In this video, I answer a question he received from a Cadre coworker who asked the team this question during one of our meetings. "What is your first thought in the morning?" This one threw me off a bit, and I really had to think about it. Therefore, I share my thought process in the morning, healthy or unhealthy depending on the day... Also, the skills I teach my clients who struggle with depression and the mornings, a time that tends to be the most difficult for them.
In the morning, especially the first couple things you do, are extremely important for getting your day started. Often when you first wake up and you're not feeling great about yourself, you have this negative outlook. For you, that may mean facing your problems. This is just something that's helped me and something I've tried to instead.
Yesterday, someone asked me a question at Cadre, and I'll admit it threw me a bit off guard. Basically, this coach challenged me to think about what is the first thing I think about in the morning. And honestly, even as a therapist and someone who does coaching with people, I never really stopped to think about that for myself. Look, I'll admit that some mornings, there's probably not too many thoughts going through my head. I'll probably just wake up, roll over, and look at my phone, and maybe, depending on the morning scroll TikTok for, like, 1015 minutes till I'm finally ready to get out of bed.
But lately, I've really made a commitment to do things differently, because I know that in the morning, especially the first couple things you do, are extremely important for getting your day started. Now, I want to acknowledge that this time could be one of the most difficult times for people, especially those who struggle with mood disorders like depression. Often when you first wake up and you're in a place where you're not feeling great about yourself, about the world, you have this negative outlook.
It seems like all your problems crash down at once, and it makes it really difficult to get motivated to get out of bed and face the day. And essentially, for you, that may mean facing your problems. I find that when I'm in one of those states of mind, or I'm just having a hard day trying to get out of bed, what I do is I think about one thing, and that is what is the first thing I need to do? Because it's so easy when you start to have all those problems in your mind, piling up, thinking about all the things you need to do that day, it's overwhelming.
And especially because early in the morning, you're tired, you don't feel like you have the energy to do all these things. When in reality, oftentimes when you just get up and you have that sip of coffee, you start to come to, maybe you splash a little bit of water on your face, you start to feel a little bit more energized. And all of those problems or things you have to do just don't feel quite as overwhelming. Recently, there was a special that came out on Netflix. It was done by the actor Jonah Hill, and basically he was documenting the relationship he has with his therapist.
He talks about his therapist life, but also about how he helped him through a really difficult time and continues to help him. Now, this guy is a master therapist. He's known throughout Hollywood. He's helped a lot of people. He's an older man. He's extremely wise and talks and teaches in metaphors. One of my favorite parts of the documentary is when he talks about a skill that he teaches, he refers to as the pearl necklace. So essentially, it's looking at life like a series of pearls, and each pearl is just an action that we need to take.
Maybe it's a responsibility or a step to reach a certain goal. Now, look, there are many thoughts that you could have in the morning, and this is not a one size fits all thing. This is just something that's helped me and something I've tried to instead. Still, on my clients, there's a lot of great morning rituals and routines that you can do. But as a therapist, this is one I just wanted to throw out. And maybe you'll find that it'll help.
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