10 Morning Rituals to Change Your Life

The typical adult isn't much better at waking up and starting their day than the average teenager. Does the following sound familiar? The alarm goes off and you grudgingly get out of bed, half-awake and vaguely aware that you have responsibilities you need to meet. Most likely, you slept fewer hours than you needed to, so you're already in a bad state of mind and feeling pressed for time, and your day hasn't even started yet.

You might make your bed and brush your teeth or wash your face, but you have to start work soon, so your morning exists under a constant state of anxiety. Anxiety breeds bad decision-making: you know you should take the time to prepare yourself a healthy morning meal, but in your stressed state that quick morning bagel seems really appealing, or maybe you'll stop for donuts and coffee on the way to work.

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Too many adults go through their mornings on autopilot, and by so doing, they treat their weekdays as something to survive, an ordeal to be conquered, rather than as opportunities to grow, to set and meet goals, to tackle the world head on. Truthfully, it starts the night before, when you make the choice to watch another episode of that show you're binging, or decide to catch the late-night game on TV. It's easy to do, but it cuts into your sleep, and you pay a price for it.

But there's another way. You can actively decide to get more sleep, wake up rested, and give yourself more time to have a fulfilling, healthy, and productive morning, one that sets you up for success during your day.

Meditation isn't exactly new – it's as old as humanity, in fact – but too few people bother to meditate. If you're regularly feeling stressed or anxious, it's easy to assume that those feelings have objective correlatives (the homework you haven't done, the work assignment you've been putting off, the upcoming mortgage payment) but it turns out that, with a little practice, you can create some breathing room between your responsibilities and your feelings about them. In a meta-analysis of multiple studies conducted on the relationship between anxiety and meditation, researchers found "robust" and consistent results indicating that meditative therapy is effective at reducing negative emotional responses.

Start small, with five minutes of concentrated meditation, and build up your routine as you gain experience. You can even check out some of these meditation apps if you want a more guided meditative experience.

The mornings are every gym's best-kept secret, because very few people are willing to wake up to get there in time for the opening hours. If you can bring yourself to set your alarm an hour or two earlier, you can get a morning workout in, and start your day off right.

There are obvious health and fitness benefits to working out, from increased muscle size and decreased body fat to reduced incidence of cardiovascular disease, but there's one aspect to morning workouts that's often overlooked: the cognitive benefits. A study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine on the effects of morning exercise on the brain reached a surprising conclusion: morning workouts were associated with massive improvements in cognitive function, from increased memory and visual learning to greater attention spans. Why might this be? Because nothing puts your brain on high alert like some heart-pumping exercise.

You've probably heard it said that one of the best things you can do when you wake up is down a glass of water. That's because you wake up dehydrated, having spent the last 7-9 hours losing fluids and not replenishing them. So, water = good for you, right? Nothing revolutionary there. But you can kick things up a notch by adding a lemon to your morning water.

Apart from offering a splash of sweetness, lemons are also high in vitamin C, which will help you reduce your risk of heart and cardiovascular disease. Men are particularly vulnerable to these diseases, so this one healthy habit can go a long way towards preventing health troubles for you later in life. It gets even better: two compounds found in lemons, hesperidin and diosmin, have been proven to reduce cholesterol levels.

There's one final benefit to lemon water: it supports weight loss, by ramping up your metabolism in the early morning hours.

You probably have a vague idea of what you need to get done on any given day, so why do you need to bother writing it down?

It turns out that taking our goals and responsibilities out of our heads and putting them down on paper can actually make them seem less onerous. A study from researchers at Wake Forest University found that the simple act of writing down your goals and responsibilities both reduced stress and anxiety around those specific activities and made it more likely that the subjects would actually check those goals off, rather than leave them for another day.

RELATED: Benefits of Adding Mindfulness to Your Fitness Routine

Let's say, hypothetically, that you work a desk job. You sit at a computer for 7-9 hours a day, five days a week, or between 35 and 45 hours a week. No big deal, right? Well, it turns out that, as far as your health is concerned, "sitting is the new smoking." Excess sitting – something almost all people in the modern world are guilty of – contributes to a raft of terrible health outcomes, from lower back pain to obesity and diabetes.

And note, the above calculation assumes you only sit at work, and not at home watching Netflix or playing computer games.

To counteract these negative health outcomes, you need to move and put your body through the full range of motion it's capable of. Even 15 minutes of stretching each morning can unlock your joints, loosen your limbs, and stave off or alleviate your back pain problems.

One other major drawback of modern living? We spend too much time indoors, particularly during the daylight hours, when our bodies should be soaking up as much vitamin D as possible. That's also a major contributing factor to insomnia: if your body rarely sees any sunlight, and then you spend your day and much of your night bathing yourself in a computer's blue light, your body will be very confused about when you're supposed to feel tired.

Counteract these trends by going for a short walk in the morning before work. If you have a dog, or if you're lucky enough to be able to walk to work, then you're probably already benefiting from sun exposure. But if you don't already go for morning walks, make the time for even a short stroll, and reap the rewards. You can still supplement with vitamin D, but you'll need a lower dose to get all the benefits.

Keeping a journal of your thoughts and feelings is a mental health game-changer. It's an incredible way to give yourself perspective and unchain yourself from the immediacy of your feelings, negative and positive.

If you're someone who often feels at the mercy of his emotions, who feels powerless over his mental wellness, journaling is as effective as meditation at reducing stress and anxiety and increasing emotional resiliency. How is this possible? By putting your thoughts and feelings on paper, you force yourself to see them as separate from you, and thereby distance yourself from them. So if you think you're stuck in negative thought patterns, if you feel powerless and anxious all the time, you owe it to yourself to start a journal – you'll be surprised where it takes you.

We here at AskMen are big proponents of cold showers, and as awful as the concept probably sounds to you, we think you should give them a try. Like meditation, this concept isn't new: in fact, it long predates the invention of indoor plumbing. In colder European climates, so-called "polar bear swims" in icy waters have been practiced for a long time, with benefits thought to include better mental health, relief from chronic aches and pains, and boosted immune function.

Modern science has confirmed most of these benefits, and discovered a few more, from improved blood flow to a faster metabolism, leading to weight loss.

We're especially fond of this option because it's not very time-consuming, and can easily be incorporated into most people's morning routines. You probably already shower before work – why not save on your energy bill by keeping the water cold?

Another morning habit we're big fans of is creating a grooming routine. As with most things in life, from building wealth to losing fat, consistency is extremely important, and that applies equally to your grooming regimen. One day of washing your face and moisturizing won't give you clearer, healthier skin, but if you can repeat that routine over a week, a month, or a year, you'll be astonished at the transformation. 

You can make this habit as simple or as intricate as you want. Maybe you just commit to brushing your teeth and flossing after your morning meal, or maybe you kick things up a notch by exfoliating, moisturizing, or applying a facial mask.

It's a cliché, sure, but sometimes the truth needs to be repeated: breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That's especially true for people accustomed to reaching for something convenient and satisfying like a bagel or a muffin or a donut, or even worse, a takeout or drive-thru meal from a fast-food restaurant.

Very few morning routines will make as big of a change in your life, as quickly, as nailing down a healthy breakfast. You'll lose weight, gain in focus and attention, and energy, and see your skin look clearer and more youthful than ever before.

If you really don't think you have the time to prepare a meal in the morning, opt for something you can prepare the night before, like overnight oats with protein powder. Even the smallest preparation will pay big dividends towards your health and wellbeing.

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