A Millennial’s morning routine..
No matter what your age or your generation’s trendy nickname,
most of us are guilty.

Wake up.
Grab the cell phone.
Turn off the alarm.
Curse the day, for forcing you to wake up & get your grown-up on.
Proceed to scroll through your Gram and/or Facebook for what seems like an hour in search for the latest news, gossip and other excuses not to get out of bed.

Reaching for your smart-phone seems harmless enough. Afterall, an estimated 64% of us smart-phone users use our phones as soon as we wake up.
However it’s not the most ideal morning habit and it could be getting in the way of having a healthiest and most harmonious start to your day possible.

Instead of immediately reaching for your favorite piece of technology, take those first few awakened moments to meditate on the new day that you’ve been allowed to see.

Prayer, Chi (QI) Zen,chakra,flow or just an old fashioned chill session, …however you recognize it. Whatever you want to call it. A few minutes of morning reflection can be a life changing way to start your day.

An Attitude of Gratitude

“I’ve just got to say ‘much obliged to ya, Master’
Cause the walls in my room
was not the walls to my grave
My bed, was not my cooling board”
-Donny Hathaway
“Thank You Master For My Soul”

I’m a Christian and for me, a morning prayer is my starting the day on a positive note.
When I wake up, I give thanks.

I give thanks for the gift of waking up to see another day.
I give thanks for the continued health, wellness and perseverance of my family and friends.
I give thanks for the sun that continues to shine bright, providing life for us all.
I give thanks for all that I have and don’t deserve.
I give thanks for the day in front of me and whatever lessons it has in store.

There are those who wake up instantly disappointed with the day in front of them before it’s even begun.

“Why can’t I sleep all day?”
“Why do I have to go to class?”
“I hate Mondays”
“I hate traffic”
“I hate my job”
“I hate not having a job”

Soon after this inner-rant takes place, they will invariably reach for their phone and wander through the halls of social media; a world filled with perfectly edited pictures and posts. Some which were created to induce the kind of “life-envy” that will almost certainly exacerbate the personal disappointment that they already feel.

But when you wake up and take a moment to count your blessings, it puts your energy in a positive place and makes you less likely to be negatively affected by the challenging events and people that you may encounter that day.
And guess what! It only takes a small amount of time. Every prayer or celebration of grattitude doesn’t have to be a long, 10 minute, drawn out, knockdown, southern baptist spiritual slobberknocker. I mean, if that works for you, cool. But giving sincere thanks only requires that you fully express the happiness in your soul which shouldn’t be limited by the measure of time.

By the way, my suggestion that you start your day with an attitude of gratitude doesn’t come from a naive, out of touch perspective – unfamiliar with what struggle is. As of the time of this entry’s publishing, I have been unemployed for the last 11 months.
I’m telling you from that vantage point and many more, that
YOU CAN ALWAYS FIND SOMETHING TO BE GRATEFUL FOR : )

After I pray, I also visualize my plans and goals for the day.
Doing this renews my sense of purpose and organizes my schedule.
Visualizing my day also decreases the likelihood that I’ll waste too much time scrolling through a never-ending timeline.
Facebook is cool and all but I’d much rather be invested in the improvement of my own life instead of watching someone else’s.

Did you just wake up from an amazing dream that you didn’t want to end?
Meditation can help your mind calmly come down from that high, allowing you to savor the feeling a little while longer.
Did you have a terrifying nightmare where an orange, big mouthed, hotel owning billionaire became America’s next President, elects Dr. Evil, the entire planet of the apes, Megatron and the Decepticons to his cabinet, allowing them to destroy the earth?
By chillin out and taking a moment for yourself, you allow your heart rate to normalize and your urge to move to Canada (or Mars) will slowly disappear.

Prayer and visualization aren’t the only ways to center your self either. Write a song. Write in a journal or diary. Stretch. Read. Have some water. Some coffee. Lay in bed and stare at the ceiling.
I promise you, your phone will still be there when you’re done.
(Assuming of course that you don’t share your crib with a group of clepto ninjas.
If you do, then that bad boy might be gone by the time you’re done.

“The heart speaks in whispers”
-Corrine Bailey Rae

The above line is a quote pulled from Corrine Bailey Rae’s gorgeous new album by the same name. It’s a MUST BUY
And I think she’s right. The heart does speak in whispers.
Waking up is the moment when the infinite possibilities of God and nature speak to us through silence.
In order to tune in to our inner-most aspirations and inspirations, sometimes we need to quiet all of the distracting noise.

There is no more special time of the day than when you first open your eyes in the morning. For a brief moment, nothing is in your mind and everything seems possible.
You should capitalize on this window of infinite possibilities by using your first moments of the day to check in with yourself.

Like the base of a waterfall eagerly waiting to drink the water from above,
our minds thirst for the sensations of life to come rushing in. So it’s not unnatural to want to check your phone to get a sense of what’s going on in the world around you. This is not a crazed “cell-phones are evil” hippie rant.
They aren’t evil and I’m not a hippie.
Cell phones are fly and what they enable us to do is beyond remarkable.

Enjoy them and all of Tweets, Snaps, ESPN highlights and viral videos as you want…. AFTER you’ve taken a few moments for yourself in the morning.
The change this can have on your outlook on life will be worth it.