Bookend Your Day with Small Wins
Did you know that small morning and evening habits can help you to achieve your bigger goals in life? They are a great way to bookend your day that provides small wins you can build on to transition into your big goals for the day and help you get rested to tackle the next day. Morning routines can be small but meaningful tasks that trigger the next and get you started on a positive and productive note. Similarly, evening rituals end your day with a nice wind down to get better rest so you are recharged for the next day. I have developed a fun mnemonic device to remember what I call my Morning Booster and my Evening Chiller routines. For the Morning Booster, I have called it MOWBYGMME (or “Mo’ Big Me) and for the Evening Chiller, I have called it DEWBETRR (or Do Better). They are fun acronyms to remember what I want to do in the morning to start my day off for myself and end the day for myself or my “Me Time”. You will see below what the acronym stands for.
Morning Booster
Make the bed — Making your bed is a very small win that is so easy to do and has such a positive ripple effect for your day that you reap it at the end of the day when you come back to bed for the evening. Your bed is made and it feels clean, fresh, and ready for you to get back in to rest and recharge for another day.
Open blinds — Opening the blinds or curtains is another small win that adds to making the bed. It is another easy task that not only sets you up for a strong start to your day, but you are opening up the world to you, inviting the sun into your room and yourself. You are brightening up your room and getting vitamin D, which is vital to our life and is often lower than it should be in most people. Because so many of us work indoors these days, we don’t generally get enough vitamin D in our system to keep up running at an optimal level.
Water — Drink a glass of water. Keep it next to your bed so it’s accessible when you get up in the morning. I like to use a Camelbak water bottle with a straw that has a bite-value like their bladders or backpacks. I am against the single-use plastic bottle crisis and carry my water bottle with me all over the world to make sure I am hydrated and not support the use of plastic bottles along the way.
Wash face — Washing your face with cold water is refreshing, helps to wake you up, get the sleep out of your eyes, and gets you primed for brushing your teeth.
Brush teeth — Pretty self-explanatory, yeah? It is just another small step you can do to keep compounding on the triggers and cues (as James Clear talks about in his best-selling book, Atomic Habits) as you transition into your day with small wins.
Yoga/stretching — This is a newer practice for me but is one that I’ve dabbled in over the years and wanted to get more intentional with as I’ve gotten older. It feels so good to take 5-10 minutes to roll out the mat and get connected to your body. Stretching our bodies out before work or school is so good for you, whether you are sitting down to work at a desk for most of the day in a sedentary position or even doing a more physical job. Stretching, flexing, and getting your body aligned in the morning, helps to prep you for the rigors of the day, provide more blood flow throughout your body, and provide more flexibility the more you do it. Just as with fitness and healthy food protocols, consistency is the key here.
Get dressed — Again, self-explanatory but with the last few years of athleisure wear and who knows what else that’s not on camera for those Zoom meetings. I had my dear friend and personal brand and image consultant, Rhoda Johnson, on the podcast, and during our conversation, she shares the importance of getting dressed for work.
Make coffee — Because I mean, coffee. Ok, maybe you drink tea. No problem. I do too. I love my coffee in the morning and drink tea and water the rest of the day. Also, lower your caffeine intake throughout the day to help ensure a good night’s rest. More on that in a bit.
Mantras / Motivation — These are mantras I’ve written, compiled, or saved throughout the years. I have these set as reminders in my phone (notice there was no mention of a device until now) so they pop up each day and are waiting for me to read and acknowledge them before starting my day. I also get motivated by reading a daily affirmation and adding it to three questions I like to ask myself. I picked these great motivational questions up from a friend, Jennifer Pinter.
Take 10 silent minutes for reflection and write it down:
🤷♀️ How am I feeling and why?
🥰 How do I want to show up today?
👩🏽💻 Looking back on the day what is one thing I can accomplish that will make me feel like it was a success?
Establish day — I look at my calendar and Todoist (my task and project management tool — Love it!) I get mentally prepared for any calls, coaching sessions, or podcast interviews that are happening that day. I take my mantras and motivations and focus those on the people I’ll be connecting with and serving that day, artfully. I think about the tasks I need to get done, like my workout, meals, writing, editing, posting, and family time.
Now, it’s the end of the day and it’s time to transition from getting things done mode to winding down (the mind and the body). With all of the distractions, we have to come at us all day from email, texts, notifications, calendar invites, meetings booked over other meetings, appointments, errands, posting online, scrolling the feed, and so on, it can be hard to shut down our brains and get into a relaxed state so we can rest and recharge to get after another day tomorrow. Here are my routines for winding down at the end of my day.
Evening Chiller
Drink nighttime tea — As I mentioned before, I lower my caffeine intake throughout the day. I choose to end my day with Sleepytime Tea. It starts the process of relaxing my mind and body and getting into a chiller vibe for the evening.
End screen time — I put my phone away and stop checking emails, social media, surfing the internet, reading the news or blogs, or any other outside influences that might get my mind spinning before bed. I make sure to put my phone in a different room than my bedroom and make sure it’s on silent (which it usually is anyway).
Wash face — Again, no brainer. It’s nice to clean up and feel refreshed and ready to get into bed.
Brush teeth — Gotta get that final cleaning for the day, after that awesome dinner you had earlier.
Establish restful space — Time to close the blinds or curtains and darken the space for sleep. I also love to use an eye mask and earplugs. It trains my brain to know it’s time to rest. I like to keep my bottle of water on the nightstand, in case I need any during the night, and most importantly, the next morning (see Morning Booster). I’m also a big fan of white noise to help me get into a deeper sleep.
Time for bed — Studies show that going to bed at the same time each night (or close to it) helps you get better sleep because you are getting your body’s rhythms into a schedule. Consistency and constancy are key. I wear a Fitbit smartwatch and use it to set an alarm so my watch vibrates at 10 pm when it’s time to get ready for bed and grab my iPad to read whatever current book I’m enjoying.
Read a book — I have taken my old iPad 2 and turned it into a Kindle reader. I took off any distracting apps and only kept reading or learning apps on it so I can’t cheat. I also have it set to Focus and Night Shift mode (the amber-colored light instead of blue) so your brain isn’t tricked into thinking it’s daytime and time to be active. I also use dark mode and lower the brightness to a nice level to read but not too bright. I like to read traditional books but prefer to have the lights off when in bed, so this option has been good for me. I also like to track how many books I read and how often, which the Kindle app does for me automatically.
Relax — Once I’m ready to stop reading and go to sleep, I grab my eye mask and ear plugs, put my “Kindle on steroids” away, begin to relax, and shift into a restful, calm, softened state, mentally and physically.
You may not be interested in following all of these micro-habits to start and end your day, but hopefully, you found one or two things you can take away and use to help you bookend your day with small wins! Let me know in the comments what works for you, or if you have any other tips or hacks that others might be able to add or replace with these. And, as always, keep being artful!
