Morning Routine Mastery
Picture this.
Your alarm goes off. You hit the snooze button and lie cozily snuggled in bed, until that familiar cadence on your phone urges it’s time to get up. You seriously contemplate hitting snooze for the third time but think better of it knowing your whole day will be thrown into a tailspin if you don’t move now.
But what if hitting snooze and worrying about your calendar running the show wasn’t your reality anymore? While we can’t control the world, we can control how we start the day. How you start your day sets the pace for how you live your day. And that’s where having a powerful and positive morning routine can shift your thoughts and behaviours towards having the kind of intentionality that leads to success in all aspects of your life.
From a health perspective, having a morning routine allows you to tackle the things that make the biggest impact on your wellness first thing - so you don’t have to remember to try to do them later. That’s a huge plus.
A routine will help make change and habit stick and can be an enormous gift in terms of physical health, emotional health, clarity, focus, and stress resilience. Also, willpower is highest in the morning so it’s the best time of day to do those things of greatest significance.
If you think you don’t already have a morning routine, you do…it’s just a question of whether you run it or it runs you.
So what does a morning routine look like?
The good news is that a morning routine can shift and evolve over time. We'll always be subject to life changes so your morning routine has to be flexible. Showing up is the win that you can check off every single day. Also, having a deeply ingrained routine will make any unexpected pivots easier to manage like let’s say….a pandemic.
You can play around with the pieces of your routine and you’ll still feel like you’re starting your day with intentionality and purpose. It’s about waking up and deciding you’ll start your day with the things that serve you best. Prioritize the things that you know serve you most but that you tend to run out of time or energy for as your day goes on. Saying these things are part of your morning routine means that you’re prioritizing them to the degree you ensure they always get done while looking for those most impactful to your physical health, mental health, mood, grounding and centeredness.
Now is the time to start - who couldn’t use a little more focus, productivity and stress resilience, right?
Here are a couple of tips to get you started:
Make a short list of 3-5 things if you could accomplish you’d feel like you were starting your day off right.
Be realistic about the time you have in the morning to get those things done. How can you carve out time to make them happen and how much time would it take? Is it reasonable to find that time?
Look at the items on your list and think about if you can add these items to the routine you already have. For example, if a gratitude practice is on your list, can you practice gratitude while you’re in the shower?
The point is to meet your goals while suiting your schedule and still feeling good. Don’t stress yourself out or make your tasks so lofty you set yourself up for failure before you’ve barely set your feet on the floor. Relax, this should be a rejuvenating, peaceful experience.
Finally ask for help if you need it. That might be asking your partner to watch the kids while you meditate for 10 minutes or asking for flex time on the job. It’s not selfish to prioritize self-care.
If you don’t have any idea where to start, download my offering 5 Minutes To Wellness. It has some specific habits you can begin to incorporate as well as prompts to help you design the tasks, behaviours and practices that will help you feel your best throughout your day.
