So the day has gone by and you’ve worked your heart out producing a product and/or serving people you love. Now do you just sit on the couch watch the game or watch a TV show and veg out for the rest of the night. You earned your time of rest no doubt. Could you make better use of your time?

If you were to do that it’s understandable you’ve spent energy throughout the day so you probably feel fatigued in the body and the mind.

Why not reward yourself with a night of relaxation and rest? Well, our night should include some relaxation and rest, but it also include preparation for the day to come. The preparation we put in for the day to come will help to dictate our effectiveness and usefulness for the next day.

To lessen stress the next day, you must wake after having put a well planned evening routine into place. This way you can deliver your product or service to those you love locked in on cultivating your seed / mission statement, our harvest / vision statement, your cultivations / values.

The stress or calm you bring from that morning can easily get brought into the day causing the day to be more anxious and less effective in rendering the service or delivering the product that we otherwise would have been able to do in a calm and collected manner.

What specific behaviors can you engage in the night before to be your best in delivering the service of the product you are passionate about to the people we love?

Here is a list of a few evening practices to grow your evening practices beyond their current limits so that you might be able to grow effectiveness and go beyond your current limits in behavior and belief:

• Iron and put your clothes out for the morning. Thinking through what to wear can cause you to exert mental energy. To find the right thing to wear you need to figure out which clothes match, which clothes have a tear or a little hole, which clothes have a stain on them, and/or which clothes has buttons missing. But if you put your clothes out at night, although you may be tired from the day’s activities, then we’ll be able to take care of the maintenance and selection of your clothes without the pressure needing to be somewhere at a certain time. This practice will help you enter into the day with less to do and a more calm assurance with you mind focused on growth.
• Drink a glass of water. For me eight gulps of water is equivalent to about a cup so before bed I drink 8 to 16 gulps of water so that I can hydrate my body before an extended fasting period of sleep. Hydration is always key for because you may feel lethargic when dehydrated. When you hydrate before bed sure you might have to take a trip or two to the restroom at night but when you wake up in the morning your body and mind will feel more rejuvenated.
• Show someone or something you care. If you have loved ones in your home, a pet, or even a plant spend some time giving them/it attention. Giving a hug and/or a kiss will activate your social and emotional wellness. Tending to a plant will do the same. These actions will help you to remind yourself the real reasons why you live, work, and be.
• Meditate and/or pray each evening. Night time is when your mind is vulnerable due to fatigue. It may wander into projections about the future and rumination on the past. Often those thoughts are negative. So meditation and / or prayer helps you to notice your emotional mental state and bring awareness and calm to it.
• Review the day. A simple after action review works well enough. Nothing elaborate is needed here. Ask the questions “What went well? What went poorly? What will I change?” These three simple to answer questions can help foster your daily growth.
• Preview the day to come. Look at your calendar to see what’s coming up soon. For those events coming up, what type of preparation do you need to do before the event‘s day?
• Look over your seed statement, harvest statement, and your cultivations. Remind yourself as often as you can what you are attempting to accomplish in your life, while you were attempting to accomplish it, and who you are cultivating yourself to be in order to accomplish that work. This clarity will bring calm and energy simultaneously.

Our morning and evening routines are the most important parts of our day. These parts of the day are well within our influence. If we want consistent growth, we must observe a consistent and practical morning and evening routine.

Which routine resonates with you? What would you add to this list?