What do calm mornings look like?
When you ask, you hear words about being unrushed and private, yours. Instead, most of us get up and promptly do the opposite-phone in hand before we even plant our feet on the floor, mentally halfway through the day before we’ve had our first sip of coffee. A slow morning is not a result of getting up before dawn or of adding five new habits to your already-crowded days.
Oftentimes, a slow morning starts with something small, embarrassingly simple even-noticing the Ordinary Things you are already doing, starting with your hands full of a warm beverage.
The Forgotten Component of a Calm Morning
We are all prone to thinking of a calm morning as a matter of time, of having more time. Yet, there are a surprising number of people who have slow mornings and who are by no means less busy than their peers; they’ve simply integrated a pocket of attention into the day. What is needed is not doing more.
It’s doing one Ordinary Thing with attention.Coffee and tea are your prime candidates:You were going to do them anyway. Your only task is to show up differently.
3 —Tips for Slowing Down the First Twenty Minutes
- Claim back space before the noise. Keep your phone out of reach or at least face-down, while your drink is steeping or just until you’ve completed it.It does much of the heavy lifting.
- Engage the process. Watch the water heating or steeping, smell your coffee grounds or tea leaves, let the few minutes of brewing become a brief moment of mindfulness instead of downtime to fill scrolling.
- Use your senses. Hold the warm cup between both hands, pay attention to its weight, its temperature; take your first sip slowly. This may sound ridiculous enough that you’d never consider it. Which is exactly why it works.
Why the Cup Matters More Than You Might
Guess And here’s the part that nearly all the “Morning Routine” advice will miss: What you touch as you initiate your day has a way of subtly but profoundly defining the character of that moment. A plain white mug retrieved from the dark recesses of your cupboard says this is simply a container for liquid fuel. But a mug you love the look of and whose form is satisfying in your hand whispers, this moment is special. This moment is for you.
You have time for this. This is how many people who claim to value slow mornings become something of collectors of ceramic coffee cups. A handmade ceramic mug holds heat differently and has a heft that a mass-produced one cannot. And because each piece is individually thrown, its slight variations make it feel that much more like your own.
If you’ve ever wondered how to discern an Ordinary Mug from an Extraordinary one, it’s useful to know what to consider when buying a handmade ceramic mug-including the clay body, the way the glaze is fired, the balance of weight and fit in your hand, and its thermal properties. The goal isn’t an enormous investment of cash or some idealized vision of perfection. The point is to honor the small objects that punctuate our lives and to acknowledge that holding a morning in a cup you adore makes all the difference. Start Tomorrow You do not need to buy anything new.
You do not need an app. You do not even need to get up any earlier.
Just start tomorrow:
Put down the phone, make something warm and let it be-and then hold it in your hands and sip it slowly. Twenty minutes for your to decide how your day will begin.
