I have never considered myself a morning person.  It’s always been a joke in my family that I could sleep through anything, especially my alarm in the morning.  My husband hates when I set an alarm in the morning.  It’s loud, annoying, and goes off for far too long before I find it and turn it off. I’ve always been one of those people who sets the alarm for at least 30 minutes before I absolutely have to get out of bed, so that I could hit the snooze button repeatedly.  I know, I’m not really sleeping anymore at that point, but there was just something comforting about looking at the time and knowing I didn’t really have to get up yet.  I also used to set two alarms because I feared one of them wouldn’t work (I also obsessively checked them repeatedly before I fell asleep, but that’s a topic for another day).  Crazy, I know!  For example, if I needed to get out of bed at 7:00am to get ready for work, I would set my first alarm for 6:20am, hit snooze for another glorious nine minutes, then my second alarm would go off at 6:35am, and of course, I hit snooze on that one, and so on, and so on until I absolutely had to get out of bed to get ready.  Even with the entrance of my son in 2006, the hurried, grumpy, bleary-eyed morning existence continued. This was when I was a regular, 9-5 employee.  This was my life when I had places to be outside of my home.  This was way back prior to 2019.  But in reality, this was my morning existence for my entire adult, and probably teen, life.  I dragged and was miserable in the morning.  I rushed to get ready because I spent as much time as possible hitting the snooze button.  So I skipped breakfast, drank my coffee in the car, and was semi-responsive by the time I arrived at work.  

Can anyone recognize themselves in the scenario I described?  If you answer yes (or some other hurried, chaotic current morning existence) I want you to really think about whether this morning existence is working for you.  Really think about it.  Is it setting you up to have the day you want?  Is it preparing you for being the awesome, self confident, productive human you know you could be?  Until I tried different things, I was happy with this system.  I loved sleep! I thought this was the way it was supposed to be. I didn’t want to get up earlier, and I thought people like my husband were crazy for waking super early to get a workout in before work.

When I first left my 9-5 for our relocation south and became a self-employed entrepreneur, my mornings changed dramatically.  I no longer needed to leave the house.  And then at the beginning of 2020 I couldn’t leave my house!   My day was self-directed.  I didn’t have to rush at all in the morning.  I could leisurely get out of bed, sip my coffee while watching morning television and scrolling through social media.  But slowly as 2020 progressed, I began to realize that I was wasting my time in this leisurely existence. Is this what I wanted?  I began expanding my horizons and looking for more.  I started reading books devoted to self development.  I really started digging into habits and routines.  I needed to change my mornings!

So I started with getting up early. This happened gradually. My goal was to be out of bed by 7:00am. I decided I would track my progress daily on a visual, paper tracking sheet. I used a form I got from the book, The One Thing, by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. I tracked my wake-up time for 66 days, which was what the book recommended for setting a habit. At first I was far from productive at my earlier wake-up time. And I would be lying if I told you I was up before 7:00am every day. But most days, my feet hit the floor before the clock hit 7:00am. Progress. It was definitely not a straight line of reaching my goal. But there was progress. I celebrated that progress. By the end of the 66 days I was an early riser, and I was out of bed before 7:00am daily. And I still am most days…10 months later

Once I tackled my first goal, I added on to my morning routine. I wasn’t looking for an hour of activity. I wasn’t looking to finish a morning run followed by a cold shower kind of morning, although this might work for some, it wasn’t what I wanted for my morning. I added journaling, which I made myself do before I allowed myself coffee. This journal is where I set my intention for the day. I also use my journal to work through things I might be struggling with. In January I added a gratitude practice of starting my day writing in a separate journal about three things I’m thankful for in the present and three things the future me will be thankful for. This led me (due to the format of the journal) to add an evening routine of writing down three things that went well that day. The next thing I’m working on adding to my morning routine is meditation. I am experimenting with different formats and apps to see what will work for me.

It may seem like a lengthy routine, and you may be thinking “who has time for that?” But start to finish, it takes me about 20 minutes at the most. I actually don’t even leave my bed while I write in my two journals and do some form of meditation. I figured out that if I left the quiet comfort of my bed and went downstairs to start my day, none of my routine would happen. I simply turn on the light, reach for my journals and pen, and begin. After I get out of bed, my day starts. But it now doesn’t start with frenzy and chaos or with slow, dragging lethargy. Some mornings I go to Pilates class. Other mornings I walk my dog, but each day starts with some form of gentle, physical activity. Then I get to work building my empire:)