How to Own Your Mornings
So many mums I speak to hit the ground running at the start of the day, then wonder why they feel exhausted and cranky by 9am.
Many of us just can’t seem to make a morning routine stick. So day to day, week to week, we struggle through our days, wishing we could get some control over this particular area of our life.
It’s often on our mind to make a change, but we feel too busy or overwhelmed to make it happen.
I was working with a client recently on her morning routine - when we first started chatting she was snoozing her alarm repeatedly, then scrolling through her phone while in bed, and prioritising her kids’ breakfasts over her own, leaving her hungry and tired as she headed out the door.
She knew it was time for a change.
It takes time to stick, but it is absolutely possible to get a new, ideal morning routine in place. So what are the easiest steps to get there?
1. Journal about your current routine
This is usually the most surprising and enlightening step to creating a new practice. We think we know where our time is going or where we’re going wrong, but until you write it down, it can be hard to quantify.
Pick up your phone or take out a piece of paper and write down your current morning routine in black and white.
Are you scrolling Instagram as soon as you wake up?
Are you letting your kids bowl in and wake you every morning?
Capture your current routine and from there you can move to step two.
2. Envisage your ideal routine
We often have an image for our perfect routine, but feel it’s just way too hard to ever get there.
My client found this exercise a lot more straightforward than capturing her current routine - among other things, she wanted to do yoga each morning, have a quiet cup of tea before her kids woke up and then eat a relaxed breakfast with them once they woke.
Write down your ideal end game routine now.
3. Add a new activity each week
Over a month or so, we replaced old activities with new, bite-sized and manageable ones each week.
Rather than launching into a 60 minute yoga routine each morning, we added five minute stretching videos to three of her weekday mornings (Yoga with Adriene, we love you).
She found it tough to make four breakfasts in the morning so grocery shopped for some easy options to have in the cupboard, and sometimes prepped breakfast (overnight oats, yum) the night before so it was ready to go once the day got underway.
Week by week, new habits were developed and the baby steps started to stick.
4. Review your progress
What’s so heartening is once you have your current and ideal routine noted down, you can chip away at the changes, then (the best part!) go back and review your progress once your new routine is in place.
To see how far you’ve come is super motivating and you can then apply this process to any part of life that’s not going as you'd like it to right now.
Set a reminder in your calendar for a month’s time to check your morning routine against your ideal!
What’s your morning routine like right now? Start with writing down your current and ideal routines, then add a new habit this week to get underway.
If you’d like more help with planning your whole day (and sticking to the plan), you can grab your free Daily Planner here.
