7 Morning Rituals to Supercharge Recovery
Hope Rehab Thailand
What you do first thing in the morning can set the tone for the rest of the day, and this is why it is so important to have some morning rituals to get things off to a good start. If you are recovering from an addiction, it can be even more important to take control of your day with positive habits because this is going to strengthen your sobriety.
Picture this – you wake up late, and you are rushing around to get ready for work. You leave the house feeling stressed and in a bad mood, and this is only made worse by the fact you then get stuck in traffic. When you get to work, one of your colleagues makes a funny comment about you being late, and you snap back with an angry response – you don’t talk to each other for the rest of the day. Your bad mood means you are less productive than normal, and your boss gives out to you for a careless mistake. It ends up being a bad day all-round and all because you started off on the wrong foot.
If you perform some morning rituals, it means you are better prepared for the day ahead. The fact that you are starting with a positive mind-set means you are more easily able to deal with stuff like traffic jams, irritating remarks, and criticism from the boss. These rituals also tend to make you more productive, and they can even boost your creativity as well as your physical health and mental well-being.
Here are 7 morning rituals to supercharge your recovery:
1. Morning Recovery Readings
The mornings can be a good time to read inspirational recovery material. If you don’t have much time, you could choose something like the Alcoholics Anonymous 24-hour book – this contains short readings for every day of the year. These days you also have the option of recovery audiobooks, and you can have this playing in the background while you get prepared for facing the day. Developing this morning ritual is going to strengthen your sobriety by helping you ensure that staying sober remains a priority in your life.
2. Positive Visualisations in Bed
You can start your morning preparations even before you get out of bed and one way to do this is using positive visualisations. This is where you try to imagine as vividly as possible, your behaviour during the rest of the day – e.g. you can see yourself being super-productive and focused on your work.
Positive visualisations has been used by athletes for decades, and it is also a popular tool with entrepreneurs. It works because to a certain extent, the brain responds in the same way to imagined behaviour as to behaviour in the real world. By imagining yourself acting in a positive way throughout the day, it tricks the brain into realising feel-good chemicals that can then give you the energy and motivation to do what you were imagining in bed.
3. Morning Meditation
Meditation is a superb morning ritual that can improve your mental and physical health – it also improves your ability to deal with stress. There is no real need to learn any fancy meditation technique, or sit in an exotic posture, and just putting your attention the movement of the breathe for a few minutes can be all you need.
Mindfulness meditation is a particularly good practice for those of us who are recovering from addiction. This is because it involves learning to feel comfortable with the present moment, and developing the ability to see thoughts and feelings in a more objective way. If you can see how your thoughts are like clouds passing through the sky, you are less likely to be a slave to them.
If you don’t feel like you have enough focus to be able to sit down and meditate – you can choose moving meditation such as yoga, tai-chi, or even chi-running.
4. Morning Exercise
Morning exercise gets blood pumping into your brain, so you feel more alert – there is some evidence to suggest that a workout boosts your brain power for about ten hours afterwards. Getting a bit of exercise also releases some feel-good hormones that boost your mood and make you better able to handle the challenges of the day ahead. You don’t have to push your body too hard to enjoy most of the benefits of morning exercise – a brisk twenty minute walk would be a manageable commitment for most of us.
5. Morning Yoga Workout
Yoga can be the perfect choice for the mornings because it can combine meditation with exercise – two positive habits for the price of one. Lots of animals have a stretching routine for when they wake up, so it is easy to understand why it can be important. Morning yoga can get the oxygen pumping in your brain, and it will wake you up faster than even the strongest coffee.
6. Gratitude List
When we first become sober, it is easy to feel grateful for our new life because everything is so new, and the scars of drinking or drug use are still fresh in our mind. So long as we remain grateful, our sobriety is secure, but the problem is that we humans have a habit of taking things for granted once we become used to them.
Your level of happiness is not determined by the how much stuff you can accumulate, or how many new experiences you can have, but by your ability to appreciate what you already have. There are plenty of people who can afford almost every luxury, yet they feel bored and dissatisfied. There is almost certainly enough in your life now for you to be happy, but you just need to become more aware of these blessings.
A gratitude list is where you write down all the good things in your life, and it is a powerful technique to increase your current level of happiness. It only takes a few minutes to do this work, but the benefits can be extraordinary. Make this one of your regular 7 Morning Rituals to Supercharge Your Recovery, and you will find that each day there are new things to feel grateful for.
7. Listen to Some Uplifting Tunes
Music can have a powerful impact on our mood, and listening to some uplifting tunes first thing in the morning can be energising. It’s a nice idea to create your own playlist for the mornings, and you can listen to this while getting ready, or travelling into work. If you are doing a morning workout, this music can be perfect for getting you in the mood for exercise.
7 Morning Rituals to Supercharge Your Recovery By Paul Hope Rehab Thailand
