We all have those days when we wake up and all we want is to lay down and fall back asleep.
Maybe you’re stressed about work. Maybe you got into a fight with your significant other. Maybe you just haven’t been sleeping well.
But whatever the reason, sometimes you wake up unexcited for the day ahead. And the worst part?
That feeling follows you through the whole day.
But with this 5 minute trick, you can turn it around and make every day a great one.
There’s a reason why we all know the saying “woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
According to several studies, your first 5 minutes of consciousness each morning sets your mood in place for the entire day.
If you wake up and your first thought is “I’m tired,” or “I don’t want to go to work,” that is the feeling that will follow you through the day.
Even if you have an objectively good day, you will be stuck in that original mindset.
This is because the thoughts we have can actually cause different hormones and chemicals to go off in the brain.
If we think of something happy, serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine levels rise. If we think of something sad, these same ‘happy hormones’ decline.
It’s hard work pumping chemicals in and out of the brain for the day, so it’s no wonder that your body gets stuck in the ‘sad’ setting sometimes.
If this seems like a lot to take in, try think of your body as a machine.
When you first wake up, you’re turning on for the day. The first thought in your head is like an update installed into the machine.
Once the update is installed, it will run for the rest of the day whether you tell it to or not.
With your emotions, if your first thoughts are bad, then the update you have installed for the day is negative, and will affect everything you do and think in a negative way.
But the great news is, you can reverse it.
All you have to do is think positively for 5 minutes each morning.
It takes practice of course.
And every once and a while, a bad thought will still creep into your head—don’t beat yourself up about it! The key is to correct yourself and move on when this happens.
For every bad thought, think of two good ones.
If you’re tired, think about how much fun it was staying up later than you should have the night before, and how great you’ll sleep tonight. If you have something stressful to do at work, envision yourself completing that task.
You can think of completely unrelated things too, as long as they’re happy. Think of your pet, or your best friend, or your favorite vacation spot.
You could play music, or make your favorite breakfast, or spend a few minutes doing something that you enjoy in the morning.
Studies show that as long as you are thinking of or doing something that makes you happy, it will increase the ‘happy hormone’ levels in your system and ensure that your body has installed an update for a good day.
The best part is, the more you practice this, the easier it becomes. This is because you are literally training your brain to think positive.
Eventually, the act of waking up will become associated with the increase in your ‘happy hormone’ levels, and you won’t even have to consciously try to think positive.
You’ll just do it automatically!
