How to Have Better Mornings!

Having a morning routine that prioritizes health can lead to better diabetes management, but how do we start developing the habits that start our day off right?

The reality is that when we want to change anything in our lives, the first step is becoming aware of what things are currently like. That means we need to figure out what your mornings are like now because truthfully, you already have a morning routine. Make a list of the different actions that make up a typical morning for you. It might look something like:

7:00 am: Alarm goes off!

7:15 am: Get out of bed and brush teeth.

7:25 am: Start coffee and feed the dog.

7:30 am: Wake up the kids and get in the shower.

And so on…

Once you’ve gotten a good idea of how your mornings are currently set up, then you need to decide on something that you could prioritize in the morning that would improve your health and your diabetes. It could be meal prepping a healthy lunch, making sure you take your diabetes medications, getting some exercise in – it’s your call. Choose what is appealing to you… and what you feel will have a positive effect on your health.

Now it’s time to figure out how to make that behavior a habit… and that starts with linking it to something else you always do in the morning. Brushing your teeth, turning on the coffee maker, feeding your dog… these are things we do pretty automatically in the morning. They can help us make the healthy behavior something we do on autopilot too. 

Here’s how it can work. Let’s say that I want to start a habit of going for a walk first thing in the morning. I’ll want to lay out my clothes and walking shoes the night before, and decide that as soon as I finish brushing my teeth, I’m going to put on my shoes and head out the door. After a few weeks of doing this regularly, after I brush my teeth I’m going to start looking for my walking shoes. Over more time, it becomes almost automatic. 

We could do the exact same thing for making sure we take our diabetes medicine or having a ritual of writing in a gratitude journal. Whatever behavior you want to do more of, the formula is the same. A trigger plus a routine over time becomes a habit.

The two questions are:

What do you want more of in your mornings?

What’s going to be the trigger that’s going to help you make that an automatic part of your day?

Once you know both of those things, you’re ready to start creating better habits and building better mornings. And you can use our handy morning checklist as a way to set your intention for the day, see your progress with your morning routine, as well as track how much sleep you’re getting and see whether you’re remembering to take your diabetes medication. Starting your morning off by consciously deciding what you want to focus on can help us remember throughout the whole day what’s really most important to us, whether that’s good health or peace or connection with others.

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