I like to think about the beginning and end of the day kind of like bookends. Imagine if you had a bookshelf and you put a few soft-covered books on that bookshelf with nothing to hold them up. Eventually, those books are going to fall over and collapse without that structure. It’s kind of like our days – our days are filled with all sorts of activities, interactions and surprises, and if we don’t have proper structures in place, we can tend to fumble inside of our day. And this really means falling off track with our goals, our dreams, allowing our thoughts to take us to fear, doubt and worry.
Now imagine that same bookshelf, putting two firm bookends on either side of those books to hold them up. Those books aren’t moving anywhere! They’re going to stay in a place where you intended them. And that’s really what morning and evening practices do for us. It’s like our bookends for our day, so that we can create more structure and live into our intention for the day.
I wanted to give you a couple of ideas for morning practices and evening practices that you can implement.
Our days are filled with all sorts of activities, interactions and surprises, and if we don't have proper structures in place, we can tend to fumble inside of our day. And this really means falling off track with our goals, our dreams, allowing our thoughts to take us to fear, doubt and worry.
Tomorrow morning, take a moment before your eyes open, before your feet hit the floor, and consider how you are starting your day.
It is so common to have our minds default to thinking about what day is it, what do I have going on, what time is it and can I get 10 more minutes of sleep while checking our phones. Our minds have patterns and habits of where it wants to go, but try to notice and be aware of where you are typically starting your day, and start to shift to beginning your days with the intention of “how do I want to wake up this morning? What can I be grateful for this morning?” And as we start our day in gratitude,e it creates a different trajectory.
And when we train ourselves that when we first notice that we’re awake, those first thoughts of the day can set your trajectory for the entire day.
Training yourself to start with gratitude is not always easy, but start somewhere, and just by putting that at the front end of your day, it’s like a bookend.
If you want to be starting with a meditation practice or moving your body, all of those practices will solidify the beginning of your day, which will set the trajectory for the day and set you up for success.
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After you have gone through the day, and you get to the completion of the day, how are you ending your day?
What is your typical evening practice right now? Maybe you wash up, crawl into bed, turn on the TV or go onto social media. Maybe you’re rehashing your day, where you’re still thinking about a problem, or you didn’t like how you treated your kids that day. Or are you rehearsing and nursing all of the things that didn’t go well in the day? Are you collapsing into bed exhausted and not even acknowledging the day that passed?
Right now you have a habit of how you end your day. What would it look like to bring a little bit more structure to that?
One of the best ways to end your day is again in gratitude. What am I grateful for in this day? Review your day and look for successes, what went well today? And also acknowledge those low points, where you wish you would have done something differently. When we look at those, instead regret, it’s shifting to saying, “Okay that was a moment of growth. I grew today, I learned today.”
Finally, ask yourself “What’s my intention for tomorrow?” We go to sleep, but our subconscious mind doesn’t go to sleep! As you’re drifting off to sleep, your subconscious mind is going to work on that for the next several hours, however long you sleep.
These “Bookends” to your day, waking up with gratitude and an intentional start to the day, then in the evening, reviewing what you’re grateful for, what you’re proud of from the day, your successes and learnings, then stating your intentions for tomorrow, will add structure to your day and set you up for success as you work towards your goals.
What are your bookends for your day? Could you implement a stronger practice or maybe start a morning or evening practise to really set you up for success?
Here is to you living a life you love,
Stacey
After 16 years of climbing the corporate ladder, mentoring entrepreneurs in marking, operations and finance, I made the decision in 2014 to teach success principles full time, combining my love of business and personal development.
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