13 The Mindfulness Blueprint: Designing Your Personalized Morning Routine

DESCRIPTION:

Discover the secrets to a more grounded, focused, and fulfilling life as I share my personal mindfulness morning routine and how it has transformed my daily experiences. Are you ready to elevate your life by tailoring a mindfulness practice that suits your individual needs? Listen in and learn h

How to create a space that supports mindfulness, meditation, and the power of gratitude.

Join me as we explore the power of gratitude and how it can help manifest the life you desire. Learn how simply being aware of your surroundings and the sounds around you can create space for mindfulness and intention setting. You’ll also hear about my favorite app, Insight Timer, which has become my go-to tool for starting and ending my day on the right note.

In this episode, I share my personal manifestation techniques and the importance of posture in both physical and mental well-being.  Find out how I maintain good posture even with forearm crutches, and how being grateful for the people around me has positively impacted my life. Don’t miss these valuable insights to help you work on your own mind and become the best version of yourself.

TRANSCRIPT:

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Vickie: 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to today’s episode. I am grateful that you are joining me today. It is not the usual kind of topic that I want to discuss, but I’m going to go through something that took me a little while to develop. It is my morning routine. Now, i’m not talking about the routine that I have at the gym for two hours every morning before I start the rest of my day. It is my mindfulness, my meditation routine. In the morning, in the wee hours before the sun comes up, i spend some time working on my mind. I don’t get a chance to during the day, and I really believe that since I’ve been working on this, my life has improved dramatically. It allows me to be focused, ready for my day, and when I walk out of this door I am charged and ready to go. So I’m going to share with you my routine. Now, every routine does not have to be the same for everybody. There’s no specific steps to developing a morning routine, because what works for me may not work for you, or you may need a little bit of more work on something else that I don’t. I’m not going to talk to wishy-washy or kind of abstract. I just want to get an idea in your head that every routine is specifically catered to the individual. I guess you could get a consultation to develop your own morning routine, but ultimately it’s going to lie in your lap for what works best for you. When I listen to meditations to put myself to sleep at night, i like guided meditations. I like somebody talking to me and telling me which way to go, what to think about, what to visualize. Not everybody’s the same. My son you hear him on the introduction for every episode Sean, he’s eight now and he doesn’t like talking. He wants to hear some visualization just through music. He wants to be lulled to sleep by the sound of an airplane, by the sound of a cat purring. So I’m telling you that mindfulness for everybody is not the same. We are all different. We are all creative creatures creating the world that we want to live in. Okay, you’re creating your own reality. Every day, when I wake up, i make a choice. I make a choice to sit down in the corner that I’ve developed for myself, focus, with a vision board on my left and in front of me, words on the wall. Let’s say habit is what keeps you going, motivation is what gets you started. So I surround myself with those words. I have gratitude rocks all around me. I’ll take a look at what the rocks are right in front of me. One of them says I’m determined. The other one says I am strong. So I’ve got some affirmations which start a phrase with I am to start my day off. I also have on my table behind me me some more rocks that say believe, dream, achieve and focus, so those can be in order to any order. You don’t necessarily need to dream, believe and achieve. You can believe that you can do something, and then you can dream. So there’s no way around it, though. All of these good vibes that surround me every morning get me ready for my day and set up my mind to go out of this house like a freaking rock star. I don’t want to go out like, oh, i’m so tired, i feel so bad, my back is a little off. I’m pushing harder on the crutch on my right. Today It’s not even shut up. Just get your mind ready and focus, and I’m going to tell you what the steps are that I start my day with. Sorry if I ramble a bit. I really don’t like to work from a script. I may have an outline, but I really just talk off the cuff. Okay, no cuffs. Today wearing my tank top from the gym, still fresh home from the gym. So this is how I get my brain ready for the day. Okay, the first thing is I have this quiet, comfortable spot. Everything has to be comfortable. Now I have these high dining room chairs. They’re not the standard seat level where you can put your feet flat on the floor. So I have a bar on the bottom of the chair where I have to plant my feet, because if I don’t, i’m hanging. My feet are hanging off of the chair and I feel like a little kid. I don’t feel grounded, i don’t feel connected. So I think for any morning routine that you do with mindfulness meditation, you need to plant your feet firmly on the floor, be connected, think of it like you’re a tree and those are your roots. Okay, put your back straight as you can, because your energy is aligned up your spine. Okay, you have chakras and I’m not going to go into too much of that today, but there’s a lot to do with being spiritual and understanding the energy centers in your body. That really changed me too, understanding chakras and the energy flow. So crown of your head needs to point to the sky Right, telling the universe what your intentions are for the day. Feet grounded on the floor, okay, hands in your lap. I like to put my thumb and point a finger together In the circle hands up so that my energy flows connected through my body. So it’s just going around and energizing every part of me so that I’m ready to receive the information. I am And I use the insight timer. I cannot tell you enough. That is my be all end all Starts my day, off ends my day. So you want to be sitting without distractions. Nice chair. You want to sit on a floor? that’s fine. I am not sitting with back support Now. I’m actually on a stool because I feel that I’m a little bit more engaged in my core and I can set up I don’t know lean If I don’t have to. I leave enough during the day when I get tired. So you could also use a meditation mat. It’s totally fine for you. So, physically, wherever you are, that is up to you. But just be grounded, be connected to the floor, head up, straight, and energy flowing straight through your spine, down through the roots. Okay, then we’re going to get energy flowing through the body And then I will say this I don’t really set a timer. You know I have meditations that I do, that have a specific time And I know that I’m looking to do about an hour of mindfulness and meditation before I head out that door. Okay, the first half of what I get up. So I get up at three, okay, from eight o’clock to four o’clock I’m getting ready, like I’m getting my clothes on, my stuff at the gym, okay, and I’m brushing my hair, brushing my teeth, getting my physical self ready for the day, nothing to do with mine. Then I head down the hall and I go into my bathroom down there my second bathroom and I put on my makeup a little bit, not too much, but something that’s going to have a sunscreen in it So I’m protected for the rest of the day. I would never think of putting on sunscreen When I get home from the gym. I just know it’s on and ready to go. So I put a little makeup on, get myself set up so I know I’m presentable to the world at least, and that’s the only time I would ever get it done. You know when my right hand started going wonky about a year ago it was a little bit before then, but it just started getting a little bit more messed up. The dexterity is not the same as my left hand. My right arm also is a little weaker Nothing that I’m complaining about. It’s just something that I need to work on a little bit more than my left. But I can. So I’m not crying, i’m just telling you the truth. So it takes me a little time to get my right hand working. So putting on my makeup, especially eyeliner or anything to do that’s very detailed, is really good exercise. My right hand And I’ve learned how to use the rest of my arm, so pretty much my shoulder, my interior, my lateral, the deltoid, to sorry, talking like a trainer to you. So I use that to control my pen in my hand when I do a little bit of eyeliner. If I want to, i don’t only have to use the fingers and the dexterity of my fingers, but I have other tools available to me And unless I did this and really set this up in the beginning of the day, i would have never realized that I can still do makeup. I’ve worn makeup for a very long time and I just thought that it was really time to do some self-care, because if you can’t love yourself. Really, who can you love? It all starts at home, and I really needed a little bit of more self-love practice, and one of those was doing one of those things was doing my makeup more and caring for myself a little bit better. So I worked out at the gym. I take care of my muscles, my body, but I needed to take care of my physical self too, and one of those ways was a little bit of makeup and feeling good for myself. So I’m not a heavy makeup wearer anyway, just something I wanted to do and go back to. So one thing that I do in the bathroom down the hall is I start my med not my meditations, but I start my mindfulness practices. Now it started with I am affirmations. Affirmations help you believe in yourself. They help you cast away any doubt that you might have for you to accomplish the goals that you want to attain your dreams and desires. That sounds kind of lofty, but what I’m saying to you is if you want to manifest anything in this world, you really have to believe in yourself, because if you don’t, anything that you want to achieve, you’ll just never believe and nothing is ever going to become a reality. So what I start with in the morning is my affirmations and I listen to them. When I’m putting on my makeup and I’m quiet and I’m sitting there, it kind of reminds me of when I’m at the gym and I have to be on the cardio machine, so I have to listen to my audio book. Or what was I watching this morning? This morning I was watching the secret, the whole secret, the law of attraction on Prime Video. So I get a chance to really absorb things but not necessarily have to 100% be physically involved in. So I listen to. I am affirmations and I have a couple of practitioners that I listen to kind of. Suarez is one of them. He’s excellent. Not just the words that he tells you, but the music that’s underlying is amazing. He really knows how to get in there and get you to believe in yourself And he also has some amazing I am affirmations for sleep. So the last night was one hour and 20 minutes and I was listening with my son who went to sleep next to me. I was just listening to it and it’s really good. If you want to really understand how you can believe in yourself more without having to do it, work on even thinking about it, just let it flow. Let it flow into your ears and into your mind. Or if you have trouble hearing, you know, take a look at a video. You can feed them into your eyeballs Right with captions, and some of these videos have, i am, affirmations. I know I’ve done one for my son Which is a kids video and it it has it in a song and it sings out like I am powerful, i Am powerful. And the kids repeat it I am powerful. It’s awesome. They just go through it. So you don’t necessarily have to hear, you can also see it. Okay, and what I believe is that if these affirmations are on a rock like this one right here, i Totally clipped that sound. But I am determined. It’s great, you know, it’s got a nice feel to it. I, i Put Mod Podge, which is like a Shiny coat over it, and it just feels right in my hand. So I’m not only Looking at it, so the, the affirmation is getting absorbed in my brain, but I’m feeling it right. This is in my hand, i’m holding it in In my body, in my my world, and I’m connected to this idea that I am determined and I will never give up on my dreams. I promise you that, and I am here for as long as I can be with this podcast to share the same ideas and Thoughts with you, so hopefully I can change your world too. Okay, now We’re sitting in a comfortable position, it I’m gonna do this with you now. I don’t know that I’m gonna do this in every episode. We’re gonna see how this works out. Okay, one thing that I love to do is Close my eyes and I just focus on my breath, and sometimes I’ll do a box breath. I’ll go in for four, hold for four, and out for four, hold for four, and in again, hold and relax. So when you have your eyes closed, as I do now, and I’m just focusing on the feeling of the breath another thing that I do to get lost in the moment and just kind of get all of those chattery kind of thoughts out of my head, right, i’m trying to control my brain and see that I have control of this CPU that’s in my head, controlling the rest of my body, taking in sights and sounds and every sensation from my outside world that really affects me, and any one of those could be a stressor, you know. So I want to make sure that my brain is prepared for it in the beginning of the day and lets me know that I have a choice with how I go out there in the world and how I can kind of react is my decision. You know, i have a choice with how I want to react with my world if I want to get stressed out or if I want to just take it nice and easy. And chillax and doing this kind of practice in the morning is going to set my day up for the rest of the rest of my life. Okay. So the way that I do the breathing is okay. I do that breathing in the morning, sit down, do my box, breath and then I close my eyes and I listen to all of the sounds in the room. I just be quiet for a second. The first sound that I hear, besides my own inhale and exhale, is my refrigerator. So there’s a hum, there’s a vibration. It’s underlying here. I don’t know if you can hear it here on my podcast, but it is definitely there. I have my window, my screen door, open. In the room behind me I do hear some birds chirping. Not a bad sound. I kind of leave the door open. That’s my choice. I hear a car out in the front. Those are the things that I hear in my world. So my point is today not to tell you what I’m hearing in my world, but that you have the ability to control the chatter in your mind. It’s going to take practice. There is no lie. I have a very, very chattery mind. I’m a chattery person, so it’s going to stand to reason that my mind that controls. That is going to be that way as well. So if you have the ability to calm it down, you’re going to see how you can control your own thoughts beyond just thoughts. Okay, and that’s going to affect how you go out there in the world. And I will say this I have a lot of people approach me at the gym. Not going to lie, i am. It’s been likened to a mayor. I wouldn’t really call myself a mayor, but I know a lot of people at the gym just because I’m there every morning and I’m very dedicated and devoted and I work really hard when I’m there. I don’t convey in any way that I’m just not knowing what I’m doing. I mean, i am a certified personal trainer, so when I get on the machine after I’ve chosen it, i know what to do. I get down and I do my sets of my reps pretty good Pretty, you know, pretty like. I know what I’m doing, okay, so I’m there and I really appreciate people that are with me, and I make sure to express my gratitude to people that I’m with, whether it’s not even with words. They’re pretty busy, they’re on their way, i get it. I will always do a true smile to people. I’m never one with a scowl on my face, no matter how hard I’m working on a rep on a set. You know it’s my fourth set on legs, which is not my favorite body part to work, for reasons that you might be aware of that. I have a little trouble with my right leg, so it’s a little bit more work for me. Upper body, i could do all day, but legs a little working, and I think that’s the same for a lot of people, even if they don’t have an issue. But so I will always greet somebody with a smile that comes from my heart. I’m really joyful that I’m there, that I am with people that can come every day in their own car, drive with their own feet. Right, i can’t drive with my foot anymore. I have hand controls and I, you know, i’m still there. I found a way. So I know I inspire people at the gym and it really made me want to bring it beyond the gym doors, and that’s when I started my fitness club with the ladies who live, and I am so excited that they’re going to be here next week to do another workshop with me. Okay, it’s a workshop that I’m working on, a manifestation, and I’m not sure when the recording will be available on my podcast, but it will soon. So these are all works in progress and I’m happy to share with you. If you have any feedback on anything that I’m sharing with you, even if it’s this podcast, if it’s the manner in which I’m sharing it with you, just kind of from my heart, not really from a script, you know, let me know. I love to know what you think, because I’m always a performer at heart, right? So? I used to be a jazz vocalist, so your best performance is your next one, right? So you get that feedback from your musicians, from your audience, whoever it is. So make sure you let me know what you think, folks. So alright, so how far have we gotten? So we’ve gotten my routine as far as finding a comfortable place to sit. Get my breathing down, stop that mental chatter and then I start. I start with the affirmations in the beginning. So I want to get rid of any doubt. I want to put myself in a positive mindset and What I need to do next is get gratitude going. Okay, i want to cultivate gratitude and set my intentions as much as possible for the day. Okay, that sets me up for my gym and it sets me up for everything that I do for the rest of the day, even sitting down to do this podcast for you right now. If I wasn’t thankful for you, believe me, i would not be sitting here talking to a microphone at all And just looking at my wall, even though it’s very attractive. I’m very happy to be here and that I have my own space. But I have to cultivate gratitude, especially because and you heard in my last workshop that I did on gratitude gratitude is completely important for you to appreciate anything you have in your life. If you don’t have gratitude, good things will not come to you. Okay, i know this because nothing good was happening when I was just a sourpus, all day, bitter, depressed, when I was diagnosed with MS. Okay, i thought it was the end, but it was really only the beginning. It wasn’t until I practiced mindfulness and really sat my butt down every day, like this at early in the morning, to find that space where I can practice, where nobody else is up and nobody else is really here, in my space, where I can really set my intentions. So I get my gratitude going. Okay, i listen to gratitude meditations. Sakeb Rizvi, who I’ve written about on a previous post and podcast, really sets you up to understand how to get your motivation flowing through you so that you can manifest, and he uses different techniques which really aren’t standard techniques that I’ve heard of before using your different chakras in your body your crown chakra, your throat chakra to express what you want to say, and it’s just really great. So I definitely invite you to check him out. I’ll put a link in the showrooms for you. So the gratitude is going to let you set your day up. You have to be appreciative for everything. If you can’t think of something yourself, i’ll give you a little trick. You can go to open AI, which is chat, ept, and you can put the command in give me 10 things to be grateful for with and then whatever. So this morning I did give me 20 things to be grateful for in nature and it gave me such a list. That was so amazing. Did I copy it here for you? Let me see, give me a second. I really don’t feel like editing today. Here we go. So again I asked for 20. Actually, i asked for 30 things to be grateful for in nature. Okay, i’m just going to go through a couple of them. So if you don’t have the ability to rack your brains and think of things, here are some things that I thought of, and it was very descriptive in the things that it shared, not just like sunlight or a sunset, but listen to how it phrases it. So, certainly, here are 30 things to be grateful for in nature. One the warmth of sunlight on your skin. Two the soothing sound of raindrops falling, the vibrant colors of flowers in bloom. There are a fresh scent of a pine forest, the gentle rustle of leaves in the wind, the majestic broody of a sunrise or sunset, the melody of birds singing in the morning, the coolness of a gentle breeze on a hot day. Two more The rhythmic crashing of ocean waves, the intricate patterns of a snowflake So beautiful, right. So I could go through the 30 of them, but I’m telling you, if I stopped at five, i would be happy. So it just gives me things to think about. If you don’t like to listen to meditations or care to go to insight, to timer, just search for gratitude and it’ll come up And some people give you a list of things to be thankful for. Some of them give you an already cultivated list of things to be thankful for, but it’s definitely an important practice and part of my morning routine every day. So I also need to let you know that you have to set an intention for the day, and this is something that I do. So I’ve got my I am, i ams, my affirmations, i’ve got my gratitude, and my intention for the day is just pretty simple. I just do my breathing and I just focus on that. I’m going to go to the gym, i know which body parts I’m going to be working on, i have a pad and pen with me and I set up my intentions for the day with things that I have to work on. One of those things today is that I need to check out the platform, riverside that allows me to do editing and interviews and it hosts them. So this isn’t something that I have on Buzzsprout, my current hosting platform. They don’t really do that the recording and everything So I got to check over that area. That’s my intention for the day. I’m also fixing up my website, fixing up my WordPress themes. I’m doing some high tech stuff on the back end that never would have happened, i promise you, if I didn’t believe in myself because of all the things that I’m making happen. And I’m looking right next to me with my vision board and I have my ladies who lift, my gorgeous ladies that believe in me and just came to be with me and meet all of the other women at the gym. But then I started to open up and speak a little bit more and be just a little bit more inspirational than the average person. That formed a group And I started to develop my workshops because I’m looking at my vision board and I’m seeing a TED Talk someday. So I’m in another book that I want to get out there. So I’ve got some things that I have to do. So I have to set my intention for the day. This involves my daily intention, but also the intention of What steps I need to take to manifest what I really desire, and those desires are what I shared with you. Okay, i’m not talking about a thing that I want. I want a House that could be fully a handicap accessible, like, yeah, okay, maybe I’ll make this house that way, but that could be one of my, you know, intentions and And I can put that as my dream, my desire not really on my list right now I’m very happy here right now as it is, and being a little bit challenged to get around and Learning to work with it. I’m very lucky to have a roof over my head right, so The manifestation is very important for me. So I do visualization exercises and I imagine a little movie screen in my mind and I’m, you know, taking a look at the movie that I’m creating. I’m closing my eyes right now and It is the movie in my reality That’s gonna happen. It’s, it’s definitely gonna happen, because I believe it and I see things Happening already. You know just the fact that I can set up a little area and people are happy to come and Listen to what I have to share and telling me that I’m already changing their life. People really weren’t listening to podcast before now. I have women that are being inspired by my, by my episodes that they have on their phones now, and I’m super excited when they just reach out to me and let me know that. So you know these. These are the the morning routine pieces that I wanted to share with you Because I feel they’re so valuable for me and you can customize your own morning routine. I’m not gonna tell you that you have to do 10 minutes of I am affirmations. You have to do that. You don’t have to do what doesn’t seem right for you. Just start small. Okay, one one thing that I believe is that if you you start small and you see what works, try it on. It’s like tipping your toe in the water. Then you see what you could do. But I recommend for everything you find your own spot, quiet and comfortable spot. When I started Doing this thing early in the morning, because I found this is the only time that I can invest in myself And not just invest in everyone else around me, like the rest of my day was being used for I made this space happen. I measured between a rock and a hard place. I measured between this wall and This. What is it? It’s like a Breakfront and I have these two spaces and it’s very narrow in here. But I just kept searching and I finally there was a vendor that put something up on Amazon and you could see it in your space, right. So I would turn my iPhone around and make sure that it would fit perfectly. I tell you, you have like an inch on either side and it worked for me. It’s just a very small desk, but I’m able to put everything up here my podcast microphone, my, my computer, my MacBook Air Pro, everything and it works for me. If I didn’t have a space, Probably nothing would happen. And now, if you don’t have a space, if you don’t have the money to do something like that, maybe you can find a corner in your house That’s furthest away from the door, furthest away from anybody that’s gonna bother you or gonna hear you. You know, that’s totally fine too. I just knew that I needed, because of my physical Ability and disability, that I needed to be able to get in and out very easily, so it couldn’t be somewhere very super far or hard to get to. So this little corner. I have a Chair that rolls under the desk. It’s like a stool that I had for the kitchen. There’s no back support on it, but it’s okay because I am not really Sitting with my back that I would need to put on anything because I’m kind of leaning forward into my microphone to talk to you. But I definitely needed this space to do anything to get my mind clear, because if I was in Clutter or I was in some you know space in this house, that just didn’t Work for me in terms of thinking and I’m just too comfortable or I’m not comfortable And I’m looking around and being distracted, then you know that doesn’t work. So it got rid of all the distraction so I can make myself the attraction right and focus on my mind and That’s, you know, that’s pretty much what I have to share with you. You know your morning routine. I Highly recommend a morning routine for everybody. It’s gonna start your day Just the way the world works. A sun comes up in the morning and it goes down at night, so it’s a cyclical thing. It’s something that we can count on every day. If you don’t have a morning routine because you can’t get up early, whatever, make it at a lunch time. You know, make. But find that time to invest in you because you know what happens. You make enough withdrawals. Got to make it deposit sometime. Okay, so it’s coming, you have to do it. You really got to set up some kind of morning routine, you’re gonna find that you are Are light years away from where you used to be. I Remember, right, i used to be like round-shouldered and didn’t have any, you know, like good postural support. Now I’m all like up and shoulders at it in the back like my. My Shoulder blades are retracted and I just have a great posture, even though I’m walking on crutches right, i could lean forward on them and take my body weight off. But I’m pretty up here because I’m happy, and I’m happy to see people When, when they approach me that, even if they’re just just in passing, i’m very into my workouts. But I’m very, very into the people that surround me and I’m grateful, grateful, for you too. I think you’re awesome for even coming and wanting to be better than you were yesterday. That’s my goal. So I hope that this episode helped you and I will put Kind of the the pieces of the puzzle. I hope I didn’t ramble too much. I’ll put it all in the podcast and the show notes and This is going to be episode 13. Okay, so I thank you for listening, hope you have a takeaway of some sort from this and so that you could work on your mind and be amazing. Okay, so go rock out. Have a great day.