How Morning Routines Changed My Life
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams.
Who looks inside awakens.
-Carl Jung
I started my first morning routine in 2015 and I can still vividly remember stomping around a Bristol park at 6.30 am on a dark and frosty December morning feeling cold and tired. It wasn’t long however, before my weariness shifted and I found myself overwhelmed with joy and with tears rolling down my cheeks. By the time I got back indoors I was invigorated and I filled my day with being exactly how I wanted to be. It was the beginning of a significant change to how I lived my life.
From that time on, how I understood my work and my personal life began to shift. To say that it has set me in a new direction would perhaps be an understatement. I credit a lot of who I am now, and the path that I have taken to get to this point, as a result of making time in the morning to make discipline, gratitude and reflection a priority.
My morning routine isn’t magic, and it doesn’t mean that my life will turn out the way I expect it to. What it has meant is that I now have a set of tools that I can utilise to help me to choose how I would like to show up in the world. As Carl Jung points out, it allows me to look into my own heart, and each morning notice an awakening.
Why the Morning?
Left to my own devices, I can find mornings really hard. I have a habit of lying in bed, feeling groggy and vulnerable and then I imagine the enormities of life and I feel ill-prepared to deal with them. A routine helps me to more quickly escape that unhelpful cycle of thinking.
Nobody expects anything of me early in the morning. The conventions of ‘the working day’ do not apply, which allows me to be unconventional and to focus on living an extraordinary life. I allow myself to consider the option of choosing my own path as opposed to following in the footsteps of somebody else's. The rest of the day may be spent sharing my energy with others but in the morning it flows directly back to me.
What makes it so great for me?
It shifts my mindset and my consciousness in the direction I would like them to be in. I give myself the opportunity to listen to what I have to say, and to find out how to make it happen. It is an example of practising self care and self discipline all at once.
It is small and incremental. It isn’t one giant gesture that is quickly forgotten, but a daily habit that builds upon itself.
It keeps my body and mind fit, strong, supple and healthy.
What do I do?
I will share some examples of routines at the end of the article. For now I will break down some of the key elements that I like to include within my routines. Nowadays I mostly do a bit of a mix-and-match of different activities, although sometimes I will return back to a more specific or structured routine.
The breath: I put this first because it is the most crucial and fundamental. All routines involve some time focusing consciously on my breath. The importance of using the breath cannot be overstated. It allows me to feel calm. Correct breathing (deep and nasal, using the tummy rather than the chest, with more emphasis on the exhale,) has some impressive health benefits, and placing the attention on the breath is a useful discipline for remaining mindful and not getting caught up in the moment.
I have included some further literature about why breathing is so important at the end of this article.
Check in: This simply means paying attention to how I am experiencing myself. It gives me the opportunity to figure out what I am holding onto from the past, or what future scenario I am worrying about. It allows me to realise what my energy level is like, how tense or loose my body is, and it helps to inform me for what I need to focus on during my routine and my day.
Gratitudes: These are fundamental to most of my routines. Gratitude brings my attention to all the great stuff I might have missed, or haven’t spent time considering fully. A gratitude practice almost always shifts my way of thinking and my presence of being in a new direction. I often remember a kindness someone has shown me, and I feel inspired to reflect that kindness back into the world. I also learn that I am grateful for the little common-place things that I do for myself, such as doing unpleasant chores, or making time to read.
I can’t think of a time where I need to practice being ungrateful. I can think of loads of times where it would be valuable for me to practice being more grateful!
I have included more about gratitude at the bottom of this article.
Vision of the future: I spend a bit of time letting my mind drift to how I would like my life to be. Sometimes I notice I’m already where I want to be and doing what I want to do. I then let my mind consider how I would like to be today: creative, reflective, determined, playful, attentive, tranquil. Training my mind to consider what a pleasant future would look like, allows me to pay attention to how I would like to live on my own terms and move towards what is most important for me.
By repeating this task nearly daily I notice that some of my imaginings are fleeting and whimsical only lasting a day or so whilst others are strong and stay with me. I am learning to move with the flow of it all.
Movement (and stillness): Moving my body will often shift my thoughts and my emotions. A walk, some yoga, some strength training, it doesn’t matter. I almost always feel different after some movement. Sometimes I stay indoors and do a little routine at home, if I am not feeling inspired I follow a YouTube video and somebody else can tell me what to do. Moving in nature often helps me to gain a greater perspective on my priorities, and it helps me to slow down, and pay attention to what is going on beyond my own bubble.
Movement has lots of other potential gains for my body, from improved digestion to strength and mobility.
Exercise also involves interacting with discomfort, this requires practising awareness and discipline. On the flipside, movement also allows me to then be still and relax. I believe that exploring this interplay between effort and stillness to have a lot of potential for personal growth and mindful awareness.
Lastly movement and stillness provide an opportunity to notice many of my senses: sight, sound, touch, smell. Whether I’m going for a stroll, doing some exercise or meditating, this helps bring me away from living in my thoughts and back into my own body.
Knowledge: I give a little bit of time learning a bit more about something that interests me. It might be a TED talk, watching a climbing video, reading an article someone sent or working through a book. I normally fit this in with my breakfast and a cup of tea.
Bringing it all together
Here are a few examples of some of the routines I have done in the past.
Walking routine
Approx 5 minutes of focusing on my breath
5-10 minutes exploring gratitude
5 or so minutes on “How would I like to be today?”
5 or so minutes on a vision of the future
5 minutes with a meaningful mantra. One of mine is “Life is play” another is “I am enough”
Indoor routine
Yoga video
Meditation practice (see resources at bottom of the article)
Cold shower
Very quick routine
All the exercises of “The walking routine” but journaling it all onto a post-it note. I then take a picture of the note and send it to my girlfriend. I sometimes like to add “What problem am I experiencing at the moment?” and “What is great about this problem?”
Getting out of bed is difficult - My bare minimum approach
In the summer I now find getting out of bed is normally quite easy. In the colder darker months, I can find it one of the biggest challenges in my day. To counteract this I tend to decide on what routine I would like to do before I go to sleep. I am a believer in following through on what I plan on doing. If I have made a well-reasoned plan I am much more likely to muster the energy to stick to it. Occasionally though I wake up and find that I am engaged in a mammoth battle. I simply want to stay in bed a little longer. I used to give myself a hard time over this.
Now I have found that I can do a deal with myself, and it is this: That I will get out of bed to make a cup of tea, and then I can allow myself to get back into bed if I still feel like it. I will use this time to sit quietly with myself and let my mind do what it needs to do, without criticism or shame or judgement about being lazy. I tend to find that this tea and reflection time is time well spent, and actually what I was seeking all along. Sometimes the best routine is no routine.
Staying in bed is amazing
It would be a shame to waste a perfectly good bed by leaping out of it every morning. Morning routines have turned lying in bed in the morning from something I did often and was ashamed of, to something I can plan towards and celebrate. I make sure I find opportunities where lying in bed in the morning can be special. Breakfast in bed or a book in bed help to make mornings sometimes that little more special. Having a morning routine has helped to bring this lesson back to me.
Laura and myself share some of our routine that kept us motivated during the 2020 lockdown
Notes and Resources:
Breathing:
“A life worth breathing” - Max Strom - Audible
Gratitude
How gratitude changes you and your brain
Vision - *I feel that it is important to add that when I talk about ‘future vision’ that I don’t buy into the nonsense of “The law of attraction” and that the universe is like a Santa Claus that hands out material gifts (such as a Ferrari or a specific amount of money, or a particular person) to those that have been really good and believe in it enough. Furthermore when I talk about vision here, it is not for the attainment of material things, it is more like a signpost that guides me towards what feels right and important for me. For more about this topic I remember that Derren Brown writes eloquently about it in his book “Happy”
Meditation practice. Meditation was too big a topic to squeeze into this blog. A wonderful resource for practicing meditation can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/hachetteaudiouk/sets/mindfulness-a-practical-guide-to-finding-peace-in-a-frantic-world the accompanying book also offer further insight into the practice of mindfulness and meditation
Sleep & Restoration - A major conflict to a morning routine can be the lack of sleep, or from a hazy knowledge about how to sleep and rest efficiently. “Sleep” by Nick Littlehales is a friendly and practical book for more about how to improve sleep. It is probably one of the most important things we can make a change to in our life.
