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0 By Shae Hansen
I have to admit, most of my mornings are chaotic and are usually prone to an anxiety attack or two. I usually don’t think about my mornings until it actually is morning. I’m trying to make my mornings anxiety-free. My mornings became so bad and my anxiety so high that I had to sit down and figure out a plan to make my mornings a little easier for myself.
This plan wasn’t just for me though. It was for my husband as well. As some of you may know from reading some of my other posts, we both have anxiety. Sounds super fun, right? Anyway, if I’m panicking it isn’t long before my husband follows suit. (See my posts, Having A Spouse With Anxiety & Being A Woman And A Wife With Depression And Anxiety)
Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), we needed help. I came up with a game plan to help make my mornings more relaxed, and in doing so, my husband’s mornings became more relaxed as well.
Things I do the night before to make my mornings anxiety-free
1. Make and pack my lunch & get my breakfast ready
While many of these things I do the night before are super simple, they yield powerful results. Making my lunch the night before prevents me from running around in the morning at the last minute looking for random snack items to pass off as a lunch. One thing that I had never really thought of was how much time breakfast takes in the morning. That is why I have also started to get breakfast ready the night before. I don’t always go to great lengths to prepare my breakfast the night before. Sometimes I just set out a packet of oatmeal, a bowl, and a spoon.
2. Set out my clothes (especially socks)
This one has probably been the trickiest for me. For some reason, it is just so darn hard to remember to set clothes out for the next day… When I do though, my mornings pass unbelievably smoothly. It takes so much time in the morning for me to wander around half asleep, trying to round up all of the clothes I want to wear for the day. Socks have proven to be incredibly elusive.
3. Make sure the car has enough gas to get to work
Imagine you are running late to work and you get in your car and go to drive away, only to realise you don’t have enough gas to get to work. That can add heaps of anxiety to your already stressful morning. I always make sure that I know how much gas is in my car the night before so I don’t have to fill up in the morning.
4. Go to bed and wake up at a good time
This is probably the second hardest thing to do. Once I established a routine it actually became very easy to follow. I would get tired when I was supposed to and wake up around the time I was supposed to. The tricky part was getting my body used to the routine. I had to set an alarm to tell me when to start to get ready to go to bed, when to go to bed, and when to wake up. Now that I have a routine I actually sleep better so I’m not as groggy the next morning.
5. Set an alarm that makes me get up (Possibly set multiple alarms)
Getting up in the morning can be hard. My husband actually has more trouble with this than I do. He discovered a few alarm clock apps that make you get out of bed. When the alarm goes off you have to do a certain task (take a picture of the kitchen sink, go sit in a certain place in the house) in order to shut the alarm off. I think that is pretty genius.
6. Take a shower
Taking a shower at night saves me a lot of time and stress in the morning. My hair has time to dry overnight, I don’t have to wake up extra early, I can just brush my hair and go. Taking a shower a few hours before I go to bed also helps me sleep better too. As my body cools off from my shower I start to relax and shortly afterwards I’m asleep.
Well these are the things that I do to help prevent an anxiety-filled morning! I hope that this post helped! I’d love to hear some of the things you do to help your mornings be anxiety-free! Please feel free to comment and share this post!
-Shae
Reproduced with permission, originally published here
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