23: Morning Routines Help Connect With Your Missionary

Episode Summary: Imagine starting your day with purpose, feeling spiritually energized, and creating a daily connection to your missionary. While your missionary follows a strict morning routine, implementing your own can be a game changer. In this episode, we dive deep into how a structured morning routine can transform your daily life and bring you closer to your missionary, no matter where they are in the world.

Welcome to the Podcast! Today, we’re talking about the benefits of a morning routine, the spiritual advantages, and how it supports your missionary. We’ll cover how to decide what to include in your routine, what my morning routine looks like, how I created its structure, and the common challenges of starting and maintaining an ongoing routine.

Episode Highlights:

1. Benefits of a Morning Routine:
   • Improved Mental Health: Studies show consistent routines reduce stress and anxiety.
   • Enhanced Mood: Positive morning activities boost mood and overall well-being.
   • Increased Productivity: Better focus and time management.
   • Physical Health: Incorporating exercise and a nutritious breakfast.
   • Enhanced Cognitive Function: Activities like reading and meditation improve memory and decision-making.
   • Better Sleep Quality: Consistent wake-up times and good evening preparation.
2. Spiritual Benefits of a Morning Routine:
   • Enhanced Connection with God: Daily prayer and scripture study.
   • Increased Spiritual Awareness: Mindfulness, meditation, and reflection.
   • Strengthened Faith and Resilience: Positive affirmations and setting spiritual intentions.
   • Peace and Clarity: Quiet time for meditation and reflection.
   • Improved Relationships: Family prayer and study.
   • Increased Spiritual Discipline: Building consistent spiritual habits.
3. Supporting Your Missionary:
   • Emotional Stability: A calm and centered start helps provide steady support to your missionary.
   • Spiritual Connection: Specific prayers for your missionary’s safety and success.
   • Effective Communication: Designated time for thoughtful letters and emails.
   • Positive Role Modeling: Setting an example for your other children and inspiring your missionary.
4. Deciding What to Include in Your Routine:
   • Start small with one or two activities.
   • Make a list of important components and select easy-to-start tasks.
   • Start with short durations, gradually adding more as habits form.
5. My Morning Routine:
   • Summer Routine: Morning walk with my dog, YouTube yoga, meditation, prayer, journaling, and r

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Transcript

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Imagine, starting your day with purpose. And feeling spiritually energized and creating a daily connection to your missionary. Your missionary has a strict morning routine that they follow and implementing your own morning routine can be a game changer. So today we're going to deep dive into how a structured morning routine can not only transform your daily life, but bring you closer to your missionary no matter where they are in the world. Welcome to the podcast. We're going to talk about the benefits of a morning routine. And the spiritual benefits. And how this supports your missionary. How to decide what you want to include. What my morning routine looks like and how I created the structure and common challenges. With starting and maintaining an ongoing routine. First off the benefits of a morning routine. This is actually been extensively studied. There's improved mental health. It reduces stress and anxiety. Structured morning routine can reduce stress and anxiety by improving a sense of control. And predictability. A study published in the journal of psychiatric research, found that individuals with consistent routines experienced lower levels of stress and anxiety. It also enhances your mood engaging in positive morning activities, such as exercise. Or exposure to natural light. Can increase their production of endorphins and serotonin, which are known to boost mood. And overall wellbeing. It also increases productivity. Bye. Improving your focus and conscious concentration. And it improves your time management because it helps you. Effectively set the tone for the day and reduce time wasted. On like decision-making or scrolling sort of social media. First thing in the morning. There's also physical health benefits. Regular exercise. Incorporating some sort of activity into your morning routine. Helps improve your cardiovascular health boost, your metabolism. Just overall fitness. And then also starting the day with a nutritious breakfast can help with your metabolism, maintain holding weight. And we've known about that kind of stuff for a long time. There's also enhanced cognitive function. It boosts your memory and learning. I don't know about you, but I need all the help I can get boosting my memory. It does that by including like reading meditation. Or. Learning new skills that help with your cognitive function. And it improves decision-making. So it starts your day with clear focus, mind. That helps you make better decisions. It also improves your sleep quality because it creates a consistent wake up time. That gets into your circadian rhythm. And even helps on weekends, if you can maintain. That routine and also your evening preparation. A really good morning routine starts the night before. Winding down avoiding screens. Preparing for the next day. And this all helps. Improve. Your sleep hygiene and the quality. The other reason. For a good morning routine is spiritual and emotional wellbeing. It helps you incorporate some mindfulness. That's talked about a lot nowadays meditation. Or prayer. And it helps you start the day in peace. And purpose instead of kind of anxiety and stress. And then you can also incorporate a gratitude practice. Just starting to think of the things that you're grateful for and it can be very small things. I have a writing practice. That includes gratitude. And it. Helps me think of little things that I'm grateful for, like a water heater. Or a hop. Hot bath. Or a crisp morning walk. My dog. Just any little things and also large things. And it really helps. Lead to longterm improvements. The second benefit is spiritual benefits of morning routine. It helps you incorporate like a daily prayer. Scripture studies. Mindfulness meditation is just increased spiritual awareness. Being able to tune into your inner intuition. Reflection, reflection and journaling. And then It strengthens your faith and resilience. Bye. You know, you can create affirmations or positive thinking. It also helps you align with your spiritual goals. Setting spiritual intentions, reviewing and planning. Those spiritual globe. Goals. And supporting those helps you contribute to longterm spiritual growth. It also gives you peace and clarity and it gives you some quiet time. And the quiet time is really interesting because I had a yoga instructor. A number of years ago, I was working as a. Fitness director and a Y YMCA. And she would come and get me. Every Wednesday morning. And she would say, you need to come in and go to yoga. And. I at the time. Felt like I just needed to be running all the time and, and go, go, go, go, go. But this yoga instructor really helped me create some space. Or it gave me some quiet time and. And I was, I started to learn how to deal with my own brain. And be in the present moment as it's, as opposed to like this very busy mindset. It also helps improve your family prayer and study. And then also just being able to set a time. Aside time for servicing kindness. And really that happened later in your day. You normally, but it helps you be able to kind of plan for those things. And then the last thing it does is it increases spiritual discipline. So consisting, see, and commitment helps you. Build the discipline and the commitment to your faith. Reinforcing your spiritual habits. That can really become integral parts of your life. So the third thing, how a morning routine can help support your missionary. So. Think about this, it creates helps create emotional stability and strength inside of you so that you create a calm and centered start. And so that helps you stay emotionally stable. And so that allows you to create additional, very calm support for your missionary who may be facing challenges or uncertainties or unknowns. It also. I mentioned before it helps you reduce stress. And so a consistent morning routine. Helps all of us moms handle the emotional ups and downs. Of having a child, so remission and whatever is, you know, Coming up with that and help us be able to communicate more effectively. Instead of like, just being all over the place. It also helps us support our missionary. By creating a spiritual connection. So in our daily prayers, being able to. Incorporate specific prayers for missionary. And sending them. You know, there are way. For their safety, their success, their wellbeing whatever challenges helps you just really have a focus time. That you spend, you know, thinking about them as well as your other children. And be able to be very honed in. On what you're praying for in order to help them. It also creates time for you to have a spiritual study and reflection. And that just really helps you gain insights. Spiritual strength. Then things that maybe come to you, you can also be able to share. With your missionary through letters or emails, and that helps. Provide spiritual nourishment. For you and them. And then The other thing that a morning routine helps support your missionary. Is, it gives you time to write. Letters or emails and you have kind of a designated time that you can sit down and communicate with them. And although we get to tie, you know, we get to talk to them. But they love getting emails or letters. So it allows you to, to sit down and really focus just on them and not be distracted by. Concerns of. You know, whatever's going on in the family. It also helps you set a positive example by creating something structured. With your routine. And it turns into an example for your other kids so that they can see. The importance of a spiritual practice. And it also helps inspire your missionary uphold. They're similar. Practices that they have all of their serving. A mission. So the fourth one is how to decide what you want to include. So when you're starting something new, it's really important to start out with only one or two things. So that we don't overwhelm ourselves with the task. So we know a lot of people that start going to the gym and maybe this has happened to you. It's definitely happened to me. And I wake up and I'm like, I'm going to go to the gym five days a week. And then after two days, I'm like, I don't really want to do that. And so then I don't go back and tell, you know, next month, next year. So, what we're looking for is just micro improvements instead of like monumental changes right out of the gate. So we want to make a list of all the parts of the morning routine that you feel would be the most important and most beneficial, and just be aware that it's okay. That these things change over time. My morning routine routine is always evolving. And then you just want to select two things from the list that feel easy to start with. Don't start with something that you feel like you should be doing and probably won't. Just something that feels like really yummy. And easy. That you can experiment with right out of the gate. And then decide how much time that you'll need to do these tasks. If you. Have it set for an hour? And you haven't been doing. Morning routine. Then that's too long because your brain will do everything. It can kind of sabotage you. So start out with a maximum, maybe 10 to 15 minutes, because 10 to 15 minutes, like most people can do anything for 10, 10 to 15 minutes. So if you start out with something very simple like that, and then you can start to add. Components to your morning routine as you get those going. So I don't usually Change my morning routine until I have something very established. And then. Sometimes, I just feel like intuitively that I need to change and, or add something. And so I'll add in the next kind of layer in. But it has to be a solid three weeks of doing something before I do that. So I just want to share my morning routine and just bear in mind. I've been doing this for a number of years, and so this is not. By any means something that you need to do. I think morning routines are definitely specific to the people and. Also for me, it's also the season. So right now it's summer. Where I'm living. And so I wake up. And the first thing I do is I go on a walk. I take my dog on a walk for at least 15 minutes. I try and do this before the sun is up up. And this is very strategic because I don't want to wash my face and apply sunscreen yet because I'm not ready to get ready for my day. I just want to go on a. On a nice morning walk. It doesn't have to be brisk. I don't think of this. As. Like the grind. We're exercise. I just think of this as time that I can. You know, have some quiet and like, think about like what's coming up. Sometimes I'm still kind of sleepy when I'm walking. And so I don't really think, I just kind of take myself on a walk. And when I get back. I get on YouTube. Have a yoga practice. That I do for 15 to 20 minutes. Just kind of, depending on the day. I follow a few people that I really enjoy. That really stretching and getting my body awake and just kind of getting into my body. After I finished my yoga, I have a little corner that I sit in. That I meditate. And practice. Just my morning prayers. But my, my meditation comes first. And I try and allow my brain to. Be open and listen for any promptings or guidance. And just trying to connect. With God in some way. And so I usually start my meditation with. Just like like a little saying where I just say, heavenly father, I am listening. And then I sit there for however long. I feel. Is necessary and what, and I just have to put a caveat on here. When I started meditating, I used an app and it helped me. Just allow myself. To like concentrate on my breath and, you know, different things. And it really helped me be able to start that practice practice. And I use Headspace. And I just use their free version for a long time. I don't use any of that anymore. Now. I just meditate. And Sometimes I have prompting sometimes I don't. And I don't put any judgment or, you know, guidance on it. I just allow it to be. And I am constantly refocusing my brain. Because my brain wants to just run all over the place and think about. Stuff. The LA oh, the next thing I do in my practice is I pray out loud. And I usually have some specific things that I'm thinking about with my missionary, with my other kids. And I just try and be very specific with things that I am concerned about and I try to convey those concerns through my prayer. And then I always include. Asking for the atonement. Toby helped me heal a specific wound or something. That's not serving me anymore. So for example, If I'm holding resentment or towards somebody or. Alec. I, if I run into somebody. That I have had a. You know, an interaction with it. I don't love. I don't want to hold on to that. So I always ask for Sperry specific things to help me heal. Just applying the atonement to my life. Then I, when I get done with that, I write in my journal. And I have a missionary mom journal. That I write in and it's in the link in the show notes. It's available on Amazon. So. If there are things that are coming up that I want, I want to write down. I try to write in a weekly. Or I'll just write in my regular journal and I only write one page. But that's what I put myself as. Like, I'm just going to write one page. Now, if I have more to say, I can. But I don't force myself to write more than one and sometimes I write three or four, but. A lot of times I'll only write one and that's okay. And I just gave myself a lot of grace and I'm not strict about these kinds of things. And then I try and read. Something from like the upcoming lesson for the week. Or a scripture. Or sometimes my son who's serving a mission will share something. And he'll say, mommy, you've really got to read this. So I will write that down. And then I incorporate it during this time. And I'll go through and read it. Maybe make a few notes of. What is coming up. I might read something from a general conference talk. Or sometimes I even read from a self-improvement book. It's just whatever I'm feeling that I need that morning. And I just try really hard to trust my intuition. And. Read. Something that's uplifting. That's going to be beneficial. Some common challenges. So it's really helpful to write down any obstacles that you can see that may come up. For you. For starting a morning routine. So some typical ones are. Younger kids waking up. Not getting up and getting enough sleep the night before. Letting the bed dragon, get you and keep you in bed. I call out the bedroom. Again, because sometimes it feels like. You know, we, we can't peel ourselves out of bed. Another thing that is a challenge or an obstacle is starting with too many things and then getting overwhelmed. Or if we have a very strict schedule and we have to get a work. At a certain time. Or starting and stopping and starting and stopping. Or starting, and then. Stopping and then not starting again. So if you miss a day, just allow for it and then get right back to it. And. Morning routines are not. They don't need to be used as a club. So you don't need to club yourself if you miss a day. There's many times on the weekend that I only get one or two things off of my, my morning routine done, because I have more things going on. My husband's home. And so I just allow for. The flexibility of life and we don't want to get so rigid. That we can't, you know, create some space. For us. And then our morning routine starts to feel heavy and like task oriented as opposed to intuitive and peace creating. So just make sure that you allow yourself. You know, that, that. Flexibility. And then just making sure that for all of this, all of the obstacles that you come up with, try to write down solutions for them ahead of time. And that really helps you keep on track. So I used to get up at five in the morning. I don't anymore. But I used to for a lot of years. And I had some friends that were like, how do you do that? I can't get up until seven. I was like, well, then just get up at 6 45. I mean, you don't go from like getting up at seven to getting up at five. That just, it doesn't work. It's too clunky. It's too much for our brain to really metabolize and And so what we're looking for is like small, small improvements, 1%, 1%. And I tell myself that all the time. I'm just looking for 1% improvement. That that really gets me out of that perfectionist mindset. And I, and a lot of my friends suffer from that as well. And so it's just giving yourself tons and tons of grace. And feeling into what feels good for you. I know some of my friends. They like to get up and ground in the morning where they go outside, they walk around in the grass. Bare footed. I don't do that, but I think it's amazing. And in the winter, my, my morning routine completely changes. Because of the later sunrise, you know, the weather. How cold it is. I don't want to walk my dog at six 30 in the morning. I want to walk in when the sun is up. So I just allow myself to change and shift. It has the seasons change and like what feels good for me? All right. You guys, that is what I have for you today. If you enjoyed this episode and there was benefit, if you could share it with your friend or share it on social media. You can tag me. That means the world to me. And thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week. Bye-bye now.