Wake Up With More Energy: Waking Up With Ryan

What do you do with the first 5 minutes of your day?

Check your phone, worry about what lies ahead, add caffeine to the mix and wonder why you’re feeling depressed before breakfast?

What if I told you that harnessing the power of these precious (and typically groggy) minutes could change your life forever, would you do it? Taking care of yourself doesn’t have to take all day. One thing you do every day is wake up. If you change the way you do it, your life will transform. Every ancient tradition and religion encourages its followers to perform a daily morning ritual. Hinduism teaches to bathe, recite prayers and mantras, make an offering to the Sun, and mark the forehead — all to purify for communion with God. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all teach the same principles with slight variations. Each of their morning practices are aimed at connecting to a Source upon waking.

Why have a morning practice?

When we first wake up, our minds are open.

As the day progresses, we fill our minds with external “stuff,” until we’re lost in our rational (more often irrational) minds. Before we know it it’s bedtime.

Tomorrow comes quickly and in the blink of an eye, it will be 2020.

How you wake up each day will determine who you are destined to become. The first few thoughts we think determine how the rest of the day will unfold. Why not use your first few precious moments as a powerful catalyst for good?

Well, let’s look at what gets in the way:

Do you do this?

Wake up to the sound of your alarm… on your phone.

Shut off your alarm and immediately do one of these:

• Check email and text messages
• Scroll through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds
• Look through your calendar and to-do list for the upcoming day
• Read about what’s going on in the world
• Drink a cup of coffee – adding caffeine to your already busy mind.

Sound familiar?

Depression has been defined as separation from the self. And we’ve replaced our self with our smart phone.

We leave out the most important thing ever — ME.

The ME who can give great gifts to the world, the ME who is tapped into creativity, the ME who isn’t thrown by life’s challenges. This is the ME the world needs!

How can we change this pattern? Allow me to offer you a glimpse into my morning routine:

1. Breath Work

I immediately turn to a Kundalini Yoga breath called the Breath Of Fire. This rapid inhalation and exhalation through the nose lifts your spirits, activates your circulation, turns up your energy with just one minute.

2. Gratitude List

I find 5 things I can be grateful for; one of which is the always love of my cuddly dog Henry.

Gratitude helps me immediately connect and turns on the light, shining out the darkness. Gratitude is the open door to abundance. No matter how much lack you may experience, training your mind to think with gratitude will change everything.

3. Ask To Be Guided

I ask my Highest Self:

1. Where would you have me go?
2. What would you have me do?
3. What would you have me say?
4. And to whom?

4. Look For Evidence All Day Long

The mind’s job is to find evidence that proves right what we choose to believe. Just asking the questions above will bring the answers as the day progresses.

My hope is that you give this a try for one week and see what happens. And I can help.

We’re living in a chaotic world, filled with insanity, bred by fear.
Do something every morning to bring your light to the darkness.

Shine bright. Love big.

Photo credit: Ryan Weiss