About 4 years ago, I was working on a project that gave me a lot of daily stress and anxiety. I would wake up in the morning and immediately have anxious thoughts about going to work. I would often feel depressed and hopeless because I felt trapped in my job. My mental and physical health got to the point where I seriously had to reevaluate and change parts of my living routine. One part that I wanted to change was how I started my mornings. I started searching for ways to improve your mood in the morning.
Since then, I have been incorporating simple and common morning habits that have significantly decreased my anxiety and stress in the morning. I feel like I am much more controlled in how I feel. While I am still a work in progress, I notice that if I don’t do these habits, my anxiety and stress come back. I also get more distracted with tasks throughout the day.
I wanted to share 5 of these habits with you so that you can improve your mood in the morning.
Here are 5 simple and common habits to improve your mood in the morning
Before you read on, I’m gonna guess that you’ve done all these things at some point in your life.
So why read on if it’s something you’ve done before (and it might not have worked)?
Well…It’s one thing to do something but it’s another thing to understand why.
It’s like drinking water everyday. You know drinking water is good for you, but why is it good for you? Aside from staying hydrated, drinking water aids in digestion, nutrient and oxygen transport, etc…the list goes on!
Understanding why these morning mood booster habits can improve your mood really boosts how effective they can be.
Some of these habits are also science backed as well! So you got both logical and experience explanations for these habits! 2 in 1! What a deal!
1. Wake up on your first alarm
By stopping the alarm once and staying awake after, you have completed the first task of the day. You’ve also won one of the toughest mental battles of your day too. That little win can boost your energy and confidence for tackling the rest of your day.
Note that you’re not going to immediately feel happy go lucky and stress free when you’ve successfully woken up on your first alarm. You’ll most likely still feel tired and groggy, but once you get moving, I can say from personal experience that you won’t feel as stressed and you will feel more focused.
To be completely transparent though – I still snooze my alarm from time to time. I’m not perfect. I still have my days of feeling super tired and needing to sleep in. I just don’t snooze my alarm as much as I used to.
Sleep Inertia
If you stay awake after your first alarm (meaning you don’t snooze it and go back to sleep), you can reduce your sleep inertia, which can reduce how irritable or groggy you feel in the morning.
Sleep inertia is a transitional state that occurs when you first wake up.
Here was a study that showed if you snoozed your first alarm and went back to sleep, you could wake up feeling more groggy. This is because when you wake up, you’re finishing the NREM (non Rapid Eye Movement) cycle of your sleep. By snoozing your alarm and going back to sleep, you’re going right back into the NREM cycle. If you do this repeatedly, there’s a chance you’ll wake up during your NREM cycle and end up with sleep inertia.
I’ve definitely had this happen to me before. I would feel more tired and cranky after waking up from snoozing my alarm 5 or 6 times. If you’ve experienced this before, this is why!
2. Make your bed
Making your bed can improve your mood for several reasons:
- it makes your room look more organized, and a well made bed looks way better to sleep in than a messy bed.
- by completing this small and menial task, it gives you motivation and pride to accomplish the next task you do
The mentality behind this habit first came to me when I listened to Admiral McRaven on YouTube. Here’s the video:
If I didn’t listen to Admiral McRaven’s mindset to making your bed, I don’t think I would’ve internalized the power it can have on boosting my mood in the morning.
I’ve made my bed before. It’s a habit I think everybody should do regardless of your situation.
Making my bed doesn’t completely change my day around. Instead, it gives me a good 30 seconds to maybe a minute of peace and joy. That feeling of joy decreases how negatively I feel in the morning and about the day to come.
Charles Duhigg also explains in his book, The Power of Habit: “Making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger skills at sticking with a budget”.
3. Get sunlight as soon as possible
Exposure to sunlight increases your serotonin, which is associated with boosting mood and helping a person feel calm.
I do notice a very subtle difference in my mood when I intentionally expose myself to sunlight early in the morning. I feel more calm and composed – not to the point where I feel like I’ve cured any anxiety or stress, but enough where my thoughts don’t overwhelm me.
This is something I actually learned from Dr. Andrew Huberman and started applying earlier this year. Here’s an explanation from him:
For those who want the summary:
- Getting light exposure (whether its natural or artificial) can help you feel more energized and sleep better the following night.
- If you are in an area where you don’t have access to sunlight when you wake up, then turn on your room light and make your environment as bright as you can.
- Try and get sunlight within an hour of waking up. The earlier you get to sunlight, the better.
If I had to choose a habit that can improve your mood instantly, I would choose this one 🙂
4. Work out in the morning
It’s a well known fact that working out is good for your overall health. If you have good health, you’ll be in a good mood. Can’t really say anything more than that.
But just to get a little biological for a second – working out increases the production of your brain’s “feel good” neurotransmitters, called endorphins, and decreases the body’s stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. There are other various neurotransmitters that get released that boost your mood in the morning. So if you are sad or stressed or anxious, exercise is a great way to relax and improve your mood.
Now…there’s a reason gyms are way busier in the evening than in the morning. It’s real freakin hard to go work out in the morning. Similar to the first habit about waking up on the first alarm – very easy to say but very very hard to do. I’m not David Goggins where I’m disciplined enough to work out everyday, but I go work out at least 4 times a week.
Working out is hard because it requires putting your body through some physical stress. When you finish a hard task, don’t you feel good and relieved that you were done? The same idea goes for working out in the morning. You feel better knowing that you’ve completed a physically challenging task.
Despite how much it sucks, working out has significantly improved my moods in the mornings because it makes me feel calmer and more confident.
5. Don’t look at social media first thing in the morning
By not looking at social media first thing in the morning, you’re abstaining your brain from forms of instant gratification, distraction, and stress.
I started doing this for several reasons:
- I was getting stressed from looking at how many likes I was getting from a Facebook post or feeling FOMO (fear of missing out) from all the fun my friends were having on their Instagram stories.
- I would get sucked into doom scrolling on social media and then feel bad for wasting so much time in bed when I could’ve been more productive like going to work out or making a good breakfast.
Psychiatrist Dr. Adeola Adelayo says “instead of giving power to yourself on how you want to start your day, you are giving that control over to your phone”.
Give yourself an hour before you look at your phone. Let your body naturally find its rhythm in your morning routine. By focusing on your morning activities instead of your social media, you can better control your mood and avoid the potential dopamine spikes.
Instead of getting distracted by social media, you can focus on say…working out or meditating :), all of which can improve your mood in the morning.
If you were looking for how to improve your mood in the morning, I hope you these 5 habits or tips helped! Some are easier to incorporate than others, but the key is not to rush incorporating all of them at once. Start simple, aim to be consistent, and then grow your practice of these habits more frequently or more intensely.
