More and more people started to pay attention lately to their morning routine. As everyone knows that how you start your morning directly impacts your whole day: your productivity, focus, the choices you are making throughout the day, etc. But very few are devoting as much time to their nightly routine as to their morning one. And an evening routine is as important to your overall well-being as your morning habits. Your bedtime rituals impact the kind of sleep you will get, which in turn will impact your morning. We have talked about morning routine several times already, so today we will concentrate on empowering nighttime habits.
What you do in the evening directly impacts the quality of sleep you will get, which in turn will impact what kind of morning you will have the next day. These activities need to empower and set you up for success the following day.
Here are some of the best practices: Give yourself at least an hour for your nighttime rituals. Start preparing for sleep with all of your bathroom/shower rituals first. So you can continue with the rest – in your bedroom. Avoid any electronics and blue light at least a couple of hours before you go to sleep, as blue light interferes with the release of melatonin, which impacts the quality of your sleep. I am personally still working on not using any electronics several hours before my sleep. 🙂 And if you are also working on this,, make sure that the electronics that you are using are in night mode or turn down the brightness on those devices that don’t have the night mode, preferably wearing blue light blocking glasses.
If journaling is a regular thing for you, then proceed to it, ideally listing a few amazing things that happened today. I am personally using the 5 Minute Journal by Intelligent Change. You spend 3 minutes in the morning and 2 minutes at night journaling. And this is exactly what you are supposed to fill out at night time: 3 amazing things that happened today and 2 things that I could’ve done better. Additionally, if there is anything on your mind, let it out on the paper, instead of keeping it in your head; free your mind up.
Then, decide if you can do something now to make tomorrow easier, such as packing a few things in advance or leaving yourself a note to remember to complete something in the morning. The last thing you want to do before you go to sleep is to keep your mind preoccupied with everything you need to remember to accomplish in the morning.
And another best practice is to try to avoid eating 3-4 hours before you go to sleep. You want your body to get rest instead of working on digesting this food. And I understand that sometimes it’s not possible due to an extreme work schedule. If this is the case, eat very light and easily digestible food.
Reading something before you go to sleep is another good habit to have. But I wouldn’t read anything heavy that will get your mind ‘going’. Then you will achieve a counterproductive effect and won’t be able to go to sleep.
Additionally, a very empowering practice is deep abdominal breathing exercises. The best ones I know of are from the ‘King of Breathing’ himself – Wim Hof. 🙂 There are different levels of these exercises that you can do. And you can find all of them on YouTube, but here is a link for beginners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
If you meditate, then, by all means, meditate before you go to sleep, as this is one of the most empowering morning and night routines. But if you don’t, no worries, you can still achieve a similar effect by doing the breathing exercises above.
I hope this helps. And please share your success stories and empowering nighttime habits that you have in place.
Have a Beautiful Day!
