Hi ,
Last week we had a really juicy conversation in
The Happy Squirrel Collective all about morning routines. You've probably heard of The Miracle Morning or the 5am Club, both which (suck, in my opinion, and) tout greater
productivity if you can get your morning "right".
There has only been one time in my life where I had a useful morning routine. I would get up, do some bodyweight exercises, write for an hour (I was working on an e-book back when those were a thing), then I would have breakfast and go about my day.
That was when I:
-didn't have a job I had to go to
-didn't have a partner at home (he was working away)
-didn't have a pet
-didn't have a kid
Now my morning routine is:
-wake up before I'm ready
-get a kid ready for school
-walk to the bus
-get home and relish in the silence for a few minutes before starting my day
So about halfway through our call, as the group was talking about what they would love in a morning routine, someone asked "Do you have one Stephanie?", and I had to answer "heck no, mine is a shitshow!"
Because THAT is what I believe about morning routines. Sure,
they would be nice (maybe?). But also, it's a completely unrealistic expectation for many people. It's especially unrealistic if you don't want to get up before everyone else in your house is awake.
So it isn't that morning routines are bad, or good, or that they are helpful or not. It's about the fact that for many people they feel like a "should" and they feel guilty or bad about themselves when they can't do them
consistently or perfectly.
Which is why I always ask - what works for YOU?
As we started to shed the "shoulds" in our conversation, we realized two important things about morning routines.
Morning Routines are a Way to Express Your
Values
We realized that the desire to exercise in the morning would maybe make us more productive, but it also represented "health" or "vitality" as a value. The desire to have unstructured "me" time represented a value for "space" or "calm". And the desire to stay in bed having coffee with the cats was really about "comfort". So morning routines became less about productivity and more about starting our days
in alignment with our values.
Quickly we realized that could also apply to evening routines - how fun!
Consistency is a Trap
Aiming to do the same morning routine every day felt boring and rigid, so we talked about other ways to make it feel better.
First, we agreed that measuring success daily was the wrong approach, but we could look back on a week or a month and decide if it felt good or not. That was a better cadence for consistency.
Second, it became apparent that if we listened to what our bodies need, that would give us the true scale for consistency. If our bodies wake up stiff, listening to that would make us more likely to exercise. If our bodies are
overstimulated, we could honour that with spacious time. If we feel creative, journalling could be nice. So the consistency we decided we would like to have is to consistently listen to our bodies.
To end, I wanted to also say that it's okay if your morning routine changes over time. I wrote this article back in 2022 about morning routines and my life was very different back then! It's okay to experiment, try something, and then try something new.
But please share, how do you think about morning routines? What did we
miss?
And if you'd like to be part of more of these conversations, we'd love to have you in The Happy Squirrel Collective. Our next call will be all about staying on top of the numbers in your business (and you know I'm not going to give you a super rigid structure to follow!)
Have a lovely day,
Stephanie Wasylyk