5 Things To Do In The Morning Besides Check Your Phone

You know the routine: roll over, turn off alarm, unlock your phone and check your notifications through one eye because the other eye is still buried in your pillow. Why do we check our phones as often as we do?

To stay connected to things. I'm guilty, you're guilty. Sometimes we can feel obligated to check our emails, impressions, and notifications. While these things are important, your mornings are precious!

Let's not flood our minds with social media, the latest headline, or a work related email as soon as we wake up. How we start the day affects our whole mindset! If you've got 15 minutes to check your phone, you've got 15 minutes to do the following:

1. Pray

15 minutes of prayer in the morning sounds like my kind of morning motivation! Just talking to God and giving Him praise will boost your mood. Self/spiritual care to start the day sounds a bit more valuable than seeing who is FashionNova's most recent celebrity cameo. You can also use this time to recite your daily affirmations. It is important to start your day with yourself - not with your phone or your tasks. If you do not, you can and will become a slave to these things. You'll find that you feel incomplete or unworthy without a device or a completed to-do list. Don't believe the lies! Start your day nurturing your core, and your day will start off right!

2. Stretch

Stretching increases blood flow to your muscles, improves joint mobility, and just feels good. A good stretch can take you from slumped to slayed if you do it right! If you're someone who sits for a long period of time this works excellent for you!

3. Write

Take the time to write a to-do list for the day. What do you have to accomplish today or this week that you don't want to forget? Write it down! Writing things down keeps you organized and all your tasks prioritized. I know we love our phones, and that means we love keeping notes in them but this works better if you have a physical journal. It's less tempting to drift off to your notifications when you're not typing on your phone.

4. Exercise

Summer bodies are made in the Winter! You can perform an effective squat workout in 15 minutes, or do 10 crunches, 10 leg raises, and a 20 second plank with about 3 minutes to rest. I feel better knowing I'm working towards a nice butt at 7am instead of checking to see who's fake one deflated while one stage on 7am. See the point I'm making here?