Do you ever wake up on a Monday morning feeling groggy, tired, uninspired, or under-energised? Does this have a knock on effect on the rest of your week, where you never really catch up until the weekend when it all starts again? Well, the good news is you’re not alone. Many, many people wake up on a Monday morning feeling the same way. And that’s something I’m going to try and help you with. Because the good news is, there are a number of things that you can do about it. Here are my seven ways to wake up feeling more energised on a Monday morning…
7 ways to wake up feeling more energised
1. Eat dinner three to four hours before going to bed
To wake up energised on a Monday morning, your work starts on Sunday night. In fact, it would apply for any evening of your week. The renowned nutritionist, Alessandro Ferretti, in a podcast episode that I recorded with him, said that studies have shown that the best length of time is between three and four hours between eating and getting to bed for optimal sleep, so it doesn’t interrupt your circadian rhythm.
2. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep
It might sound obvious, but we’ve come to accept that the new normal might be getting six to seven hours sleep, and the majority of us need longer than that. This will depend on your genetic predisposition, and there is a very tiny minority of us that can do with maybe four or five hours sleep. A few famous politicians, like Margaret Thatcher, for example, was potentially one of those people. However, most of us need a good seven or eight hours or sometimes even more, so understand what amount of sleep really works for you. If you’re an eight-hour person, then you need to adjust your bedtime to take that into account.
3. Start moving as soon as you wake up
In order to kickstart our circadian rhythms and get our bodies geared up for the day, we need to move. Optimal movement would be a gentle walk, maybe some yoga, and this need only be a few minutes; it could also be walking the dog or just bouncing or walking around the house, but get moving and get some energy flowing.
4. Heartfulness
This involves saying something nice to your partner or your kids or your animals or looking in the mirror and saying something nice and warm and loving to yourself. Start the day with a positive tone. Change your physiology by doing something that comes from the heart, and you’ll be amazed at what a difference it can make to how you feel, even about the day ahead.
5. Get natural light into the eyes as soon as possible
Curtains go up, blinds lifted. Get natural light, even if it’s not sunny, onto the eyes and onto your skin as early as you possibly can. Once you’re up, get in front of the sun or in front of natural light.
6. More heartfulness
Specifically, introducing more heartfulness into the week. What I mean by this is, quite often, we have a week that’s controlled by somebody else. It’s controlled by our employer, by our clients, by our team, and we can feel quite claustrophobic in that environment. Put something in your week that’s for you. It might just be five or ten minutes. Maybe it’s meditation; maybe it’s reading; maybe it’s walking the dog; reading a magazine. Whatever it might be, do something, an exercise class, get something in the diary that is for you, and that will help change your perspective on the week ahead and help you feel more energised about it.
7. Governing your circadian rhythm
Take control of your body clock to make sure you don’t have what’s called a sleep hangover on Monday, also called a social hangover. This refers to the fact that many of us get up to an alarm clock Monday through to Friday, but at the weekends, we sleep in, and the consequence on Sunday nights, we can’t sleep at our usual time because we’ve had a lie-in that morning. So have a consistent wake time throughout the week to avoid that sleep hangover on a Monday morning.
The Cadence Wellbeing Scorecard
The Cadence Wellbeing Scorecard is a tool that helps you assess and track your progress in achieving work-life balance, managing energy and improving overall wellbeing. Take the scorecard and receive a free, personalised report with actionable insights you can take into your daily life to optimise your health and wellbeing.
Leanne Spencer is an award-winning entrepreneur, Six Signals® Coach, double-bestselling author and TEDx Speaker. She is also the co-founder of Bodyshot Performance, and regularly speaks to audiences all over the UK on topics around fitness, health, wellbeing, burnout and corporate resilience.
Connect with Leanne on Facebook or Insta, or visit leannespencer.co.uk for more information about her wellbeing keynotes.
