When you meet someone for the first time that initial interaction is incredibly powerful, for example…if someone rubs you the wrong way right off the bat, it’s really difficult for that individual to bounce back and get in your good books.

Similarly, if you meet someone and absolutely hit it off, that tends to have an equally powerful impact in a positive direction…the same concept applies to how you start your day.

It’s a first impression, it sets the tone for the next however many hours you’re going to be awake and so if it starts well, the chances of you having a really fulfilling day is so much higher.

As far as my morning routine goes, it is not the best or right or optimal for everyone…it’s just what is working for me right now and if that changes I’ll adapt and shift things around.

Also, this is just what I choose to do, so feel free to implement one of these things, all of them or none of them…whatever fits.

I wake up without an alarm and that’s usually between 4 and 5am on weekdays and oftentimes a little later on weekends. I wasn’t always an early riser, but especially since I’ve scaled back my alcohol intake, I’ve found that I love going to bed earlier and waking up earlier.

It’s worth mentioning that I’m usually in bed by 9ish on weekdays and a little later on weekends. Occasionally I’ll have a pretty late one like New Years for example, I think was up until 2 or 3am, that’s the exception not the rule.

First things first, coffee…I get that stuff brewing ASAP and I let it do its thing while I meditate for 10 minutes. I did a 10 day silent Vipassana meditation retreat over 20 years ago now and I’ve been meditating regularly ever since then. Episode #69 of the podcast outlines that wild experience if you’re interested.

After a short little meditation session I’ll wake my body up a little bit for like 3-5 minutes with some gentle stretching and movement. I’m not doing push-ups or anything like that, it’s more so reaching down and touching my toes, sitting on my heels and stretching my quads, doing some CARS or controlled articular rotations…

Basically I’m just getting the blood flowing for a few minutes being that I’ve been still all night long.

After that I journal for about a half hour, sometimes longer if I’m really feeling it or if I have something specific that I’m working through.

Journaling has honestly changed my life, I find it so enriching. It’s an incredible way to check-in myself and the beautiful thing about journaling specifically is that I find it so seamless to be completely honest about anything and everything.

It’s for me and no one else and so it’s just really nice to be able to provide myself with that outlet to touch on whatever is on my mind and my heart.

There’s a lot of gratitude mixed in there too because I’m a firm believer that gratitude is a game of noticing, for example…

We all have these amazing things going on around us every single day and so I think that it’s really valuable to go out of my way to notice and acknowledge them no matter how big or small, an example that I wrote about this morning…

Yesterday afternoon I was out for a walk and virtually every traffic light that I came to turned green and the walk sign lit up, I barely had to break stride. Tiny thing, kinda cool.

Especially because when most folks are driving let’s say, they often notice and acknowledge if they hit a bunch of red lights, but then don’t notice or acknowledge when they hit a ton of greens…

There’s this odd human bias towards noticing what isn’t favourable while simultaneously not acknowledging what is.

If you’re interested in starting to journal, feel free to read ‘how to start journaling’…in this article I outline exactly what I do step by step in detail.

After I wrap up with writing I dig into work for usually about 3-4 hours and this is when I take my phone off of airplane mode. I turn it on airplane mode half an hour to an hour before bed, I leave it outside of the bedroom and I flip it on once I’m about to kick things off work wise.

This is always my most productive work block of the day and one of the reasons is just because there are very few if any distractions that early in the morning.

So if your productivity isn’t exactly what you want it to be, getting up earlier and tackling your most important tasks first and foremost is an amazing way to go!

After that initial work block it’s time to move. I will do 1 of 3 things…a gym workout, a run or a walk (oh and let me know if you’re interested in an article outlining my current movement routine, I’d be happy to put that together for ya).

After I mix in some movement I’ll shower up, have something to eat and get into some more work…

That’s how Monday through Friday looks, I do switch things up on the weekends in the sense that I work less and I don’t meditate or journal. I’ll get up, have coffee, stretch, work for a few hours, move and then the rest of my day is usually wide open to just flow.

If you’re interested in implementing a morning routine, here are a few key principles that I think are helpful to keep front of mind…

One, your morning routine starts the night before via getting good sleep because if you don’t get quality sleep, it’s just way tougher to build momentum in the morning.

The second principle is that we always have time for the things that we do first and having a little morning routine that consists of your top priorities just makes it so much more likely that ya fit them in.

The third principle is that you can do just about anything that you want to do, you just can’t do everything that you want to do, meaning…

We can’t be in two places at once and so managing our time becomes a game of trade-offs, for example…

Staying up late and waking up early just doesn’t work, you can’t have both.

Losing fat and crushing pizza and ice cream everyday also doesn’t jive, there’s a mismatch there.

Saving money and spending it frivolously doesn’t add up, ya gotta choose.

Another thing to note is that you already have a morning routine, for example…

If you wake up, reach your phone and scroll for a while before getting out of bed, no judgement by the way I did that for years…that is your routine and the question becomes, is that working for you.

If the answer is yes, don’t change a thing, but if you find that you’d prefer to have a different first impression try changing things up!

Having said all of that, if for whatever reason you need to choose…I would absolutely recommend prioritizing getting the sleep that you need in order to wake up feeling rested and alert over having the quote unquote ‘perfect morning routine.’

Sleep is way more important.

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