I’ve tried most of the life hacks out there.
(Except for the morning cold plunge. Hard pass.)
Most of them come and go, but a few of them really stick.
One of those is the morning journal.
The morning journal is a stream-of-consciousness exercise right when you wake up. It’s really simple. You just write down everything that pops into your head.
For a while, I did it every morning, but it’s turned into something I do on THOSE mornings.
I had one of THOSE mornings last Tuesday.
The cortisol was next level. The morning anxiety was bouncing my thoughts from one unfounded potential catastrophe to the next.
Nothing was off limits.
After laying in bed wide-eyed for 30 minutes, I finally accepted that I would not be going back to sleep.
So I tip-toed out of the bedroom, sank into my recliner, and opened my reMarkable* writing tablet…
…and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.
A funny thing happens when I write.
It slows down my thinking.
The split second it takes for my thought to travel from my synapses to my fingers to the paper forces me to take a mental breath.
And within that momentary empty space, positive thoughts slip in.
Solutions present themselves. Reassurance about the future emerges. And perspective on the absurdity of my early morning anxiety is achieved.
It doesn’t work every time, but it works often enough that it’s my go-to solution when I wake up on THAT side of the bed.
Do you have any life hacks that have proven themselves enough to integrate them into your routine?
If so, let me know what’s worked for you!
I love exploring shortcuts to realize our potential.
*my reMarkable is probably the best $300 I’ve ever spent.
