The Beautiful Mornings Challenge: Create a Sacred Morning Routine

By Leo Babauta

Our days are filled with chaos, busyness and noise — often with very little time for intentional activity, quiet, solitude, mindfulness.

But we can intentionally create that lovely, mindful space that we crave.

Today I invite you to join me and a thousand others in my Sea Change Program as we launching into the Beautiful Mornings Challenge, which is about creating simple, lovely morning routines, and waking just a little earlier to make space for those intentional activities.

It’s about creating some space for meditation, reflection, movement, writing, or anything else you’d like to have room for in your life. And finding some space in the mornings for that, a sacred space that takes advantage of the quiet and beautiful light of the mornings.

Here’s how the challenge works:

1. Week 1: You pick one thing to do in the morning and wake up a little earlier to do it. There will be additional instructions for this first week, but the idea is that we’re easing into it. We don’t need to have the “perfect” morning routine to get started. Btw, this week could just be 5-10 minutes earlier than your usual wake time (20 minutes at the most). So pick a small task to fit into that. Things you might pick as your one thing to do: meditation, writing, yoga, journaling, writing, reading, or really anything that you’d like space for in your life. You cannot use the time for going on your phone or browsing the Internet.
2. Week 2: You pick a second thing to do in the morning, and wake up a little earlier than last week. Again, wake just 5-10 minutes earlier, and ease into it. Pick another small task. Now we’re waking 10-20 minutes earlier each day, and doing two small tasks.
3. Week 3: You make this a mindful, sacred space. Instead of waking earlier and doing a third task, this week you’re going to take some time to adjust to the new wake time, and make this a sacred space where you practice mindfulness. We’ll go more into this in the article for this week.
4. Week 4: You wake just a little earlier, and perhaps choose a 3rd thing to do. Like the first two weeks, you’ll wake just a little earlier (5-10 minutes) and choose a third thing to do for your beautiful morning routine. You’ll keep practicing your sacred space and mindfulness from the previous week.

So it’s that simple … slowly wake a little earlier each weeks (for 3 of the weeks) to make space for something you’d like to have in your mornings. And spend a little time making it a sacred space where you practice mindfully.

If you join the Sea Change Program, you’ll get:

• Articles to help you move through this monthlong challenge
• A live webinar with me, where you can ask questions
• A supportive community on Slack (including the recommended option to join a small team for added accountability)
• A library of video courses and articles to help you change any habit

Join Sea Change today (free for 7 days, then $15/month).

Source: zenhabits.net