parenting so much harder.
Once we restore the connection, cooperation becomes a given. Like all human beings, your children, too, want to be good to and for the ones they love, the ones they are well attached and well connected to.
When the connection is in place, and everyone feels seen, and heard, understood, and accepted, family life becomes what you’ve always wanted it to be.
Start with these 5 pre-breakfast habits of the happiest people and the calmest parents, and talk to me if you’d like to take this work forward. Positive Parenting VIP is my membership group where I teach Mindfulness through Nonviolent Communication and offer members 24\7 life & parent coaching, without having to invest in one-on-one coaching.
You can also contact me for one-on-one work 🙂
And regardless, I’d love to have you in my free support group on Facebook, where I share tips and tricks to Mindful and happy parenting. See you soon 🙂
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