The Importance of a Morning Routine
It’s 5:51 a.m. I’ve already walked the neighborhood with a walking stick…because well, dark and coyotes. Read a devotional. Finished a chapter in a nonfiction book that is too much for my brain in the evening hours. Not trying to brag – just trying to make the point that I’ve learned lately this is the only way sh*t gets done.
A week ago, Kelly came to me with the idea to start waking up at 5 a.m. He’d been inspired by a podcast episode of Darren Daily on his 2 x 2 Morning Routine. In the course of our nearly six year marriage and through the addition of two (almost three) children, we’d fallen into a “survival mode” style morning routine. If you don’t have children, yet, this may not resonate as well with you – but I’ll try to paint a picture.
Once you have your first child your mornings, evenings and life as a whole are never the same. Now, that’s a wonderful, beautiful thing overall – but let me tell you, always waking to, “Mommy, mommy!” isn’t as sweet as it may sound. And that’s because they are not waking to tell you how wonderful you are…to thank you for giving them life. They are waking you because they need something. Because they’re hungry. Because they want to watch Princess Sophia, or because they have an imaginary “boo boo” on their leg that requires a bandaid ASAP.
And worst, if you don’t respond to the, “Mommy, mommy!” within five seconds flat, they will elevate that plea to a blood-curling cry and start banging all their appendages on the door.
Long story, short: this does not make for a peaceful start to your day.
For the better part of four years, we’ve been starting our days behind. On the defense. And it was spilling over into other areas of our lives: hindering our personal growth, goals and marriage.
Before I place all the blame on our children – let me also say that I’m (or was) naturally a morning person. Kelly is not. My mind and body basically shut down at 7 p.m. and we’re lucky if I can fake a conversation between binging a Netflix series until 9:30 p.m. Kelly comes alive around the same time I retire to bed. It’s more common, than not, that I feel him crawl into bed beside me at 1-2 a.m. after he’s A. Watched a double-header or B. Caught up on emails and work projects.
These are not the habits of a healthy marriage. Engaged people, write this into your vows: “I shall make every effort to fall asleep beside you at night.” Kelly would agree. But we weren’t doing what we needed throughout the day to make that happen.
I could labor over all the negative affects of waiting until the last minute to crawl out of bed every morning, but onward and upward!
Kelly came to me with his new early morning routine and before he could explain the tiniest fraction of his reasoning, I was screaming, “I’M IN. I’LL DO IT WITH YOU.”
Our Morning Schedule
5 a.m. – Alarm goes off. We pop right up. Not naturally, with smiles on our faces. But we force ourselves out of bed, because we know the end result is worth it. I could’t imagine attempting this alone – there is absolutely strength in numbers. If you can get your partner on board for early morning wake-ups, I guarantee you’ll have a greater chance at success.
Side note: yes, we’re waking up together. But these first 2-2.5 hours of our day are not spent holding hands and moving as one. We have similar, but different routines, that we work through individually.
5:08 a.m. – I walk out the door. I wanted to be specific with the 5:08 to show you that we’re truly POPPING out of bed, brushing our teeth and getting after it. If you hit snooze just once, you’re done. I head out for a 20 minute walk, and Kelly makes a cup of coffee and sits down on the couch to read his Bible and/or morning devotional.
A successful morning routine will have strong roots, with a little flexibility. After pregnancy, I’d love to turn this 20 minute walk into a 30-45 minute run.
5:30 a.m. – I’m home and sit down at the kitchen counter with a bottle of water, cup of coffee, my daily devotional and a nonfiction book. Forcing habits before the sun is up. If I’m not intentional with water I can literally go days on a couple sips. I read one devotional and about 20 minutes worth of a book. This has fixed the whole, “I want to read self-help style books, but not when my brain is fried before bed” issue. I read nonfiction in the AM and cheesy fiction before bed.
At this point, Kelly grabs the doodle and heads out for a walk. Remember, we have two kids sleeping upstairs, so we need to stagger our morning activity. Kelly’s focus is more on just moving his body to kick-start his day – he doesn’t use this time for a full-blown workout….he’ll squeeze that in later.
6 a.m. – Kelly walks back in the door, and sits down on the couch with this computer. I head to my office around the same time and we both set to work on our two biggest, work-related tasks of the day. I spend the next hour writing blog posts. The single most important thing for my business, and the one that gets neglected most. I can’t write with children screaming in the background. I can’t write with Instagram DMs piling up. It stresses me out.
7 a.m. – I head upstairs, pop in the shower if necessary and make our bed. Open our shutters. The sort of tidying up my brain needs to feel like our house is in order. I’ll come back downstairs and do the same in the kitchen – unload the dishwasher, start prepping the girls’ lunches if they have school or camp. That sorta thing. It may seem small, but having these things done before the girls wake makes me a better mom. It means once they’re downstairs I’m focused on them – not a small, but ever-growing list of tasks.
7:15 a.m. – At this point we hear 1 of 2 things: giggles or cries. The girls usually wake between 7-7:30, but we operate on the “OK to Wake Light“. The light turns their favorite shade of pinkish-purple at 7:30 a.m. and until that baby shines, mom and dad ain’t opening the door.
7:30 a.m. – “MOMMMMMMMY. DADDDDDDY. The light is on!!!” I walk upstairs for my morning kisses and doves might as well fly over head when I open the door. That’s how different my headspace is.
2.5 glorious hours later I’m ready and energized to handle all their demands. I’m more patient when it takes them 15 minutes to decide between juice or milk. I’m calmer when breaking up a fight around who gets to pick the morning cartoon. Having time to myself to accomplish things that are important to ME, truly makes me a better mom, wife + person as a whole.
Tips to Tackle Your Morning Routine
Commitment
Promise yourself you’ll give it 110 percent for at least 2-3 weeks. If you’re used to crawling out of bed at 7 a.m., you can’t expect your body to magically transform and love waking up at 5 a.m. just because you told it to. Heck! It may never love waking up that early. Force yourself up and with time the reward will be worth it.
Prep
You can’t wake-up at the crack of dawn and continue to be a night owl. We make a point to do everything earlier now, allowing us to crawl into bed TOGETHER by 10 p.m. We spend the last 15-30 minutes of our day reading (HELLO CHEESY ROMANCE NOVEL) in bed to set the tone for the following day. You know you’ve read that screen time up until the moment you close your eyes is like the worst thing for you, ever.
Another positive that has bubbled over from our new routine is we’re eating dinner as a family. Before, we’d throw something together for the girls around 5:30 p.m. when they started asking for their 47th snack of the day, and find ourselves waiting until after they’d gone to bed to even discuss what we were going to eat. Our new routine has made me be more intentional with prepping meals that we can all eat around 6 p.m. – which is key if we’re going to be in bed before 10.
Plan
The night before we both write down our two most important work-related tasks for the following day. We lay out clothes for our walks. Kelly finds Dumbledore’s leash that the girls like to leave in unusual places after playing “doggy”. That sort of thing. We do anything that will make us move through the wee hours of the morning easier.
Guidelines
If I woke up and started scrolling Instagram I’d follow into the abyss. If I had a million windows open on my laptop when I sat down to write, I would spend $200+ online shopping before a single sentence made it into this blog post (slight exaggeration, but you get it). Unless, “catch up on Instagram DMs” makes it into my top two work-related tasks of the day, my phone stays in the other room. Same goes for whether or not I even open my Gmail.
Last fall I had a particular anxious season and Kelly wrote this quote on our studio roller. The other day I heard some version of a popular quote that stuck with me: Be the kind of woman who shows up for her life.
I’m totally pumped up by words like these. I often try to fit more into my day than humanly possible, which is a topic for a complete book, let alone a bog post. BUT, waking up early is one small thing I can do to achieve more, and combat anxious feelings along the way.
When I casually mentioned we were waking up earlier in my Instagram stories, y’all RESPONDED. I hope this was helpful for those of you that feel the pull to do the same. It’s not a perfect science. You have to make your own routine…but if you do, I have exactly zero doubts you’ll regret it. And if you have an anxiety about all a day can bring – I’m confident adding a few extra hours to it will only help.