#1: Start With Great Energy

7 Simple Morning Habits to Feel Calm, Clear, and Energised

Janine Lattimore

Apr 02, 2026

April Abundance Challenge

Listen to the 6 minute guided meditation daily in the morning every day for the entire month of April. I started 1 April NZ time, but you can start 1 April in your time zone or join in any time over the month.

Link to the meditation recording on Substack

Link to the meditation recording on YouTube

Link to the chat thread on Substack

Transcript

Checking your phone first thing in the morning might be one of the fastest ways to increase your stress.

If your days feel rushed, reactive, or overwhelming then your morning might be the real problem.

What if I told you that how you spend the first five minutes of your morning could reduce your stress, enhance your focus, and even improve how you sleep at night? In today’s episode I am going to give you 7 quick and easy things you can do to start your day feeling calm, clear and energised.

Let’s Start with Great Energy – welcome to episode one of the Living Life Well podcast.

Kia ora and hello, I’m Janine Lattimore, a wellbeing writer and coach providing information and inspiration to make daily health and happiness simple.

As this is episode one, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about starting with great energy, and particularly, how to start your day with great energy.

What You Do in the First 5 Minutes of Your Day Matters More Than You Think

How you start your morning sets the tone for the rest of your day. How are you typically starting yours? Do you direct it with intention, or react to whatever the people and environment around you dictate?

How are you setting your physical, mental and emotional energy in the morning? What are you giving your focus to because what you give your attention to plays a big part in whether you set your nervous system for stress or resilience.

Do you nourish yourself well before you begin to give out to the world around you, or do you get up and run on cortisol and caffeine - and sugar?

The majority of people launch into their day on autopilot responding to the agendas of other people through messages and emails, or the questions and needs of those in their household, or to the world through news bulletins.

What if you started your day with first tuning into yourself and what is important to you and then flowed out into the world from there?

What if you could take some small steps towards that?

It doesn’t need to take long. Starting your day well doesn’t require a complicated optimal morning routine. It may only take five minutes to ground and centre yourself in your own energy. That small shift can reduce stress, increase the clarity of your thinking and connect you with your inner peace. It can also decrease feelings of resentment, rush and overwhelm that you then try to relieve through things like comfort eating, quick fix shopping or a few extra glasses of wine later in the day.

There are a number of things that you can do nourish yourself first thing in the morning that only take a few minutes or make positive use of downtime like when you are driving. I have listed seven ideas below and one even gives you back more time.

7 Easy Ways to Reclaim Your Time, Energy, and Attention

1. Leave Your Phone Off

I know that suggesting that you don’t check your phone first thing in the morning may actually stimulate a state of fear in some people, but doing this can have a big positive impact on how you feel starting your day. At least don’t check emails, social media and general chat groups, and only check personal messages if it may be something truly important. This one takes no time at all and actually gives you more time in the morning and you won’t get stuck in a scroll loop. When you check your phone in the morning as soon as, or soon after, you wake up, then you are setting your life by other people’s agendas; their messages, their thoughts, their demands for your attention and energy, and their topics. One of the easiest ways to feel better in the morning is to leave your phone off until you have prepared for the day. It’s okay, the world will wait. We survived very well before the internet and mobile phones were invented, and grounding yourself into your own energy first can increase productivity.

2. Tune Into Your Body

When you wake up, before doing anything else, put your hand/s over your heart Chakra in the centre of your chest, breathe through your nose into your lower ribs and diaphragm, and notice what you are thinking and feeling from the perspective of your inner observer. Notice sensations in your body, notice thoughts come and go (if one feels important then you could write it down and then come back to noticing). Pause before moving into action for your day and let your body feel that pause. This gives you the sense of starting your day with mental space, rather than launching straight into action and rush.

3. Engage With A Heart Massage

If you haven’t engaged in self massage before then this may feel strange at first, but it can be a beautiful way to soothe your heart and ground yourself. I usually do this after I have had my shower in the morning. Put some moisturiser on your hands and torso and then place your hands on your navel (bellybutton). Breathe in consciously through your nose as you massage with the palms of your hands up from your navel, between your breasts and then out to the sides round your breasts and back to the navel like you are drawing a heart shape on your chest. Breathe in as you massage up the body and exhale as you massage back down your body. Repeat this 3 or more times and then reverse the flow of the massage coming up the sides and then down through the middle and into the navel. You may like to begin and/or finish with placing one hand on your navel and one hand on your heart and taking a few slow conscious breaths into your diaphragm. I understand that many people don’t like the way their belly or breasts look and may not want to touch them. If it makes you really uncomfortable, then don’t do this practice. However, this can be an effective way of beginning to love and accept your body more. If you find it hard to touch yourself lovingly in this way then what you can do is love yourself for whatever you are feeling as you touch your body and let it be okay. For example, you can love yourself for feeling ugly. You can love yourself for feeling disgusted. You can love yourself for feeling sad. You can offer yourself love and acceptance for whatever you are feeling and let it be okay to feel that. When you let go of judgement and resistance to your feelings whatever they may be, then it opens you to integrating and transforming that part of you. It seems simple but can be very powerful. I explain this concept more in Step 6 in my book 10 Steps to Happiness.

4. Prioritise Pleasure in Your To-Do List

If you write a daily to-do list, add in at least one thing for enjoyment or pleasure and aim to do it early in the day so that it doesn’t get squeezed out in terms of time and energy. You can also prioritize your list in terms of what is most important to you rather than what is important to other people. (If you are the type of person who likes to plan out their day then there are more suggestions of how you can do this in an empowered way in my book The Great Life Planner.

5. Use Commute Time to Breathe

About two years ago, I decided not to listen to the radio in the car when I was driving to work in the morning and to do breathwork practices instead. It took me a week or two to get used to the quiet of not having the radio on, but after a while that tranquil, breathing time before work started to feel really good in my body. I felt a lot more peaceful and centred coming into the work day. I realised how much the radio had been stimulating my nervous system and distracting my brain. Now I do this practice whenever I am driving alone. I enjoy that muted me-time when I am driving and it is an opportunity and reminder to me to practice breathing well.

6. Play Your Soundtrack

There are two aspects to this. For many people, music uplifts and energises them so just playing music you enjoy in the morning can help you start the day feeling good. The second aspect is to play your own curated playlist rather than listening to the radio or a random top hits playlist. The content on the radio is set to other people’s agendas and also contains advertisements and news which can move you emotionally in ways that may not be positive or beneficial. Be conscious of the soundtrack you are living your life to, and choose positive music that you like.

Small Habits Shape Your Self-Belief, Choices, and Productivity

Starting your day with good energy does not require you to overhaul your whole morning routine or add in things that will take a lot of space in what is often already a small amount of time to get ready in the morning. The key is to intentionally set your energy first. It is like taking a pause to acknowledge yourself. That small action whispers to your subconscious — “you are important and you are worth spending time and energy on.” When you consciously show yourself love, even in these small ways, it creates a shift; a new neural pathway; an opening for something new; the curiosity of, “if I can let myself have this then what else can I let myself have that I need or desire?” Often you do not need to even change what you are doing, but just how you are doing it.

Start with just one thing; just one small change in your morning routine. Keep it simple because that keeps it manageable and makes it more likely that you will maintain the change over time.

Lastly, here’s the seventh option for Just One Simple Practice that you can do this week to start your day with great energy

You can join my April Abundance Challenge. This simply involves listening to a six minute guided meditation every day early in the morning. The best time to listen to it is when you wake up because that is when you brain is still in a receiving brainwave state.

The meditation is designed to align your mental and emotional energy with abundance. It includes affirmation statements and energy alignment elements from Napoleon Hill’s teaching combined with elements to open your mind and body to relax and receive.

If you don’t know who Napoleon Hill was, he was an American author and pioneer of the self-help genre, and is best known for his 1937 best-selling book Think and Grow Rich.

If you want to join me in this, here are the details: