Recipe for happiness: how to learn to wake up before your alarm clock?

Do you hear the alarm clock, set it for five minutes several times, barely get out of bed and crawl to work and study with a frown? Or to get up with a smile, and early, to put your body and mind in order, eat a delicious meal and in an elevated mood to ride on business? Perhaps the second option at first glance seems less realistic, but the heroine of our column model and professional Mind & Body trainer Anastasia Bystrova told “Championship” how to spend an early morning with a smile and benefit.

Nastya used to treat the morning the same way as most students and workers: as long as she didn’t oversleep, wasn’t late, and if she was lucky, she could have breakfast on the way. But one day she had the opportunity to go to the Good Story Surf camp in Sri Lanka, where the attitude to such a time of day as morning changed radically. Waking up at six in the morning, yoga by the ocean and a delicious breakfast at the round table – what could be more enjoyable? You’ll love getting up early for that! However, Nastya managed to keep her mood even after returning to Moscow, where she has been starting her mornings for three years already, so that the charge of vivacity and positivity is enough for the whole day.

So, let’s find out what is the perfect morning?

Recipe for a perfect morning

My perfect morning starts at about 7 o’clock (or 7:30). No matter what time I go to bed, I always do it with the idea that I’ll get a good night’s sleep, even if it’s five hours or three. That’s probably the secret to my easy rises in the mornings.

Of course, after I wake up, the first thing I do is drink a couple glasses of water to jumpstart all the processes in my body and be awake. Then I wash my face and move on to exercise.

I start the morning with Tibetan hormonal exercises. It’s considered a longevity exercise. It’s based on rubbing. We rub our whole body, thus warming it up, improving blood supply and, accordingly, opening all energy meridians.

Then three breathing sessions and I move on to bodyflex. This whole ritual takes an average of half an hour. But this is now, when I have been practicing for 2-3 years on a regular basis. There are, of course, also moments when I do nothing and let myself rest, but then I feel a little uncomfortable during the day, because it seems that something very important is missing.

How do you motivate yourself to get up early if you’re not used to it?

First of all, you should ask yourself what you really dream about, what you would like to do, but you really don’t have enough time for it. In any case, everyone has some desires for which there is a catastrophic lack of time. And in fact, the excuse of lack of time is just an excuse, because you can simply reduce your sleep a little bit or go to bed early and, accordingly, get up.

You have to start small. If a person wakes up at nine in the morning, I advise him to first get up at 8:30, then try to move the alarm clock a little more. And most importantly, fall asleep not with the thought “I only have five hours of sleep left…” but with the thought “five whole hours! I’m definitely going to get a good night’s sleep.” That helps a lot. By the way, pay attention: on an important day we get up before the alarm clock, we start the morning with joy. So every day you should try to wake up with this attitude. Even if it is an ordinary day.

Most often we, repeating Groundhog Day every day, forget about the important thing: every day is unique, we have the opportunity to change everything. To start getting up early and, for example, to do exercises for the first time in the morning is already something new. And then you can add cooking breakfast to the exercise – another plus. So there can be a million motivations.

Breathing, gymnastics, bodyflex: get your body and mind in order

It’s one thing to do sports seriously – not everyone has the time and opportunity to do it, but to do yoga or breathing practices in the morning, just getting out of bed, having a mat and mood – it’s much easier and requires less time. So breathing exercises, yoga, stretching are no longer sports, but Mind & Body programs. That is, practices that just allow you to synchronize your mind with your body. I believe that for women in general, this is ideal. But I encourage men to do it too, of course.

When you live in a metropolis, you must have a quiet corner where you will feel at ease. You can’t find such a place outside, it’s inside you. And at least this half an hour of exercise in the morning will create a mood that you will keep during the day and thanks to which you will realize that you have everything cool.

Everything about stretching, breathing, and concentration educates us, disciplines us, and makes us look a little deeper.

The right breakfast: what is it?

Breakfast should be the best! I have my own definition: breakfast is a ritual every morning.

A nutritious and satisfying omelet

I pour a thin layer of coconut oil on a skillet (only it doesn’t release carcinogens at high temperatures). Cut zucchini and zucchini rings. I fry it all up a little bit. I beat a couple eggs, but I don’t add regular milk. I either add a little water or some kind of plant milk, i.e. oat milk, coconut milk, or almond milk, but just a little bit too. For flavor, coconut milk is really cool.

My secret to a delicious omelet is a lot of spices, but specifically herbal spices. So it can be Italian herbs, cilantro, basil, hops, kari, turmeric (it’s very useful, a natural antibiotic) for color – anything. I make all kinds of crazy mixes.

I shake it all up. I pour half of the mixture over the zucchini and zucchini. I put tomatoes and spinach on top, spinach is fine. Then I pour the rest of the mixture over it.

Quick to make, but no less dainty porridge

You can boil oatmeal for a quick meal. But not the one that boils for a minute, but exactly “hercules” (15 minutes). Or, if you have the opportunity, you can boil buckwheat in the evening, warm it up in the morning, pour milk over it and cut peaches, strawberries, raspberries – whatever you want. You can add carob powder for sweetness, a spoonful of honey or agave syrup as a sugar substitute. You can put dates in there, pumpkin seeds.

Buckwheat is very healthy, even healthier than oatmeal. And its preparation does not take a lot of time. Now there is buckwheat in sachets: you throw it to boil, and while you are getting ready, getting dressed, brushing your teeth, you have everything ready. Then you pour milk over it, throw in some fruit, and that’s it, you’re happy.

By the way, now in almost any good supermarket you can find all kinds of such organic products for cooking.

What you need to exclude from your diet

Bread from wheat flour and yeast bread. I have eliminated yeast altogether. I rarely eat dairy products. Because I noticed that from dairy products very much spoils the skin and swelling appears, as milk, sugar, salt and yeast ferment in the body and contribute to fluid retention. But it’s different for everyone.

Also the enemies of anyone – everyone knows this – wheat, yeast products, sweets including cakes, ice cream, marmalade. But I’ve found an alternative. You just type in “raw food desserts” on the Internet, and you get delicious cakes made with fresh fruit, plant milk, nuts, dried fruit. It’s incredibly delicious and not that unhealthy. Caloric, of course, because of sugar, fructose, but it is tastier than the usual fatty cakes that we all love so much.

What can we promise to a person who decides to change his life by starting to spend his morning the same way?

Happy days will be added to his life. He will leave the house with a smile up to his ears, and, accordingly, the energy and the world around him will change, because only happy people attract everything that is in them.

Everyone sees the world in their own way. If you have everything cool, calm, harmonious, you are happy and enjoy every moment. It doesn’t matter if you wake up on the ocean, or in Moscow, or in Samara. It is one thing when you enter the subway sad, and another when you give everyone a smile and someone will smile back. In any case, if you come to work in a cheerful mood, people around you will notice it, appreciate it and want to thank you in the same way. And even if they don’t, you’re not doing it for gratitude, you’re doing it for yourself!

And plus you’ll have more time for yourself and your loved ones.