Caroline Cavanagh, an anxiety specialist, explains why checking your phone immediately after waking increases morning anxiety. She recommends avoiding your phone for at least 30 minutes to an hour, instead stretching, hydrating, or reading to ease into the day. This "warm-up" is the first half of her bookending approach, paired with an evening gratitude practice.
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Hi there, my name's Caroline Cavanagh and I'm an anxiety specialist. And before I started planning what I was going to talk about today, I did a little bit of research in my Facebook group. And the question was, do you reach for your phone as soon as you wake up in the morning? And the poll's still going, you can go and check it out if you want to, but the result that's come back so far is about— it was 62% when I last checked it, so about 2 people out of 3 said yes, as soon as they wake up they reach for their phone. So if that's you, if you fit into that profile, I'm here to say stop. If it's not you, then why don't you carry on listening anyway, because I'd love to have your company. But if it's you, what I'm going to share with you now could make a really big difference to your day and also your anxiety and stress levels. Now, let me put it into context. Just imagine now, a— there's a runner. This runner, I'm gonna say he, it's very sexist, but hey, let's run with it. So he wakes up, straight away trainers are on, and within just a few minutes he's out the door and he's running, and he's running along, and then it starts to rain. And then it gets muddy, and then he slips and he twists his ankle, and that twisted ankle causes him a pain throughout the rest of his day. Then there's another runner. This runner, she, she wakes up and she kind of, you know, slowly stretches, takes a bit of time, She hydrates herself, gets some good water, preparing for the run, maybe does a little bit of yoga to get her body ready for the day, and within about half an hour or so, then she's out running and it starts to rain. But she just thinks, I've got to have a shower when I get back anyway, so what does it matter? Starts to get muddy too. She slips. And her ankle though, because she's nicely warmed up and prepared for the day, doesn't hurt. She just kind of picks herself up, carries on, enjoys the rest of the run. Now, perhaps a very sexist— sorry to say, just slightly sexist— but a little story. Let's now take running out of the equation and put the phone back in. So Person 1, they wake up, pick up their phone, BBC News. It's all a bit dreary, a bit like the rain, a bit dismal. Then social media. Slipping, sliding around, scrolling, looking at various things that rarely make you feel very good. And then email. And in that email, there's a stroppy email from a work colleague that just makes you go, ugh, I've got to deal with that today. And that email causes a pain throughout the whole of the day. But then we have our other runner. She's the one that doesn't pick up her phone. She wakes up, has a bit of a stretch, she goes out, she carries on, you know, starts the day as normal, has a shower, has a breakfast, gets ready for the day, and by the time she's gone out That email's still there. It's still raining. But she's prepared her day on a really solid foundation. So my tip for you is, do not reach for your phone for at least a half hour. Ideally, I would love for you to not reach your phone for an hour and use that hour to prepare for your day. Now, it may just be you get on with your day as normal, doing those things like having a shower, breakfast, but it's all just a little bit slower. And you haven't risked getting out in the rain, slipping up and twisting your ankle like the fast runner did. What you could also do though, and this is something that I've started doing, is spending that first hour of your day on just stretching my mind. So I might do a bit of self-development. I've got all sorts of courses, books that I read that just stretches my mind, making me mentally stronger. I might just read a bit of a novel, again starting the day slowly. I might do a bit of yoga, stretching the mind and the body, but they're all things that are creating a foundation to start the day in a strong way, because those emails, they come in, but when you've started on a strong foundation, they don't floor you in the same way as if you weren't prepared for them. And now this approach is half of what I call bookending my day. So imagine a shelf full If you've got bookends, you can take books out of the middle and they don't all fall over. But you take those bookends away, take one book out, and they're all going to wobble and potentially all fall off the shelf. It becomes really, really unstable. And reaching for your phone is a bit like taking that bookend away. In fact, even worse, it's putting the shelf on a bit of a tilt with everything likely to fall over anyway. So, Bookends come in 2 though. The other end is something that I do in the evening, and that's called an attitude of gratitude. And I'm not going to talk about that now because I really value you having listened this far. There is a free download on the attitude of gratitude that you can access on carolinecavanagh.co.uk, and I probably will do a video on that sometime in the future anyway. But for today, My top tip is please leave your phone downstairs, ideally. Don't touch it for half an hour, ideally an hour of your day. Invest in creating a warm-up for your day because then whatever comes throughout that day, you've created a mental and a physical environment that's going to allow you to deal with that much more effectively And there'll be nothing in there causing that twinge like the guy that went out without preparing. I hope you've enjoyed that. Please do comment if you think this is helpful. Are you up for making a bit of a, yeah, I'm gonna try this? Try it for a couple of weeks. If you do something just once, you haven't really given it enough chance. But perhaps make a pact to yourself. We're in Lent, maybe 40 days is a bit of a stretch. Do it for 14. See how that impacts on your day. How are your stress levels? How are your anxiety levels? What's the quality of your day by investing in the start of it? Please share your comments with me. Let me know how you get on. If you want a bit of accountability, I'd love to help you do that. I'm very happy to send you an email every day or text message and say, did you do it? What did you do in that first hour? How are you feeling? Let's do this together. Let's create real solid foundations for brilliant days. Thank you very much for listening. That download file again, Anxiety— uh, no, it's not. It's called Attitude for Gratitude. It's on carolinecavanagh.co.uk. I would love for you to download it, have a go at that too. That's the other half of the bookend, and there's loads of other stuff on the website too. So thank you very much for listening, for watching, and I look forward To coming and sharing another tip with you very, very soon. Bye-bye for now. Bye.
