High Vibe Habits: Establishing a Daily Ritual

It’s a conscious effort for me to complete my ‘zen time’ each day. I have an ever-evolving checklist of items that support my expansion; physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I am a student of life and I pay close attention to those who are sharing inspiring content, so I am often adding a new practice into my morning routine to see if it awakens something in me or makes me feel more aligned! No one thing will work for every person, but having time for a ritual of feel-good activities that work for you is self-love at it's best! Here are some of the ways I have curated my daily 'me' time:

Finding the Time

I have always been a morning person. No matter how late I am up the night before (or how many glasses of wine I have), I am always up by 7 am, often earlier. So, it’s easy for me to find time before the world wakes up to work on myself. Now that I am a Mom, I find my alone time to be very precious and essential, so about six months after our Olive was born, my husband (Ade) and I figured out a system that would allow us both to have our time each day. Because I’m the early riser in the family, I usually try to wake up between 5:30-6 am each day and have ‘me time’ until 8 am when I will ‘tag in’ and take over with Olive. My husband then has time to work out, do his affirmations, shower and get ready for the day and be at his desk by 10 am. Sometimes, if Olive had a rough night, I wake up at 7 am and only have an hour to myself, so I have to shrink my routine to fit that time. On the good days, I wake up at 5 am and have three blissful hours to myself… ahh, I love those days!

I am well aware that the majority of people are not morning people, so waking up at 5 am to burn a candle and meditate may be a recipe for you to fall back asleep. You have to find a time that works for you!

What put this in perspective for me when I was trying to carve out my ‘me time’, was reading that we all have the same 1440 minutes in the day and we just need to start by finding 10 of those minutes to start a mindful practice. 10 out of 1440 doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. As you grow in your practice, you may find that your ‘zen time’ actually feels more relaxing and centring than the time you spend ‘relaxing’ watching Netflix, so you may want to take 30 minutes of Netflix time and put it towards your ‘me time’.

If you feel overwhelmed about trying to fit something else into your already busy life, I would suggest that you take a few days and be very conscious about where you’re spending your time. Check ‘Screen time’ on your phone to see how much time you’re scrolling on Instagram, be aware of how much time you spend watching TV or Netflix. Could you borrow some time from these activities to implement practices that will help yourself feel more aligned?

Designating a Space

You don’t need to have a perfectly curated ‘zen den’ to begin a mindfulness practice, but it’s important that you are practising in a space that feels calming for you. This place can be as big as an entire room with a door that closes or as small as a corner of your bedroom with a pillow on the ground.

I always make an effort to keep my ‘zen space’ clean and tidy to ensure my mind isn’t distracted when I enter it. I usually use sage to cleanse the space and either diffuse essential oils or burn incense. I love having things that bring me joy in my zen space, like my favourite crystals, mala beads and my mini Buddha statue. Seeing these items automatically brings me peace. This is what works for me, but maybe a photo of your family or a candle would do the trick for you? Dig deep and think about what brings you joy and peace and ensure your environment reflects that.

Defining (and evolving) your Daily Rituals

The ‘Mind your Own’ mantra is all about recognizing the importance of focussing on your own self-care and what works best for you! I’ll be happy to share my daily rituals with you later in this post, but I can’t stress enough the importance of trial and error when you are finding practices that work for you.

While meditation and journaling may work for some, yoga or exercise may be meditative and cathartic for others. This post is all about finding what practices you can implement into your life that make you feel at peace so that you can actually hear your inner guidance system (or your intuition) and allow it to lead you to live a more aligned life.

Once you get into a routine of daily mindfulness and self-care practices, don’t stop there. As you grow in your capabilities, you’ll need to constantly evolve your practices to ensure you continue to flourish, emotionally and spiritually. You’ll know when it’s time to implement something new into your day. Over the past few months, I have been very focused on forgiveness and healing from events in the past that may contribute to my self-limiting beliefs today, so there has been a lot of introspective work including free-journaling and forgiveness meditations. I have recently felt the call that I need to be more physically active as a part of my daily routine, so I am listening to that guidance and working to include this in my daily practice.

My Current Daily Rituals

Here is my list of 'non-negotiable' practices that I partake in each and every day as a part of my wellness and self-healing ritual:

• Gratitude Rampage
  The first thing I do every morning as I'm laying in bed after my alarm goes off is rattling off all the things I'm grateful for in my head, in quick secession (i.e. 'thank you for this bed, thank you for my home, thank you for my daughter, thank you for my husband). I do this for a few minutes and focus on really feeling the gratitude. This helps me set up a good vibration for my practice and the day ahead.
• Setting up the Space 
  I then head to my zen space. I turn on my Himalayan salt lamp, start my essential oil diffuser and either burn sage or use spray sage on myself. I’ll often cover myself with a blanket and will either sit for my mediation or get into a restorative yoga position. Like I mentioned, once I’m awake, I’m awake, so I don’t ever fall back asleep, but I know there are people who would go straight back to sleep if they attempted to meditate lying down.
• Guided Meditation
  I have used multiple apps for meditation, but lately, I’ve been exploring the freely available guided meditations on YouTube! Often I’ll have an inclination of what I need to work on that day and will search according to that (releasing fear, forgiveness, gratitude, specific chakra clearing)
• Silent Meditation 
  I have been meditating fairly regularly for close to 10 years now and I have always been a guided meditation person (I began by participating in group meditation when I was living in Sydney, Australia). But lately, I feel I’m becoming more capable of sitting in silence and observing, but not attaching to, my thoughts, so I am trying to hone this practice.
• Journaling & Intention Setting
  Freewriting immediately after meditation has allowed me to find a lot of clarity over the past months. I literally just put pen to paper and write. Sometimes I read it back, sometimes I don’t! I also like to set intentions. Usually, I'll set monthly intentions at the beginning of each month, weekly intentions on each Sunday evening and daily intentions each morning. This is like a conscious 'to do' list. It can be intentions for health or something else but my intentions are always to do things (or feel things) that make me happy.