In August 2016 I was lucky enough to go on an African safari in Botswana. We had to get up in the dark and drive out to the game park in time for the dawn. This was the best time of day to view many of the animals, it was freezing cold but extremely beautiful.
I’m a bit of a morning person, preferring to get up early and go to bed early.
How do you start your day?
Do you wake up in the morning and immediately start listening to the news, scrolling through facebook, reading emails and worrying about the day ahead?
Starting the day like this connects us a stressful world, switching on our sympathetic nervous systems, increasing our stress hormones, putting us into a state of “fight or flight”. In other words we create stress in our lives right at the start of the day. This has a flow on effect. We spend the rest of the day in this mode or we have to find ways to destress and calm ourselves.
If we start our day with some quiet reflective time – meditation, prayer, gratitude practice, journalling – we are relaxed and calm with our parasympathetic nervous system in control. Less stress hormones means better digestion, calmer thought processes and a much better start to the day.
I remember Louise Hay saying that she starts her day with gratitude for her bed!
Most spiritual traditions would encourage morning devotions. To spend a little time tuning into who we really are and setting an intention of being and acting from love that day.
A Course In Miracles says to start the day with the prayer: “Where would you have me go?, What would you have me do?, What would you have me say?, and too whom?”
Starting our day with gratitude sends out a message to the universe and will attract more abundance into our lives.
I know from experience that meditating first thing in the morning sets me up for a much calmer day, so my day flows better. This has now become a habit and requires getting up quite early some days!.
So tomorrow morning notice what your first thoughts are and nurture yourself with a calmer start to your day.
