How to have an elegant morning

How do you start most of your days? What do think when you wake up? What’s the first thing you do in the morning? How do you feel? Our mornings set us up for the rest of the day, so in order to have a good day, we need a good morning.

When we’re stressed, or worried, or reacting to our lives, we often don’t sleep well. In turn this means that when we wake, we’re not fully rested and fresh, ready for the day ahead. We can often wake up thinking our life is what’s happening to us, with the first thoughts of the day are things like “this is going to be a toughie”, “I’m so overwhelmed”, “I’m never going to get anything done”. Straightaway, we feel overwhelmed, frustrated and hopeless. This is the energy we start our day with. The cycle continues throughout the day.

When we learn to manage our minds, we sleep better. When we sleep better we wake up a little bit more refreshed, and it can all begin to change the trajectory of your day or your life.

By making our mornings simple, elegant and intentional, we can really start to tweak them so that we feel better, more empowered and excited about our day.

One simple thing may be to have a fantastic cup of coffee. Many people find journaling in the morning about the person we intend to be for the day, anything that’s holding us back, giving ourselves a pep talk at the beginning of the day, can really set the intention and direction of how the day will pan out. Decide ahead of time what we want to create and how we’re going to make that happen, how we’re going to feel, think and do in order to create that. If we don’t know what we want, our brains have no direction or focus, so it will attempt to recreate what we did yesterday.

Whether we journal our thoughts for the day ahead, or simply take to the time to consider them, we can change to direction based on what it is we want to create, what are our goals, what is it that we’re wanting to experience, what do we want to do, who do we want to be.

Another thing to do in the morning is to recognise things to celebrate and appreciate. The more we appreciate and celebrate our lives, the more is celebrates us back. Be mindful of our first thoughts of the day. Ask ourselves what amazing things are going to happen today. Start with one thought that is a little bit better than the “here we go again” mindset. Think of a new day as a fresh start where we get to practice something different, looking for things to be grateful for. Our energy flows where our attention goes, and what we focus on expands. This is a great opportunity to change the direction of our focus and attention.

Most people are waiting for their world to change first in order for them to feel better, but when we start to feel better, the world outside will start to change. Then in our state of celebration and gratitude, we are creating those good feelings first thing in the morning. How we start the day is generally how our day is going to go, so we need to get our energy going in the right direction.

Then when we create space for inspiration, reading, watching or listening to something that is going to inspire us in some way, we can infuse our goals and dreams. It may be playing some music that helps us get in the zone of being more energetic, focussed, fun or whatever. It can be very fluid based on what our soul wants to be inspired by, a podcast, a book or article.

Think about how we start our day. We’re often rushed and before we’re clear on our commitments of the day, we’re already plugged in to the chaos of the world. Our mornings are a chance to take back our power, to be creative, and decide ahead of time what we’re going to do today.

My workday morning routine usually revolves around drinking a coffee, then spending five to ten minutes playing a matching game on my tablet. It gives me time to focus on something else, to sharpen my brain and my responses. I can usually tell whether I’m in a focussed state of mind for the day ahead based on my game score of the morning.

I don’t do journaling, I did try, but never really got into it, but I do think about my day ahead. I think about the meetings I have, or the messages I need to respond to. I think about the work I need to accomplish that day and try to imagine carving parts of my day out to support getting those activities done. I imagine to myself that I’ll get xyz done by lunch time, then abc done by the end of the day. Then I’ll think about the things I need to do each evening; more meetings, emails and pieces of work. I am quite good at putting things in priority and can therefore put something on the side if I’m not in the right place to deal with it that day.

That does mean however, that when I get thrown a curve ball, I’m not always receptive to having to deal with it in the moment. If I’ve already got it in my mind that I’ll deal with that tomorrow, I really can’t get enthused about dealing with it today. Sometimes C will ask me to look at a document later in the evening, when I’ve already switched my brain off for the day. I can’t always respond in a positive manner.

I did give myself a pep talk the other day. After a couple of days in the doldrums, I woke up the next day thinking that I could either wallow in self-pity, or put it out of my mind and get on with things. I chose the latter and my day was much more productive; I engaged with those around me much more positively and by the end of the day, the thing that had been annoying me the previous couple of days, was almost forgotten.

The power of our attitude toward the day, really can change our experience of the day ahead.

Are you a coffee or tea person?

When I was very much younger, living with my parents, I used to drink milky tea. Pretty much everyone in the household did so it seemed the natural thing to do. Then for some reason, at I can’t remember what age, I decided I didn’t like tea anymore.

I remember working for a firm of accountants who had pods of tea, coffee or hot chocolate, that you tipped into you mug then topped it up with hot water. The tea and the coffee came in with milk, or without milk options. I was still predominately drinking white tea then. We ran out of white tea, so I moved over to white coffee instead. It was tolerable. Then we ran out of white coffee as well, so I migrated to black coffee.

I’ve never really been a big fan of milk, or dairy type products, yoghurts and the like. It all tastes like gone off milk to me. It therefore didn’t seem too much of a problem to shift to black coffee.

Since then, I’ve never gone back to drinking milk in my hot beverage, or drinking tea. The traditional sort anyway.

When I changed jobs in August 1990 the new company had a Maxpax machine. Unlimited, short stumpy looking paper cups full of tepid watery stuff that didn’t resemble anything particularly. I do recall getting through somewhere in the region of eight cups of this black liquid throughout the average day, until one day I decided imbibing that quantity of caffeine probably wasn’t good for me. I decided to go cold turkey and just stop, substituting my intake with water instead. For the first two weeks I had the worst withdrawal headaches I can ever remember.

Over the years, I have refined my taste buds and consider myself a bit of a coffee snob now. We rarely drink instant coffee, and we now grind beans first thing in the morning ready for my travel cafetiere to take to work each morning. If we are at home, the coffee pot goes on for a good two mugs worth to start the day.

When I first started my current substantive post, one of my team kindly offered to make me a coffee and said they had decent stuff, promptly producing a tub of Azera. I turned my nose up and retrieved my travel mug and asked her to take a deep sniff of what I called real coffee. She never offered again.

I have never returned to tea drinking with the exception of going through a phase of raspberry tea in the afternoons but honestly found that a bit too sweet. After a bit of research I swapped that for mint tea, and now tend to have a mint tea when I’m at home or out and about in the afternoon.

Two mugs of real coffee in the morning, occasionally a mint tea in the afternoon, but the rest of the day its good old water. Unless its wine Wednesday of course (in the evening)!

Kindling some e-shorts

As I’ve been on annual leave this week, one of the things that I wanted to do was some reading. Trouble is, I’ve read all the fiction books that I’ve invested in and although I have some non-fiction to wade through, felt that being on “holiday” wasn’t the best time to read those.

I haven’t downloaded a Kindle edition of a book in ages. I much prefer the physical thing to hold, turn pages and even the smell. I am also a bit OCD when it comes to collections. If there are a number of books by an author I enjoy, or a series that run together, then I have to buy all of them, and read them in order.

My favourite genre is historical fiction, most specifically Tudor period. I’ve read all the Jean Plaidy, Phillipa Gregory et al. Having most recently thoroughly enjoyed Alison Weir’s series on the Six Tudor Queens. I have the final instalment already on pre-order. I happened to be rummaging around that well known online purchasing site and came across a series of Alison Weir e-shorts. These seem to be companion stories to the Six Tudor Queens series. There are 7 e-shorts so far that relate to the first 4 books of the Tudor Queens, so one can assume that there are more to come. For £0.99 each, it was a no brainer to download the lot.

I’ve gone through the precis for each e-short and listed them in order of which main Six Tudor Queens books they sit along side so that I can, as with full series, read them in order. There appears to be 1 that sits with Katherine of Aragon, 1 that bridges that with Anne Boleyn, 1 that accompanies Anne Boleyn, 1 for Jane Seymour and 2 for Anna of Kleves.

I have a whole day with no meetings or need to be anywhere else or do anything in particular, that I can give wholeheartedly over to reading these e-shorts. Give me a nudge when dinner’s ready!

Sunday rituals

Rituals are good for giving us the power to keep us grounded, stabilised and focused. They can provide a sense of confidence and security and can help alleviate grief and stress and can increase happiness. Doing things on a regular basis gives us a sense of familiarity in a world when there is so much going on around us.

Sundays in this house is very ritualistic. Fortunately for the two of us we can still go #bellringing on our own, so up and out first thing. When we get back home we split the chores. Something we agreed from the start is that I would either cook Sunday lunch or do the ironing but not both. He picked cooking so I get landed with the ironing.

Ironing is not my favourite pastime so I need some distraction in order to get through it. Generally this comes in the form of a vat of coffee, using a huge mug I’ve had for years. Because I don’t have breakfasts on Sundays by the time we get home from ringing I’m hungry, so have a snack of some sort with my coffee.

Then I’ll put a film or Netflix series on so that I can watch that whilst I’m ironing but it can’t be anything that requires too much concentration otherwise I’d burn his shirts. He’s busy cooking a Sunday roast by this point.

Then, after lunch I prepare my breakfasts and lunches for the working week ahead. This week I’ve made Biscoff pancakes for breakfasts 😋 and I’ll have ham rolls for lunch.

Every other week we have a family Skype and catch up with everyone, and sometimes I have either a meeting or virtual #bellringing session in the early evening.

Then its time to settle down. Often we’ll have cheese and crackers for supper, sometimes accompanied by a glass of Baileys. There’s usually a dodgy old film or TV show on that we’ll settle in to before wrapping myself in my sofa blanket and having a nap.

The simple pleasures in life and the familiarity of ritual allows me to rest and recover ready for the week ahead. Once I’m under my sofa blanket, do not disturb!

Overindulgence just for one day

Why is it over the Christmas period apparently its ok to eat food, snacks, drink tons of alcohol, and generally put on your own body weight in food again? Essentially, its one day. Essentially its just like having a Sunday roast. So why do we obsess over all the additional stuff?

Don’t get me wrong, I do it too. I love all the special foods that they only seem to bring out at Christmas. I could eat a whole plate of pigs in blankets. I can shovel food in my face until the point of feeling physically sick at the thought of another “wafer thin mint” (see Monty Python sketch in The Meaning of Liff).

I don’t tend to eat breakfast so Christmas morning was just a cup of coffee for me. We had to go ringing so wouldn’t have had time for much else anyway. When we got home, we had more coffee and 2 mince pies (seemingly extra large ones from the bakery stall in town) whilst we were on the family Skype. We had a 3 bird roast, enough to fed 4, and all the trimmings for lunch. We had half the meat for Christmas day and will have the other half for Sunday lunch. That was washed down with a bottle of Moet & Chandon that we’ve had for a while. Then followed by an epic chocolate orange cheesecake that I’d made. The recipe said that it made 12 servings. We’ve cut it into 6!

We have hampers of food that family members have been generous to send, and chocolates etc that people have given as gifts. I couldn’t even look at it. After such a lunch, I couldn’t eat again. I stuck to water for the rest of the day, and only at about 9pm did I have another mince pie (they need to be eaten before they go stale). Couldn’t possibly eat another thing.

I weigh myself every day. I know you’re not supposed to so that, but it helps keep me focused from day to day. On Christmas morning I had already put on 4lb in the week due to additional snacking and the Christmas Eve curry we’d eaten the night before. On Boxing Day the scales of doom said that I’d actually lost 1lb since Christmas morning.

I’m not going to obsess about going on a diet just yet as there’s too much food in the house to consume yet. But once the overindulgence is done it’ll be time to refocus, and be more considerate about those who were unable to have a hot Christmas day meal.

This week can do one

The feeling you have after a week’s annual leave, supposedly of having rested and regathered, hasn’t lasted long on my return this week. For some reason its been a real challenge, more so than usual.

So many of my team are either on annual leave or off sick, or off because someone in their household has symptoms so they need to isolate. Of course the knock on effect for those left in the office has been really difficult. The volume of work doesn’t decrease, and the type of role we have means that you can’t just leave it until the next day. Stresses and strains were really showing.

I have emailed all our services users to explain our predicament to give them the heads up that our service might not be up to standard. It has prompted a few to offer support where they can, albeit very limited, for which we are incredibly grateful. Of course there are others who are adding more pressure by phoning through monotonously, demanding that theirs is more important than anyone else’s. Well, no its not. Its all as important as each others because it involves patients, and one patient is no more or less important than the next.

In order to support my team as best I can I will come in on my day off to deflect some of the grief they’re getting, and I have also bought them all a prepaid coffee voucher as a thank you for their hard work. Neither of these things goes anywhere near to making up what they’re dealing with this week, but a simple way for me to acknowledge them.

Here’s hoping next week is a bit better. This week can definitely do one.

Fundraising Baking

My team are holding a socially distanced MacMillan coffee morning on Monday to raise funds. We do this every year in memory of a colleague who died a few years ago. I’ve done my bit by baking some chocolate and lemon cupcakes.

Its going to be a little strange holding the event this year, when we can’t gather all together. The team is split across two shifts in order to maintain social distancing. That means we’ll get to do it twice though. A coffee morning and a coffee afternoon. We usually hold a raffle as well to augment our fundraising.

For all the cake scoffing and prize winning of course the point is to raise funds to help support MacMillan cancer support. Lets hope we can raise a good amount.

His ‘n’ hers

So the weekly baking magazine fest continues. This week it was decorated chocolate cookies. The magazine always has a freebie stuck to the front and this weeks was plastic lettering cutters.

Mr was making bread at yhe same time so oven space had to be negotiated. His bread needed to prove and then bake at a higher temperature than my cookies need. Precision planning mode kicked in. He could prove his bread whilst I made the cookie dough. He could then bake his bread whilst my dough rested in the fridge. Then he could bake his bread whilst I roll and cut my dough, then turn the oven down to bake my cookies.

All sounds feasible. Until he gets side tracked by writing a report and doesn’t put his bread in the oven. My dough is still sitting in the fridge and getting harder. When he does put the bread in, my dough is almost too hard to roll out so I have to knead it more to warm it up enough to roll out. Then I cut out the cookies and put them back in the fridge to wait while his bread finishes and the oven temperature cools down enough for my bake.

Eventually get my first batch in the oven but they only take 10 minutes and his bread is on the cooling rack. Fighting for space on the cooker top to put the hot trays.

Then I start rolling out some fondant icing for the decorations and cutting out the shapes. They take up more space. Then I start using the plastic lettering cutters to cut out enough of our initials to go on each cookie. More space needed. Then the second batch need to come out of the oven. I now have decoration bits precariously balanced on the edge of the sink.

Fortunately the cookies cool down pretty quickly so I can start applying the decoration and our initials. We have 19 cookies each. There will be no secret cheating and snuffling of cookies.

Tested one with a cuppa before boxing the rest up. Just to be sure 😋

Not a good start to the day…. twice!

Oh dear. Yesterday morning I got to work, parked the car in my usual spot then walked the five minutes to the office. When I got to the office it suddenly occurred to me that I’d been able to unlock my office door without too much juggling of all the things that I carry in: handbag, laptop bag, lunch bag, coffee mug.

Oh my gosh, coffee mug, where is it? I usually put it on the roof of the car whilst I lock it and put the keys in my handbag. Did I put it on the roof and walk off? Did I put it on the roof at all? I know I brought it with me because I remember pushing the plunger down when I got to the roundabout. Oh dear lord.

So I trek back to the car glaring at everyone I pass in case they are carrying anything that looks like my coffee mug if I’d left it on the roof of the car. Get to the car, no visible coffee mug. Look through the window to see it still sitting snuggly in the mug holder. Thank goodness.

Fast forward to this morning. Usual routine is the alarm goes off just before 6am, I listen to the news and weather, then when they play the first song after that I get up.

Except this morning. I turn over and attempt to go back to sleep 💤. Then something registers and I’m wide awake thinking I’ve overslept and am going to be late for work.

I check the clock and clearly the song playing is still the first one after the news but I’m all of a dither now. Rushing through the shower, trying to get my lunch stuff ready and its bin day so I’ve got to put all the bins and recycling out. Then I’ll drink my first coffee.

Half way to work realise I haven’t taken my tablet so I’ll be wanting to rip my skin off later. I have urticaria and dermagraphism meaning I get itchy skin and take antihistamines every day to try to control it. Great, that’s going to annoy me know.

But I do have my coffee this morning. 🙂

I have several meetings at work today that I need to be on the ball for. Then this evening I will be running a virtual #bellringing session with friends and family.

I do hope for everyone’s sake that I get a grip soon. 🤪