Have Your Best Morning Ever
Look, I’m just a girl trying to live my best life. I do my best to eat right, although my green-smoothies-for-breakfast phase ended when I decided human beings have teeth for a reason (and it’s not just to catch chia seeds). I strive for a work-life balance so I can spend less time at the office and more time with my family cats. I’m 18-months into DIYing my entire living room, and the asbestos tests came back negative. I even recently took up meditation to get my spiritual self in order. So far my spiritual self likes falling asleep cross-legged and being mindful of how mindful I’m not being.
Maybe I should get more open flames involved.
Like any best life-living person, I am subscribed to more than a dozen email newsletters that are trying to coach me towards living an even better best life. They are mostly from Oprah. It’s nice to start the day with Oprah’s thoughts, but according to her own newsletters (including her OWN newsletter, which is a joke for Oprah Winfrey fans) and the many, many other best life-related newsletters I subscribe to, there are other good ways to start the day and they are all extremely important.
How to Spend Your Mornings if You’re Living Your Best Life
- Do not ever hit the snooze button!
- Wake up at 4 a.m.!
- Before you do anything, write three pages!
- Before you do anything, meditate for 15 minutes!
- Before you do anything, go for a run!
- Go for a walk!
- Stretch!
- Answer your emails!
- Take the time for yourself!
- Do your most thoughtful work of the day!
- Eat a nutritious breakfast!
- Read a book (and write down three things you’re grateful for)!
- Pack your lunch!
There is nothing I want more than to live my best life. I want to live it better than anyone has ever lived before, is what I’m saying. But I’m not super sure how to do it, because I’m not super sure how to even start my day. My BEST day.
I mean, maybe you could multitask (People living their best lives do not multitask, say the newsletters) and knock out a few things on that list at the same time, like answering your emails while running, or reading while you cook breakfast.
Although that’s how these Pop Tarts died.
But even if you were hyper-efficient, making tea while writing your morning pages and the things you’re grateful for, doing intervals so you get both a walk and a run in at the same time, and stretching while you meditate (something tells me that’s not mindful), by my calculation you still wouldn’t be done with everything before 9am. And even though you’ve really best-lifed it up, at that point you’re an hour late for work and still not even dressed.
Maybe once you’re finally living your self-actualized best life, you level up and can bend the laws of time and space. Or maybe it’s possible. To find out, I tried it all this morning. I thought maybe I could squeeze it in.
How I Spent My Morning, in Pursuit of My Best Life
- Hit the snooze button.
- Hit the snooze button.
- Turned the alarm off and trusted my body to wake up five minutes later.
- Woke up 15 minutes later because my body is a traitor.
- Checked Twitter.
- Read a news story about someone stealing cows in New Zealand.
- Shuffled to the bathroom.
- Shuffled to the closet and stared at my clothes.
- Checked the weather.
- Checked the closet again in case new clothes had suddenly appeared.
- Decided to wear pants because I haven’t shaved my legs in a while.
- Petted the cats.
- Bit by a cat.
- Changed out of my pajamas.
- Checked the time.
- Panicked.
- Shoved my head under the sink while brushing my teeth.
- Poked myself in the eye with my mascara wand.
- Said goodbye to the cats in a crazy person’s voice.
- Ran to the car.
- Cursed.
- Ran back in the house for my purse and a granola bar.
- Choked on the granola bar in the car on the way to work.
Not exactly best life stuff.
I never meant to hurt you, Oprah.
But when I look at how I spent my morning and how the newsletters say I should spend my morning, I think I came out on top. In my version, I got to pet cats, read about cows, and sleep. In Oprah’s version, I would just be running, and working, and giving myself paper cuts on journals.
I don’t think I want my best life after all. I’ll settle for pretty okay.
Listful Thinking 
LOL!!!!
i cant stop laughing. Don’t get me wrong. I am trying to do all that and i am experiencing the SAME problem… just different country. And yes i am late for work in the process.
By reading this, i felt more normal. LOL. Thanks for sharing.
All that “how to live the best life” stuff can be exhausting sometimes. I like your advice better.
Now and then, I get this idea that it’d be good to wake up early on the week-end and get stuff done …but then I wake up and realise that it’s much better to lie in bed for another hour or so.
I like to think that on my death bed, I won’t be saying, “I wish I’d woken up at 4am to run more.” That thought helps me sleep late, late into Saturday mornings.
You have a great life! All I read was cats :) happy happy :) Like last night I had a sore back, and my husband climbed into bed on his side and asked how I was feeling. I sort of scrunched up my face and was going to say I was ok, and then Tiger jumped up on my pillow, and all of a sudden I was all big smiles and ‘Hey Tiger! How’s it going?’ :) My husband said ‘You’re fine now though, aren’t you :)?’ I was all ‘Yup :)’. Cats are great. I gave up trying to have best days a while ago. Now I figure it’s good if one day’s tasks get done within a three day window.
It is weird how a cat can magically erase all the bad feelings. Unless they are causing you bad feelings with their claws, which happens to me a lot. Maybe it’s the brain parasites talking, but I love those little monsters.
I know, right? They’re like furry anaesthetic! Tests have apparently actually proven that having pets (read cats) makes a person healthier, and I can totally see how that would be true.
This had me laughing out loud, marvelous. A perfect way to start the morning.