Sunday Rituals To Set You Up For A Good Week

 

One way to prepare yourself for a good week is to establish some good Sunday habits to make you feel rested, recharged and ready to tackle Monday. 

Here are a few ways to get started.

 

 

1. Plan and Schedule the Next Week.

We love a good planning session - and we obviously love a good list. So steal an hour to get organised for the week with a weekly planning session. Whether you prefer to plan on paper or digitally, having all of your ducks in a row can make you feel really prepared when going into a new week. Start with a To Do list and get everything that is on your mind emptied onto paper from chores and appointments to workouts and even time with friends - and of course something for you. Then schedule things into your calendar to make sure that they fit - and if they don’t, recognise that you need to either postpone, delegate or get rid of tasks. 

2. Meal Prep For The Week

Meal plan, do a food shop and prep some meals. We spend a lot of time during the week trying to work out what to cook - and what we need from the shop, which is in essence highly inefficient. We often end up wasting food, spending more money on extra ingredients and even giving up and grabbing another takeaway. Stocking up on good food and planning your meals for the week will save you both money and time, as well as brain power, freeing you up to focus on other things. If this still feels like a chore in the beginning, why not try a meal subscription service? We’re big fans of Mindful Chef, ideal for busy people who still want to eat well.

 

3. Plan Your Outfits For The Week.

Another thing that we all waste time doing during the week is working out what to wear each morning. So having a plan of what to wear each day - or at least outfits for a few weather variants pre-planned would be helpful. It also may prevent you from shoving on the same outfit each day (unless of course you want to pull a Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg and create a uniform for yourself to eradicate this daily decision from your life entirely, but some of us like to play with looks) So, if your laundry is done and everything is folded/ironed/steamed/hung, then you may as well also just loosely plan what goes together so that you don’t have to think too much each morning about what to wear.

 

4. Counter the Sunday Blues.

We all get the Sunday night scaries, whether that is because we haven’t made the most of our weekend or because we don’t feel ready to face the week ahead - be it because we’re in a career that we don’t love, or because we want to spend more time with our families or doing other things that we love. But rather than focusing on the negatives of the weekend ending why not focus on the positive of what’s to come - the catch up with colleagues over coffee, the feeling of relief and achievement after a big meeting that you may be dreading or even a midweek dinner or class with friends. Ensure you have good things planned and try to focus on the good things to come instead of reliving the same old dread each week - in most cases, it’s never as bad as we expect anyway.

 

5. Go To Bed Early.

It’s always good to go into a productive week feeling well rested and a key way of doing that is to wind down properly on a Sunday evening. Getting quality sleep usually helps you to handle more stressful situations that you may encounter in the week. So set yourself up for success. Take a nice long bath or shower. Tidy up and get ready for bed. Avoid electronics and screens too late. Maybe find a book you’ll look forward to picking back up as you get into bed. Magnesium or similar sleep supplements have been proven to help your body to relax if you find it difficult to head to bed earlier. Still struggling to get a good night’s sleep? We’ve got more good sleep hacks for you here.

 

6. Start Something New

If you are planning on starting a new habit - be it a morning walk or smoothie habit, maybe a weekly yoga class or daily journaling session, or even meal planning or a new craft, make time to start it on a Sunday. This will remove the pressure from Monday, when you’re already trying to cram a lot into a day. It will also send you into a week with hope and a level of achievement. Seems like a win-win to us.

 

7. Steal An Hour Just For You.

We’ve very much here to encourage you to put you on your 'To You' list at all times, but sometimes you just have to steal an hour on a Sunday that is all for you. So whether you book in for a treatment, go for a walk with a podcast in your ears or even curl up to watch your favourite TV show all alone, each of these can feel like the ultimate luxury if you’ve got a busy lifestyle. If you can manage this on a Sunday, then you’ll feel calmer and more recharged going into a new week. So make time for yourself to reap the benefits.

 

8. Have Fun with Your Family.

Making family time routine is a great way to ensure that everyone spends time together in an otherwise hectic week. If you make a Sunday morning beach walk, lunchtime roast or game night a non-negotiable (albeit a fun one - no need to force everyone!), then you’ll find it not only the perfect way to not only give everyone a little freedom throughout the week, but also create a lovely routine to stick to - and look forward to -  when everyone’s busy.

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