Morning Routines

Episode 4 - Morning Routines Hello, everyone! Welcome back to Yalla: Learning Hebrew with Steph. I'm Steph, and today, I want to talk about morning routines — how to start your day in a nice, calm and more productive way. A good morning routine isn't just for people that wake up early or people with lots of free time. It's also for people that like to get up late and get ready quickly. It's about finding small habits that make you feel good and ready for the day. At the end of this episode, I will take about a few ways to create a helpful morning routine that will make your day easier. When the alarm goes off, a lot of people hit snooze, sometimes more than once, and only then get up. When that happens to me, I always wake up in a stress and it takes me time to understand what I need to do today. I start by reading emails and then the news and immediately start to worry about the day ahead. Now, imagine something a bit different. You get up in the morning, take a few minutes just for yourself, drink some water, stretch, breathe, maybe journal or read something that inspires you. And allow yourself to wake up slowly, be present, and to connect with your feelings. Studies show that starting the day with healthy habits can improve your concentration, your mood, and your energy. Let's understand why this works and how we can see the benefits. First, let's talk about concentration. When we follow a morning routine, we don't have to make important decisions immediately when we wake up. This helps to prevent something called decision fatigue. Decision fatigue is caused by making too many decisions in a short period of time, causing our mental energy to drop. Decision fatigue can make us feel tired and lead to poor choices later in the day. But with the right routine, we don't have to think about every step—we know what comes next. This way we have more energy and focus for the rest of the day. A morning routine creates something called the "positive momentum effect." For example, when you start your day with healthy habits, like stretching and drinking water. So the rest of the day continues to look like this with healthy choices, like eating nutritious food, taking breaks to stretch and more. This positive momentum helps us stay on track with our goals and to be more productive. A successful morning begins the evening before. The steps we take the evening before, will make us feel more relaxed in the morning, to wake up more easily and be more effective. I recommend two ways that are worth doing the night before to plan for the next day: 1. Plan for Tomorrow The first thing that is worth doing, is to prepare for the next day. Before you go to bed, take a few minutes to think about the goals that you want to accomplish tomorrow. Write down three things that you want to achieve tomorrow. This helps to clear your thoughts and focus on what is most important, and not worry about all the things that you need to do. Personally, I like to use Google Calendar and Google Tasks to plan my time, because it is comfortable to use and you can see each day and week separately. 2. Ensure a Relaxing Evening Routine A calm evening routine helps your body and mind prepare for sleep, and a good sleep is one of the most important things in order to have a successful next day. So instead of watching intensive TV shows before sleeping, try to do something more relaxing, like reading a book. I always try to read a little before going to sleep, but of course that doesn't happen all the time and that's okay. If you want me to do an episode on evening routines, you are invited to send me a message. Now I will speak a bit about what I do in my simple morning routine. 1. Wake Up at the Same Time Every Day I try to wake up every day at 7:30, because waking up at the same time every day helps you to feel more awake for the rest of the day. It's clear to me that sometimes it's impossible to do that. For example, twice a week I have to travel to London for my job, and I take the train at 7:30. So twice a week I need to wake up at 5:30, but the rest of the time I try to wake up at 7:30, even on weekends. 2. Drink Water After a long sleep, the body needs to rehydrate. So I drink a large glass of water in the first moment after waking up. It's also good to wait with coffee in the morning, and not to drink it first thing after waking up and especially not before a glass of water. 3. Do something for yourself Personally, I like to do something in my morning routine just for myself. For example, reading a book for 10-15 minutes. Because this is sometimes the only time that I can find time in the day that is just for me. When I do this, I feel that my day is more calm and I am less stressed. Of course, it doesn't have to be reading but can be anything. 4. Move your body Finally, the last thing that I try to do every day is to move my body. It doesn't happen every morning because sometimes I am very busy or tired but I know that it is important so I try to persevere. Sometimes that means to go on a long walk with my dog, sometimes it's to go the the gym and sometimes it means doing a few stretches. I find that it improves my mood and I'm more productive for the rest of the day. A morning routine doesn't need to be complicated. I like that it's simple and short, this way it's easy to do it every day. In the final part of this episode, I want to talk about something important and that is that a morning routine should feel good. If your morning routine doesn't feel good, it's okay to change it. Sometimes life can be busy and you don't need to add more to your morning routine. For example, recently, I started a new job and my whole routine changed. Before this, I worked from home most of the time my office was just 15 minutes from my house. Now, as I said previously, I need to travel to London twice a week. This was a really big change for me and so my morning routine also changed a lot. It's important to listen to our bodies and do what feels best for ourselves. That's everything for today's episode. I hope that you found this episode interesting. If you have any questions, ideas for future episodes or what to share your morning routine, I will be happy to hear from you. You can write me an email or leave a comment on my website. I will put a link in the podcast description. I also want to say that you can find a transcript, in Hebrew and in English on my website. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of "Yalla: Learning Hebrew with Steph" and until next time - take care and keep learning!