Essay: Morning Routine For A Calm Day

Anxiety sucks.

It's a self-perpetuating cycle where you feel anxious, and that creates more anxiety. Then anxiety interrupts your sleep, and you wake up in the middle of the night. You get more tired, and that creates more anxiety, and it just keeps going in a big circle until you can't breathe anymore.

How do you break that cycle before it gets going? 

That's what this article is about.

So the first thing you do when you wake up is no phone, no Instagram, no Facebook, and no technology.

Instead, (1) have a shower, preferably a cold shower, but if you're not gonna do the whole thing cold, do at least the last 30 seconds. 

(2) Then go in and do a Wim Hof, so I've included the link here:

I did 12 rounds of this. That might be excessive, but it depends on how many you think will work for you. 12 I find for me is enough to sort me out and to be flying high.

(3) Then go and eat a big breakfast that's high in protein and don't have a coffee with said breakfast. I have a pint of ice water, water with ice in it. This wakes you up the same as coffee but without the caffeine, which will increase anxiety. 

And the final thing which you can do, is - (4) one big thing that has been causing you stress that you haven't done.

In my case, this was going to the dentist. I put it off for, you know, over a year. It had to be done. And I went, they scraped my teeth, and it was horrifying as I thought. But job done, and after that, boom. I was back in business.

So, why you do this is? Because anxiety is caused by increasing complexity in your life. If you're an anxious person, the more complex your life gets, the more out of control life feels, and the more anxiety you're going to experience. The way to reduce anxiety is by making decisions and increasing your feeling of competence by completing tasks, and doing one of the big things on your list, even just having a list, reduces the complexity. 

This is a straightforward routine that you can do within two hours to reduce your anxiety.

Hopefully, it'll stop you from going into a tailspin and can reestablish some good habits. That will get you back on track and make you feel healthier and happier.