Three simple steps to changing your mindset in a morning

I was just heading out for a walk when I stopped to check my hair and for lack of a mirror I used my camera phone.

I immediately noticed I’d grown horns! 

I mean, I hadn’t literally grown horns; it was actually the wicker Highland cow head hanging on the wall behind me!

It got me smiling… and then thinking! Some people wake up in the morning and they feel like they’ve actually grown horns and by that I mean, they feel their mood is terrible. They’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed, or they’ve woken up that way out. 

The fact is how we feel is down to us; it’s down to our mindset, and we can change our mood if we wake up feeling less than tip top. But sometimes it’s just easier to wallow in self-pity, be in a foul mood and go through the whole day letting it affect everything. That’s not productive to anyone though, least of all you. So how do we shift our mindset quickly, easily and simply when we have a morning feeling that way out? 

When you wake up feeling bad, or sad, or maybe anxious, what can we do? 

Here’s three simple exercise to change your mindset and your mood.

First of all, start with the basics and go back to focussing on breathing. The most basic thing that we need to stay alive and something that really connects us to our body and mind. It helps boost our mood, de-escalates our heart rate, and it regulates everything that’s going on with our body. Just a few rounds of breathing exercises can be really beneficial for your physical and mental health. 

Try this Box Breathing exercise. 

• Breathe in over a count of 4 beats
• Hold the in breath for 4 beats
• Breathe out over 4 beats
• Hold the out breath for 4 beats

Repeat 4 times. 

How do you feel?

The next thing you can try is a grounding exercise and this is good if perhaps you’re feeling a little bit anxious when you wake in the morning or perhaps worried about something that’s coming ahead. All the time that you’re worried about what’s coming in the future, or maybe worried about what happened in the past, you’re not focusing on the here and now which is where you are – planted in the present. So we want to bring our senses back to the present moment, engage in them, feel them and this will help reduce any feelings of nerves and anxiety. 

Try this Grounding Exercise.

Take a deep breath and focus on…

5 things you can see

4 things you can touch

3 things you can hear

2 things you can smell

1 thing you can taste

How was that? How do you feel?

What about if you’re just feeling low or flat and lacking energy? If you’re feeling lethargic or you can’t be bothered, or have no motivation? Well, if you wake up feeling like that and you don’t do anything about it, you’ll likely feel that way all day, meaning that your whole day will be unproductive. It might even affect relationships with others or the work you do so what we need to do is change our state – change our mindset – because our state of mind dictates our story. We can actually choose to feel in a better mood and have a higher energy and we can do this by literally moving physically.

So get moving, just for 15-30 seconds. Dance around the kitchen, stretch, pump your hands and arms upwards to the sky quickly whilst deep breathing, plant one foot in front of the other on the floor as if in a running stance and fire your arms in a sprint running motion – but without moving your feet.

Just this quick burst of movement can change your mood because it raises your energy levels.

Simple, but effective exercises for anyone to use.

Here’s a bonus exercise for you…

The truth is that your mood and emotions possibly started as a hangover from the day before. I don’t mean hangover in terms of having drunk too much alcohol (though that could be the case). What I mean is a hangover from what happened in your life the previous day – your mood when you went to sleep – which possibly meant you didn’t sleep very well, and that’s part of what is affecting you now. 

So let’s start with the night before. What can we do before we go to bed to help our mood the next day? Well, here’s a really simple exercise. 

Try this Gratitude exercise.

Before you go to sleep, write down three things that you’re grateful for that happened during the day. No matter how bad your day has been, there will always be something that you can be grateful for. Write them down and read them over a few times. Feel that feeling of gratitude absorbed into your mind and body. This is a really good way to raise your positive emotions so you fall asleep in a better mood, meaning you’re more likely to wake up in a better mood… and that means having no horns in the morning!

Let me know how you get on!

Much love,
Tabby x