Morning Mindfulness Activity | CBT Counseling Tools

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this video on morning mindfulness. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. I've had a lot of people ask me for some guidance on morning mindfulness activities as well as evening reflection activities. I decided to split it up into two videos because you're going to do one in the morning and one in the evening. So this is your morning mindfulness. Morning mindfulness can help you recognize your vulnerabilities. You wake up in the morning and if you do this activity, you're going to recognize if you're feeling sluggish, if you are dreading the day, you're going to recognize a lot of things that could make it more difficult for you to cope with life on life terms to deal with the stress. It'll help you identify or anticipate triggers that you might encounter by visualizing your day. You can anticipate that meeting coming up that you're really dreading and think about how you might deal with it. And you can plan for how to most effectively use your energy to move toward your rich and meaningful life. The first part is kind of getting grounded and in the zone, if you will. I call this oxygenation and vagal stimulation. Call it whatever you want. Deep breathing is really what we want to get at, but there are a lot of different ways to do it. Not everybody can do the deep breathing, square breathing as and not dissociate or have other problems. So we're going to talk about a couple ways if you can do the deep breathing, square breathing. Inhale for a count of four, envisioning energy and light filling your body. Hold for a count of four, feeling that energy spread. Exhale for a count of four, envisioning fatigue, darkness and brain fog leaving your body on your breath, getting you charged for the day. And repeat this four times. Alternate activity. Inhale for a count of four and hold while saying to yourself, today I'm going to have the best day possible. Then exhale for a count of four and say to yourself something like, all right, I've got this. Or a third alternative. Pick a mantra song for the day and sing it loudly. When we sing loudly, we are pushing that sound out of our body through our diaphragm that forces us to breathe deeply. So find a set of songs, the same songs usually not going to work for you every single day. But find. Find a song that kind of is your mantra for the day and sing it at the top of your lungs while you're taking your shower or do doing whatever. But this is what you need to do first in order to kind of shake the fog from the night and get ready for your day. Now moving on to the mindfulness inventory. Ask yourself physically, how do I feel? What are my needs right now and throughout the day? What will they be? What physical issues might make me more vulnerable to distress today? Am I tired? Am I in pain? Am I feeling sick? Are my allergies just really bugging me? Am I hungry right now? Or do I know I'm going to have to go a long time before I have lunch? Are my hormones out of whack? There are a lot of different things physically that can make it more difficult to tolerate distress. Once you've identified them, then ask yourself, all right, how can I cope with them? You can't get rid of the tiredness. You probably can't go back to bed. So how can you cope with it in the best way possible to use your energy effectively today? Do I feel rested if I don't? Why? And I know you already examined whether you were feeling more vulnerable because you were tired, if you're tired, if you don't feel rested, why is that? Did you stay up too late playing video games? Did you have a lot to drink the night before? Were your allergies bothering you? What kept you from getting good quality sleep? And what are you going to do beginning today to address those issues? Because we know how important sleep is affectively and cognitively. So, emotionally and mentally, how do I feel? Am I in a good mood? Am I optimistic? Do I feel like I've got the world by. By the tail? Or am I feeling something else? What are my needs? What are my feeling needs? Do I need to feel loved? Do I need comfort? Do I need encouragement? Do I need guidance cognitively? Do I need somebody to mentor me or to help me through something? What might make me more vulnerable to distress today in this area? Am I already angry about something? Even if you're not angry about anything at work, maybe you're angry about something else. If you have that ongoing issue kind of shoved into the back closet somewhere, that anger issue may make you more likely to be irritable at work, for example. So just acknowledge how do you feel if you're angry, if you feel guilty, if you have anxiety, stress, grief, burnout, depression, negativity, brain fog, the list goes on. But think about in terms of how you feel emotionally and your ability to think and process things and your attitude, that is, whether you're optimistic or pessimistic, where are you at right now? And then once you've identified those vulnerabilities. How can you cope with them? Now? This seems like it's going to take a long time, but most people don't have a lot of vulnerabilities. They'll find one or two and they'll go, oh, yeah, I need to pay attention to that today. So don't let the video put you off and make you think. It's going to be a long thing. Environmentally, what things in your environment will help you feel safe and empowered right now and throughout the day, Think about, what can I do that's going to help me feel safe and empowered? What things might come into my environment today that cause me to be more vulnerable to distress? People, places, situations, sensations, being aware of that. If you know you're going to have to go to a business luncheon in this really busy restaurant and you really don't like being in large crowds, you know that it's going to be an environmental stressor. So what can you do to try to mitigate that or cope with that stress so it doesn't throw you for a loop? And relationally, how do I feel about myself? How do I feel about me this morning? What does my inner child want right now? And your inner child may want Fruit Loops and to watch cartoons, but how can you address that right now? Maybe that means you eat Froot Loops and watch cartoons before you go to work, or you acknowledge that inner child and say, yeah, we haven't had a lot of fun lately, we'll do something after work and then actually do it. What relationships do I have that can enhance my life? And this is just really reflecting a gratitude question to recognize where you have support and where you have love and, and what you can do to nurture it. What can you do to nurture those relationships today? And what relationships might trigger or make me more vulnerable to distress today? And how can I best cope with them? If, you know, you've got to have a luncheon with somebody you don't particularly get along with, or you've got to go to the doctor and you feel like the doctor doesn't listen to you, and that tends to be adversarial, what is it that. What relationships might trigger distress today? And how can you. How can you deal with them? So you've got a plan, you're thinking about any potential bumps in the road and ways that you're going to be able to avoid them, to get. Avoid getting thrown out of alignment, if you will, in terms of your rich and meaningful life. Now this is an add on you can stop right there or you can think to yourself. And I'm a planner, so I like this one. Things I have to do today. These are the non negotiables. I have to go to work, I have to pay bills. I have to go to the grocery store and get milk, whatever it is. And on the other column, this will help me move toward my rich and meaningful life by, you know, keeping a roof over my head and making sure I have milk for cereal in the morning, et cetera. The next chart is things I will do today. Notice I say will and not should. These are things that are not have to's, but they're a couple of things that I'm telling myself I will do today that will nurture the things that are important in my rich and meaningful life. Like, I will text my daughter as soon as I'm finished with this recording, and I will go to the gym. And it's important to have those things there so you don't get stuck in the drudgery of the have to's. You're doing things that actually bring joy and nurture the aspects of your life that are important. And finally, envision yourself, now that you've thought about your vulnerabilities and what you've got coming up today and your rich and meaningful life, what you've got to do. Envision that. Envision yourself successfully moving through the day. And then finally, if you want to pick a mantra such as, I wish for everyone the ability to feel healthy, happy and safe. This one is big for me because I can get impatient and. Or irritable sometimes. I know, big surprise. And this one is important for me because I need to recognize that when people are acting irritable, they're probably not in a space where they feel healthy, happy and safe. So when I repeat this, I am wishing for them that they feel better. Or you can say, people's actions are more about their stuff than mine. Often true. I can choose who I let into my head and my life. Now that's important. Yes, I know we can choose who we let into our life. But it's also important to remember we. We can choose who we let into our head. If somebody says something nasty, you don't have to let them rent space in your head. You can say, no, no vacancy, or I will replace anger with compassion and curiosity. So throughout the day, when you start feeling angry, you can remind yourself and tell yourself, I will replace anger with compassion and curiosity. What's going on here? There are other mantras. These are four of my favorite, but it can be helpful to give you a little quick pick me up or help you reground real quickly throughout the day when you're driving or you're stuck in line or something just irritates you for a second. To help you get regrounded, Morning mindfulness can help you turn off autopilot and more efficiently use your energy for the things that matter to you throughout the day. Like I said, at the end of the day, you're encouraged to do the evening mindfulness video or activity to review the day, celebrate your successes, and learn from your mistakes. So it's easier to move forward tomorrow than it was today because you learn more about what's important and how to use your energy to move toward that rich and meaningful life.