How to: Create a Morning Routine that Actually Works

AMY: Welcome to the Peaceful Entrepreneur podcast, where together we are finding peace in the process of everyday business ownership by improving one step at a time, how we think and what we do. I'm your host, Amy Stout.

How do you build a morning routine that works specifically for you? There are a million morning routine podcast episodes out there. I am well aware of that. And I want to do something a little bit different today, which is help you figure out how to build something for yourself personally and not just another here's what I do and you can do it too and have an amazing morning because no morning routine is one size fits all we're all different people. We all have different needs different personalities and we're all in different seasons of life and you will have different routines in your different seasons of life. So today I want to break down what I think you should think through in in order to build a morning routine that serves you in this specific timeframe and how to tweak that as time goes on based on your season.

So the first question you need to ask yourself is, what season are you in? So for me, I am working from home 100% of the time with my husband. I don't have any kids or pets. My focus in my business is building it, growing it, and thinking myself, training myself to think as a CEO. And I would say that my work is characterized by being fairly mentally intensive.

So I am probably working less hours, but they're more intense. Whereas before, when I was running the business completely just by myself, I was working a ton of hours, but not every hour was super mentally intense, if that makes sense. So that's my current reality, right? So what is your current reality of your priorities in life, how you're spending your time, and where you're at mentally? And that should lead you into asking yourself, what do you need in a morning routine right now?

So for me, because my work is fairly mentally intensive, and it can get kind of stressful, One of the things I listed as what I need in my morning routine right now is to have a gentle entry into the day. So I'm not a get up at 5am and go to the gym kind of person. That is just, I don't know if I'll ever be that way honestly, but I definitely am not that way right now.

So I like to have a gentle entry into my day, but it is important for me to set myself up well by nourishing my body and hydrating my body, very first thing, you know, set the tone for the day because if I don't start right away, then I'm not going to do it the rest of the day, right? So that's the second thing I need in my morning routine. The third thing I need is to wake up my body both physically and mentally. So I need ways to do that that are still gentle. And the last thing is I need it to be fairly simple because I try to make things too complicated. So wherever I can simplify, I tried to simplify.

So what are the qualities and characteristics that you're looking for as you build your morning routine? And notice that like this whole first part is like prep. Like you have not even gotten to the specific steps of the routine yet. And I just want to camp out for a moment here and just say that this is probably the most crucial part is figuring out what you need before you set out to, to draw up your routine, because if you don't get to the core of who you are and what you need, then you're probably just going to be trying a bunch of different random stuff to see what works.

So let's skip all of that and just get right to exactly what you need right now and hopefully hit the nail on the head the first time with the routine that you build. So after you have thought through those things, the next natural question is how do I accomplish that?

So thinking through the actions that are important for you to take to accomplish those needs. And secondly, after you figured out what actions you have to figure out the order you're gonna take those in because I feel like for me that is one of the most important parts of the routine is if I switch up the order of things it doesn't have the same effect.

So let me walk you through in a very detailed fashion the routine that I've come up with for myself lately. The very first thing is when my alarm goes off I tried to get out of bed as soon as possible and I am NOT one of those people that can just spring right up. I did that when I was in high school but I'm not like that anymore.

However, I do limit myself from lingering in bed by not letting myself get on my phone or even get on my Kindle to read in bed. I need to get up and moving or I'm just gonna have a sluggish pace for the rest of the day, right? So though I want to just lounge in bed, I do allow myself that on the weekends but I try to get myself up and the next thing I do is I make my cup of coffee.

Now this order is also important because if I just get up from my bed and move to my couch, I'm gonna be falling asleep on the couch. So I need to be up and moving for a minute to start to wake my body up, right?

And so making coffee is something that I enjoy. So it's kind of a fun first activity to do. So that's what I'll start with. And while I'm making my coffee, I'm also having a little bit of a breakfast bar of some sort or a piece of toast or whatever, because I've been hearing for hormone balancing reasons, it's good to not put coffee on your empty stomach first thing in the morning. So I try to eat a couple of bites as I'm making my coffee. Once the coffee is finished, then I settle down on the couch and I read my fun book.

And that is just my kind of gentle kind thing to myself to gradually wake my brain up and wake my body up. I'm not immediately kicking into being on my phone at all. Not responding to messages, not looking at emails, not looking at social media. I'm not on my computer. I'm not thinking about work yet.

I am slowly entering my day after I have had some time to read, which ideally is maybe like 30, 40 minutes, but sometimes it's more like an hour if I don't go in the right order and I'm just like really sluggish. But anyways, at that point, say around 7 45. So like I wake up at seven, do the whole coffee reading thing till about 7 45. Then I get up and I go ahead and get dressed for a walk. And I make my bed.

And I think I said this earlier in season one, way early on, but someone just said that it stuck out to them of just making your bed every day really does something for your productivity. So I'll get up, do my little house tidy. I always try and do the dishes the night before, so then I just have to put them away, fluff the pillows, make the bed, get dressed. So this is another step in gently waking my body up, getting it moving, right?

And after that, I sit down and I do my Bible study because at that point, I am a little bit more awake and again, still not thinking about work or anything yet. So my neck, it's, it's kind of like a next step, like it's a little bit more mentally intensive than reading a book, but it's still not like work.

So this is a great time in the morning personally for me to do my Bible study because I am more awake so I can pay more attention, right? I've had a little bit of coffee, had a little bit of time to wake up. So I do my Bible study probably for about 30-40 minutes because I'll do my study and then I'll do a prayer journal time.

And immediately after I'm finished with that, I fill up my water bottle and I go out for a walk. And I am very grateful to live in a beautiful area that I can just walk in my neighborhood and have a really lovely, gorgeous place to walk. I know not everybody has that, but I just walk right out my door and I have my water bottle and I have my headphones. And this is when I start gently entering into work mode because I will either turn on a productivity business entrepreneurial podcast or audio book. And as I walk, as I sit my water starting to hydrate my body, I'm entering into thinking about work in a nice, fun, happy, positive, gentle way that is going to also benefit me because it's adding to my knowledge and adding to my business ideas that I have.

So I really enjoy, I'll tell you a couple of the podcasts I like. I really, really, my favorite one right now is Hustle Sainley. I will link it below. And then I also really like the Biz Chicks podcast. I like Gold Digger podcast. I like Promote Yourself to CEO podcast. The Lazy Genius. The Next Right Thing. The Dreamy CEO. The Digital State of Mind. There's a lot. I love me some podcasts. But I will do that.

And then I have some books on hold at the library. I'm waiting for The Ruthless Elimination Of Hurry and Atomic Habits to come in as audiobooks. So that's what I have lined up there. But I will just, I would just get my walk on. I definitely go fast so I can kind of get my heart pumping and get a little bit sweaty and like really do like wake my body up. Like that's the, the main activity there is waking my body up and and that in turn wakes my brain up.

And since I've started doing this, I've started to feel like if I don't, then I really am not able to work as productively 'cause I haven't kicked into gear yet. The walk kicks me into gear. Kinda like some people say a shower kicks them into gear in the morning, walk does that for me.

So once I get back, ideally it's around 9 a.m. at this point and I can sit down and start my work. And I'll usually jump right in and check on my Voxer messages, my email, my Instagram messages, and just make sure that everything is under control for the day-to-day of running my business.

And at that point, if I'm ready for a break, I'll go ahead and cook a bigger breakfast. So I usually have a bigger breakfast like mid-morning, and then I'm ready to jump into like my mentally intensive tasks. And that is how I set myself up for success in the day.

And it's important to note that this was not my routine six months ago. This won't be my routine a year from now. Like it always changes. So the last thing that I just want to encourage you with is give yourself grace.

Ask yourself what you need right now and either set us at a time on a monthly or quarterly or semi-annual basis to reevaluate and re-listen to this podcast and re-ask yourself these questions and see if your routine is still working for you, but just do what you need in this season. And so something in the future that I'd really love to add to my morning routine that I can't have yet is a more outdoor component.

I really want a back patio. I don't have one of those right now. And so in the future, I'd love for like my morning reading and Bible time to be outside. So that's definitely a dream. I mean, that will come when I move and moving might necessitate a change to my routine.

When I get a dog, it's probably going to necessitate a change to my routine.

When I have kids, certainly things will change.

As the business grows, as my role changes in the business, certainly my morning routine will change.

So just a reminder that life is fluid and this kind of ties back into the point of this podcast is like, we're never going to arrive at this perfect state of perfection in business or perfect state of peace and happiness and balance in life.

Oh my goodness. Jenna Kutcher, I listened to her podcast yesterday. She was like, balance is a moment. It's not meant to be sustained. And I was like, Oh my goodness. Like it's so true. So just remember we're not striving for this ideal moment, right? We're just, we just got to do what's best for us in that time.

And I do have to take this moment to say, the reason that you are striving for that ideal perfection is because that is promised to us, but it's not promised in this life. Right? So what's promised and the reason we desire is because God has put it in our heart to desire the perfect world that he initially created for us.

And because sin entered the world, we can't achieve that anymore as things are right now, but God in his grace gave us a way to escape from how things are now and revive how things were intended to be. And the way that he did that was he sent Jesus, who lived the perfect life that we were supposed to, but we didn't, and took on the punishment that we deserved but didn't get, which was dying for our sin, and then did what we could not do.

And after dying for our sin and taking on the punishment and allowing us to be forgiven by God, he resurrected and proved that he had ultimate power over sin and evil.

And if we have a relationship and believe in him, we are promised that after we finish our life on earth, we will have eternal life with God and it will be what we all desire in the deepest of our hearts, which is ultimate happiness and peace. And we will achieve that ultimate level of all of those things. So it will happen. It will, but not in this life. So while we are in this life, all we can do get to know God, right? Spend time with him and look forward to what he has for us.

Tell other people about what he has for us. And we can through these healthy practices, through relationship with him, get glimpses and have a more peaceful life because we know what's coming. And then all we can do is just look forward to that moment when everything is truly perfect, which as a perfectionist myself is just what I crave more than anything. And I really look forward to that day.

So you didn't know you were getting a sermon today, but there you go. I didn't even know. I didn't even plan that. I'm just going to say I just, that was just God. Okay.

Anyways, I hope that you are encouraged by today's episode. I hope that you got a couple of things out of it that you might not have thought about before. And I hope that you are able to craft a peaceful morning routine for yourself after this.

So if so, I would love to hear about it. Feel free to send me an email or comment on Instagram, or if you are feeling especially kind and generous, I would so greatly appreciate a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And you could just leave a quick sentence about how today's episode encouraged you.

So thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. And I will see you next time.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We look forward to connecting with you more, whether that's on Instagram, TikTok, or our email list. We'd love to hear what you thought of today's episode. And if you have any additional tips to add, we will see you next week with more tips and tools to becoming a peaceful entrepreneur.

Bye for now.