Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate…

As I mentioned last week, I have been completing largely the same morning routine for years and not only does this benefit me each day but it has a compound effect. The more I do it, the better I feel. I always think of how I am doing as my emotional temperature. If I complete my morning routine, then my emotional temperature is lower, if I don’t, then it is higher. The lower the better because when it is low, my day is easier because I am far less reactive to the tricky situations that can come along .. and fewer come my way anyway. So the result is win-win!

As I said last time, I am an imperfect person, and I hope that you are too, and I cannot stress enough the importance, when it comes to the morning routine, of kindness to oneself. I am great a beating myself up about stuff that I haven’t done, stuff that I never did, stuff that I may never do, stuff that I could have done, stuff that I did some of but not all, stuff that I should have done better etc etc. It’s my default setting and I know that I am not alone in this. All I can say is that over the years, and with the help of my morning routine, I have become kinder to myself and I think that doing my appreciation, the second part of my morning routine, is one of the keys to this change, as well as many others.

Last week I wrote about meditation and this week I am writing about the second item on the list of what formulates the beginning of my day. This is appreciation. What does this consist of? It consists of writing, in a notebook, the things in my life that I appreciate. I do this for anywhere between ten and thirty minutes, but the minimum I do is ten. This really fortifies me for the day because, having focused intently on the things in my life which are going right, the things that are really good for me and make me happy, I start the day feeling much better than I might have done if I had allowed my mind to wander to the issues or problems that I am currently experiencing like an issue at work or an argument I had with a family member. These things do not set us up for a happy and easy experience of our day, especially when one negative thought leads to another and another and so on. This has the reverse effect. It’s that simple! But if you are not convinced, then start one day by doing your appreciation and then the next writing for ten minutes about all the worries that you currently have, and you will see the difference in the quality of your days immediately. This will easily convince you that you will want to do the appreciation rather than anything else!

Many people, rather than appreciation, call this a practice of gratitude and it works on the same principle. I used to do ‘my gratitude’ each day in which I said thank you for all the things that I now appreciate. If you do this, remember to say thank you for the thing and the reason that you are thankful for it. Having tested this for myself, I find that if I ‘appreciate’ rather than ‘thank’, I am filled with more of the feeling of why I am thankful for the thing, it leads more easily, on an emotional level, to the reasons that you are thankful for that thing or experience or relationship.

People often say to me that they don’t find this practice easy and so I suggest that they start with the little things like their legs and their sight and their good night’s sleep.. anything at all can get the appreciation juices flowing and, as with our focus, whatever we focus on will grow, and more and more things that we appreciate will come into our minds and we can write them down. This is an important thing. It is great to think of all the things that we appreciate but writing them down is important. This is again because of focus because, although there are many good reasons for writing things down, the action of writing intensifies our attention to what we are writing and gives it more power. Writing down what we appreciate super-charges our appreciation and therefore our feelings of well-being and this has an effect on our day. I would just like to say that if you lie in bed at night and think of all the good things that came your way that day, this can also be very beneficial.

So far, the building blocks of the morning routine are, meditation and appreciation and next week I will be looking at the inspirational reading section of the routine. Please do remember what I said in my first post this year… start small. When you start small, you build slowly and this gives you a good feeling. Resist the temptation to go in big and do lots of everything and then feel overwhelmed and stop doing all of it. This is really important. Better to do five minutes of each every day than thirty minutes of one every other day. Build slowly and mindfully and you will see the results, not just in that day, but in your whole life.

Remember, you are not alone!

hillybarker@gmail.com