Here's a little secret: Your good day starts the night before. Respect your body and its needs and it will thank you with more optimal function that allows better living.
Intoxication is only slightly younger than our species, so you will find no judgment here if you're getting lit to let some steam out. Have a wonderful time, but respect your body and meet your needs. Eat a real dinner, drink water, and go to bed before you're too tired to think. One day you will start feeling the difference this makes, believe me. Youth is not eternal, but the availability of increased vitality sticks around quite a while if you have the will to invoke it again and again.
Wake up earlier, drink more water, and give yourself 5-15 solid minutes before any duty. Serve yourself first so you may be of use. A lot of you probably have a morning ritual, but this is pre-coffee. Meditation and some kind of exercise are the lattice on which you can grow a better experience. Making the time will pay for itself. It gets better.
Do yoga even if it's one pose you suck at and even if you think it's Starbucks Mall Girl Stuff. That's just the version for sale. The thing itself is older than cities. I'm still mastering not falling over during Sun Salutaions but thankfully my wife gets me doing it anyway. Actually kinda sucking at it is great because you have to focus to avoid mild injury and "monkey mind" shuts off. Meditate in whatever form you can hang on to long enough for stillness to arrive. It can be as easy as counting breaths. Totally portable and no props.
It's very easy to dismiss these things as privileged fluff, but remember this: we are all warriors in the struggle to break character, individuate, and live. Intelligence and health are swords of the spirit. They must be honed, folded, and sharpened constantly. Ask any athlete or engineer if they went straight to the top of their field and they're likely to tell you that they got to great heights by climbing the hill of bones rising from the mass grave of their failures.
The Verbal Hologram/Mesmermachine won't stop telling you that it can sell you success. It's not there to help you with anything but spending money. You just have to stop listening to its desperate howls and climb at your own pace toward the foothold you desire. Then on to the next, and the next, and so on.
We are either growing or wilting from moment to moment, and the determination to transcend the haze of the Hive is the purest fuel we can burn. To do that, we must forgive ourselves for the neglect and self-abuse that is labeled normal and get back at the controls of the game. The point of finding practices for body and mind is to maintain the means by which you shape reality through choice and action. To be frank, if you treat yourself like shit, your world will swiftly become a latrine.
Self-care is heavily marketed by people who aim to sell you their version, but you can and must define what works for you. Being functional is not a luxury and you don't need special gear or magic phrases or a steady flow of disposable income to ratchet your life up in doable increments. You owe it to yourself to make the time to reboot one of the best computers nature ever developed and to take care of the most adaptable vehicle for this kind of consciousness we are aware of.
I suggest we imagine a world where everyone is doing and giving their best. Will everyone show up at that roll call? I don't expect it. But you can make the shift with minimal effort, so why settle for the standard script when that movie sucks and everybody dies frustrated and sad, soul-first before the body burns up?
I'll pass, and so can you.