THE LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR

Read time - 2 minutes

Morning Routines

What’s your morning routine?

That’s a hot, and controversial, topic in internet culture.

Ever since there has been blogging and the internet, people have been sharing the morning routine that works from them. And the advent of the social media influencer has taken those routines to a more and more extreme level over the past decade.

Every day you log onto Tik Tok or instagram you can see a young, rich, buff, childless person describe their 3 hour morning routine that optimizes every second and makes them a superhuman performer who can bend the space time continuum to be more productive.

While there’s a lot of benefit to many activities to start your day, the constant barrage of things we’re supposed to do gets not only annoying, but flat out exhausting when we’re all just trying to cram in all the things we NEED to do in a day without succeeding, let alone all the thing we SHOULD be doing.

Like all of you, I’ve been tweaking and evolving my morning routine since I was a kid. My 3 year old Gabriel has a morning routine. It’s awesome - he wakes up when he wants, goes downstairs, demands his chocolate milk bear, and plays with whatever he wants to. Like mine and yours, his will evolve forever.

Also like many of you, mine has ebbed and flowed with different life stages. The past 15 years have included young kids in the house, with two working parents with big careers to manage as well.

Currently those young kids include a 1 and 3 year old - so my morning routine needs to be 1) efficient, and 2) flexible. No matter how I want to structure things, if someone had a bad sleep night or gets up early in a bad mood, it needs to be adjusted.

With my current status in mind, I’m very happy with my morning routine. I experience high energy, positive attitude and mindset, and optimism and a zest for life at the highest levels I think I’ve ever experienced.

Here’s three of the things I’m currently doing that are making the highest impact:

1. Hydration - First thing in the morning for the past 3ish years, I fill up a 12oz shaker bottle with Athletic Greens, a Liquid IV, and collagen, and down it along with my morning supplements.

   It’s a simple ritual that rehydrates me after a night’s sleep, starts the digestive system and helps my cognitive function. I also like the taste of the powder mix so it’s something I’ve grown to look forward to.

2. Morning sunlamp - One of the top recommendations from sleep experts has become getting morning sunlight on your eyes when you wake up. This regulates your circadian rhythm in a way that improves not only how you sleep the next night, but it also signals your system to wake up and start doing work.

   I live in Minnesota which has a late sunrise in winter, so I use a cheap sunlamp every morning that works wonders. I don’t use a whoop anymore, but I did religiously for 2 years, and using a sunlamp showed my most noticeable sleep improvement of anything I did during that time.

   It works - try it.

   It’s starting to get light out around 7am here, so through summer I’ll go outside and raw dog my sunlight while standing barefoot in the grass like the hippie I’ve always wanted to be.

3. Reading/study - First thing after having my liquid concoction is to sit at my desk (with sunlamp on) and read something from a book. Not on my computer, not on my phone, but from a book. Without interruption I aim for about 15 minutes.

   Doing this first thing in the morning allows my brain to wake up in a focused, undistracted way, and it sets me up for a much more grounded, calm, and enjoyable day.

   Additional practices that serve the same purpose as reading:

   • Prayer

   • Meditation

   • Stretching/yoga

   • Walking

   • Journaling

   Any of these serve the same benefit - starting your day focused, undistracted and allowing you to wake up in a smooth way without overstimulating your nervous system first thing in the morning.

These practices work.

Give one or all of these a try on Monday if you’re not currently practicing them, and try to prove me wrong.

Have a beautiful weekend,

Mike