10 Things You Can Do This Morning to Reduce Your Anxiety by 67%

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself:‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I ned to change something.” -Steve Jobs

If you are anything like I used to be, you probably put mornings right up there with death on the scale of things you most dread. I used to wake up in a fog, feeling just as tired as when I went to bed, and immediately I began to fear the inevitable feeling that creeps into your stomach and throat…

…here it is again, I would think to myself as I pulled the covers over my head. Fearing that this is how I would feel every single morning for the rest of my life. No confidence that I could ever make myself feel better.

I had always heard about how the most successful people like Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, and Ben Franklin had daily, morning routines that helped them wake up energized and ready to take on the day. But in the midst of my anxiety, the thought of waking up at 4 am to hustle was the last thing on my mind. I needed to find a way to model the morning routines of the most successful people in business in a way that was focused on decreasing my stress & anxiety.

I realized the “morning routine” I used to follow was setting me up for increased anxiety and failure throughout my day.

I would wake up. Snooze my alarm a couple times. Then finally open my eyes to face the day. Immediately, I would check all of the “socials” that assure myself that I had not missed anything. After realizing that no one had liked me throughout the night, I would get out of bed, take a shower, down a cup off coffee, and run off to work.

No structure. No purpose. No peace.

It was no wonder why I would arrive to work completely stressed out. I was setting myself up for failure by not being intentional with how I operated my day.

After reading an incredible article by Benjamin P. Hardy on Medium, I decided to finally try out a morning routine. My morning routine would be focused solely on lowering my anxiety, instead of increasing it.

Why a morning routine?

Because It Can Massively Reduce Anxiety

When I implement an effective morning routine, and stuck to it, I was able to massively reduce my anxiety. In addition, it also helped with my productivity, energy, relationships, and a host of other areas of my life. It truly was life-changing.

I wish there had been a list like this when I was first battling with anxiety during my senior year of college. On most nights I was going to bed after 2. I would procrastinate anything that felt remotely difficult in fear it may trigger more panic. And my mornings were always a nightmare. It was my daily reminder of that I had a problem.

However, something happened once I began working on my personal development, I started to view my mornings as a gift rather than a nightmare. I begin to trigger my brain, from the moment I first opened my eyes, to see the beauty in my life.

Creating a morning routine has been the single most important strategy for lowering my stress and anxiety that I have implemented over the last year. It has allowed me to get more done than I ever thought possible, while also helping to keep me grounded throughout the day.

Once you begin starting your day off on a positive, structured, and intentional note, you will be amazed by the reduction in your anxiety as well as the other benefits you will receive.

With this short morning routine, your anxiety will start to drop and your life will become enhanced.

10 Things You Can Do to Reduce Your Anxiety by 60%

Wake Up Early

Make Your Bed

Meditate / Pray

Take a Cold Shower — Thanks Tim Ferriss

Coffee, Tea, or Your Breakfast Drink of Choice

Brain Dump at Desk

Gratitude

Morning Three

MITs

Deep Work

Let’s Do This.

1. Wake up between 5:30–6:00

According to Hannah Hepworth, an expert on natural anxiety relief, “when you wake up early you can have plenty of time to get where you need to go. Instead of rushing and yelling…you can work calmly.”

2. Make Your Bed

The reason making you bed is so powerful is that it allows you to successfully complete a task first thing in the morning, which then builds momentum to continue doing more for the rest of the day.

Making my bed has taught me that how you do anything will be how you do everything. No matter how bad or stressful your day becomes, you can also make your bed. And if that is all that you complete in the day; it is still a success.

3. Meditate / Pray

Like some of you, I used to be very skeptical of meditation. Just the word itself has an aura of incense and ommming. I didn’t want to lose my edge or be one of those hippies sitting cross-legged playing the banjo and singing Kumbaya. But as I dug deeper into the research, I found that mindfulness meditation (devoid of religious ties) can have massive, positive effects on your brain and help decrease your anxiety and depression, substantially.

According to an article written by the Harvard Medical School, “Mindfulness meditation can help ease psychological stresses like anxiety, depression, and pain.”

Well…if Harvard said it worked, I better try it. So, I gave it a shot using the free 10-day trial from Headspace. And the results have been amazing. I started to feel calmer and had more clarity of my thoughts and emotions after five days. However, It took me several months to make this a recurring habit, but now that it is a staple in my morning routine, the benefits have been less anxiety, more clarity in business decisions, and overall increased happiness.

Best Resources on Getting Started:

Free Guided Meditation for Anxiety

Tara Brach

Headspace

Waking Up By Sam Harris

4. Take a Cold Shower

Disclaimer: This sounds awful. In fact, when I first heard about it I didn’t try it for months because I didn’t think it could help and I loathed the idea of taking a freezing, cold shower. However, after 3-months of consistently taking a cold shower every morning, I can ensure you the benefits are enormous.

The science behind cold exposure is not new science. Cold shower therapy is an ancient Ayurvedic remedy that has numerous health benefits such as treating anxiety and depression, improving circulation and toning skin. The use of coldness as a ‘good stressor’ on the body can help to trigger several helpful responses within the human body. It allows the controlled elicitation of the body’s natural cell repairing, pain & inflammation reducing and metabolic processes.

A study by Researcher Nikolai Shevchuk of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine found that cold showers can alleviate, and even prevent, depression and anxiety. Shevchuk theorizes that short, cold showers may stimulate the locus ceruleus, or “blue spot,” which is the brain’s primary source of noradrenaline — a biochemical that could help mediate depression and anxiety. The body is stressed by a hostile factor — in this case, icy water — that stimulates a healing response in the body and can lead to lower levels of anxiety and depression as well as a plethera of other benefits.

The easiest recipe to get the psychological lift is by taking a cold shower for 2 to 3 minutes once or twice daily, preceded by a five-minute gradual adaptation to the temperature (i.e. start you shower hot and then finish it with 2–3 minutes of pure icy goodness). Only taking a cold shower can strengthen your body’s parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, increase proper circulation of blood through your body, and contract your muscles to eliminate toxins and poisonous wastes.

Cold Therapy Experts:

Dr. Ronda Patrick

The Earth Clinic

5. Coffee, Tea, or Your Breakfast Drink of Choice

I like Bullet Proof coffee. Find the recipe here.

According to Dave Asprey, the man responsible for promoting the beverage, “[bulletproof coffee is] the creamiest, most delicious, highest octane cup of coffee you’ve ever experienced. People who use this precise recipe experience a kind of mental clarity and focus that is hard to express in words. You owe it to yourself to try it at least once before showing yourself that changing the ingredients doesn’t work very well.”

Although I think Dave is over-exaggerating a bit, I have seen some boosted levels of energy throughout my mornings by replacing my breakfast with this creamy cocktail. I try to use high-quality, single-origin beans for my coffee because it has drastically lowered my post-coffee jitters.

This is not for everyone, but if you are looking for a way to keep hunger at bay for the first 5–6 hours of your day, give it a try.

6. Brain Dump at Desk

My Journal

I’ll Let Tim Ferriss explain the benefits here…

I don’t journal to “be productive.” I don’t do it to find great ideas, or to put down prose I can later publish. The pages aren’t intended for anyone but me.

Morning pages are, as author Julia Cameron puts it, “spiritual windshield wipers.” It’s the most cost-effective therapy I’ve ever found. To quote her further, from page viii:

“Once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts [nebulous worries, jitters, and preoccupations] on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes.”

Please reread the above quote. It may be the most important aspect of trapping thought on paper (i.e. writing) you’ll ever encounter. Even if you consider yourself a terrible writer, writing can be viewed as a tool that you can and should use. There are huge benefits to writing, even if no one — yourself included — ever reads what you write. In other words, the process matters more than the product.

The Two Main Reasons I Journal:

1. Brain Clarity

2. Detachment from thoughts

“Could bitching and moaning on paper for five minutes each morning change your life? As crazy as it might seem, I believe the answer is yes.” — Tim Ferriss

7. Gratitude Practice

I write the three things I am most grateful for today:

The key here is not to repeat that you are grateful for your family, life, and god. The key is to focus on being aware of the smaller things in life that you would miss if you were gone. This is a very powerful practice that has been utilized by the Stoics, Billionaires, and monks to help them appreciate life and reduce anxiety. Dr. Emmons, a gratitude researcher, confirms that practicing gratitude daily can reduce anxiety and depression.

The three “topics” I find easiest to channel are:

1. Person — I write one thing about my fiancé that I am grateful for every morning. But it could be anyone for you and probably helps if you change it every day to realize how many people you are grateful for.

2. Small object close by — The wind blowing on your face, the warmth of the coffee mug, the silence of your bedroom. This is a stoic practice to realize that even if everything you owned were taken from you their are still small pleasures in life.

3. Something I would miss if it were gone — running water, heat, the ability to run, etc.

8.Write Your Morning Three

1. Affirmation: By stating three affirmations in the morning I am able to put myself into a charged state. It may seem hokey, but it has been hugely beneficial to my mental state.

2. What do I get to enjoy today — By starting my day thinking about what I get to enjoy today, I put my mind into a positive mode and trigger my brain to see the upside of the day.

3. Daily Intention — I start out each day with intention. Whether its as simple as “I will be present today” or “I will choose to see the beauty in everything that happens to me today.” It doesn’t really matter, but I have found it extremely helpful for lowering my daily anxiety to be intentional about what I want my day’s purpose to be,

9. Write out Your MITs: 3–5 Most Important Tasks that need to get done

Even a basic plan of attack for your day can drastically reduce your anxiety by decreasing the cognitive load that comes with increased decision making. Each morning we wake up with a finite amount of brain power and every decision we make detracts from it. By having a basic structure that decreases the amount of decisions you have to make about what you are going to do next, you will be able to take control of your day and calm your restless mind.”

Every morning, I write down the 3–5 things that are making me the most anxious or stressed out. They tend to be things that I have pushed off for days on end. And more often than not, they are the most difficult or uncomfortable taks that I need to do in order to move myself forward.

Once I have written out the 3–5 MOST important tasks — and no more — I ask myself the follow questions to help me prioritize which to focus on first:

1. What task, if completed successfully, will make all of the others obsolete?

2. What task do I have the most anxiety/fear about?

3. What task will move me closest to accomplishing my number 1 goal?

10. 90 Minutes of Deep Work on Top MIT

“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” — Mark Twain

Once I have prioritized my top MIT for the day, I block off 90 minutes of time to focus exclusively on it. This is a common strategy known as the 90–90–1 rule.

Why is it so important to get the top MIT done first thing in the morning?

Well, according to psychologist Ron Friedman, the first three hours of your day are your most precious for maximized productivity. “Typically, we have a window of about three hours where we’re focused. We’re able to have some strong contributions regarding planning, regarding thinking, regarding speaking well,” Friedman told Harvard Business Review.

I understand we all have different schedules and responsibilities, but if we want to overcome anxiety and move our goals forward truly we must protect our mornings. If we don’t take control of our mornings, something else will.

Don’t check your email or social media until you have spent at least 30–90 minutes of uninterrupted time on your number 1 MIT. Use your mornings for output, not more meaningless input. As productivity expert Benjamin Hardy says, “[p]rotecting your mornings means you are unreachable during certain hours. Only in the case of serious emergency can you be summoned from your focus-cave.”

Not only will this help you complete your number 1 MIT, but it will also do wonders for your anxiety throughout the day.

Bonus: The Routines of Titans

The Titans of our day all follow routines that make them successful and fulfilled. Here is a couple. Pick and choose what works best for you.

Leo Babauta’s Morning Routine [zen habits]

Top 10 Ways to Upgrade Your Morning Routine [Lifehacker]

What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast [Fast Company]

The Morning Ritual [Hack the System]

Create a Morning Writing Ritual [Freelance Switch]

Slay Your Dragons Before Breakfast [Michael Hyatt]

5 Morning Routines that help me win the Day [Tim Ferriss]

Tony Robbin’s Intense Morning [Tony Robbins]

What We Can Learn from Ben Franklin’s Daily Schedule [Ben Franklin]

Conclusion: Make it sustainable for you

The purpose of this list is to be a roadmap, a blueprint, to help you reduce your anxiety by creating a empowered morning routine. It is packed with strategies and loads of scientific research about what routines and habits are the most effective to lower your anxiety and increase your life. But the most important strategy of all is to remember that when you are creating your own confident morning it needs to be sustainable for you. The best routine is the one you actually stick to.

If you are anything like I used to be, you need to listen to this part. I used to spend so much time worrying about the “perfect” morning routine. Should I wake up at 5:45 or 6:00. Should I meditate before or after, I shower. Should I exercise or not exercise? This constant need to be perfect kept my mornings stressful and prevented me from forming habits with my morning.

So, my hope is that you try out some of the ones that worked wonders for decreasing my anxiety and test if they make a difference for you. If they don’t then drop them and try something else. The key is to keep testing what works and what doesn’t for you and your life. The more you test; the closer you will get to your confident morning.

An Empowered Morning isn’t something that just falls into your lap — it’s created consciously. I hope you are able to implement some changes in your morning and more importantly, I hope it lowers your anxiety and gives you more excitement in life!

Ben Foley