Three Healthy Morning Habits

Tips from Amelia to help with burnout

We’ve been hanging onto this one for a while. I’m burned out. Emily is burned out. Amelia is burned out. We’re all burned out. Amelia wrote these tips for The Guardian over the summer. They didn’t use the whole thing, so we’re passing the savings on to you. Maybe they’ll resonate and help make your mornings better.

See you on the other side, folks. Be well and make sure to get out and vote if you’re able.

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Three healthy habits to start your day better

(and if three is too much right now, just try one!)

1. Reflect on your dreams.

It doesn’t matter how much or how little you remember, though with practice you can start remembering more. You can write it down or just think it through. Start by recognizing that everything in your dream was created by your mind, made out of your memories and experiences.

When you dream, your brain is practicing what it learned that day, that week, your whole past. It’s possible you’ll dream in literal stories, but more likely you’ll get metaphors and symbols. Be curious about what parts of yourself are represented – authority figures, vulnerable creatures, sturdy or dilapidated buildings, etc. – and what their relationships are to each other.

In other words, everything in your dream is made of you, even the stuff you don’t enjoy. So, try not to judge any part of a dream as good or bad. There are lots of specific practices for dream analysis that you can get in to if you’re interested, but simply turning toward your dreams with curiosity is a step toward understanding deeper layers of yourself. 

2. Practice interoception and proprioception.

Spend a few minutes noticing how your muscles and joints feel, what you’re experiencing on your skin, and what internal sensations you feel. This is interoception, your sense of your own internal experience. As you lay in bed, stretch anything that wants to be stretched. As you get up and start moving, check in on how your body moves through space, and what effect gravity and motion have on your senses. These are proprioception, your sense of your body in space.

The more you practice noticing your internal experiences, the better you get at it. When you can easily notice changes in sensations, the better you can address concerns and discover sources of pleasure. As with your dreams, practice nonjudgment of your internal experiences. Sensations may be pleasant or unpleasant, but even challenging feelings can provide useful information. If your nonjudgment skills are fairly advanced, you can even offer thanks to both pain and pleasure for letting you know what’s going on in your body. 

3. Go back to sleep. Seriously.

If you wake up tired, the cure is almost certainly more sleep. Yes, some days you just have to push through despite inadequate sleep. But those days need to be the exception rather than the rule. If your plans are flexible and you have any choice at all between sleep and exercise, sleep and cooking an elaborate breakfast, sleep and anything optional, choose sleep.

Why? Because anything you do while sleep deprived will do more harm to your body and make it more difficult to recover. You’ll be doing it with reduced judgement and cognitive capacity, which means increased danger to yourself and those around you.

For the sake of your well-being and the safety of others, prioritize adequate sleep. 

–Amelia

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Stay safe and see you next time.