My Morning Routine

I am a huge advocate for creating your own morning routine that empowers you and puts you on pace to have a great day. I am a firm believer in the potential locked in to the morning that so many people leave untapped. I have been called a “morning person” and whether or not this is true, frankly I have no idea. I certainly haven’t always found it easy to be active in the morning and I have found myself in the past rolling out of bed into work. The unfortunate truth is that it took me a long time to find and start doing a morning routine which truly made a difference in the way that I felt. It takes experimentation and dedication.

First and foremost, my morning routine starts the night before. I prepare my coffee kettle so I only have to turn on the stove in the morning and I am in bed no later than 9:30p.m. When I get in bed I read until I fall asleep so I’m not looking at any screens which may make it difficult to fall asleep. Ideally I am reading by 9 and asleep by 9:30. This allows for about 8 hours of sleep as my alarm is set for 5:30 a.m. I try to adhere to this (only on weeknights mind you) because sleep is extremely important and will make or break you.

My morning goes roughly as follows:

5:30am: Wake up and get out of bed (my alarm clock for years has been on the other side of the bedroom or even out of the bedroom altogether)

5:35am: Turn on stove and sit down to stretch hips

5:40ish: Pour coffee and sit down to meditate (after which I tend to sip the coffee throughout the morning)

5:55am: Ankle flexion and injury exercises (I injured my ankle skateboarding some time ago; this will be adjusted for longer yoga or meditation once better)

6:10am: 30 minute yoga session

6:40am: Clean mat and shower

6:50am to 7:10am: Free time for myself. I have gotten this routine over the course of some weeks pretty narrowed down to finish by 6:50am where I then give myself about 20 minutes to sit down and do something for myself. This is one of my most favorite parts of the morning as my body and mind feel great from my practice, I am awake and before I go to work I can do something that I want to do. I think of it as the time equivalent as “paying yourself first”. Usually, I spend this time writing, working on my music (as to me my voice tends to sound best in the morning), reading or generally whatever.

7:10am to 7:25am: Prepare my morning smoothie

7:25am to 7:40am: Put on my work clothes, pack my bag (with my meal prepped lunch) and head out the door.

Now the reason why my mornings are so important to me and borderline sacred is this. After really being on this routine for a number of days, I recall one morning, while I was arriving to work, thinking to myself “wow..I feel amazing” due to how open my muscles felt from yoga, how content my mind felt from the meditating, how comfortable I felt knowing I already had given time back to myself and how not-in-a-hurry I was having my smoothie, lunch and bag packed while arriving at work even slightly early. The feeling was (and is) rather indescribable. I couldn’t help but think back to times earlier in the same year where I had thought I felt good because compared to then the difference was night and day. Those earlier days in the year I didn’t even know the potential of how good I could feel before work even began. Do I know now? This was a powerful realization and only fueled my desire to maintain my morning routine.