Why You Need to Have a Morning Routine for Mind/Body/Spirit Connection
Let's start by talking about why morning routines are such a hot topic right now.
The main appeal of morning routines is that they basically inject stability straight into your day. Which makes your work easier… and your life easier.
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When you're busy with life, with your business, with your family -- your life can fill with busy-ness and lose meaning.
Taking scheduled time every day to re-center yourself and focus on your values and what's important to you is really powerful. It makes sure that you’re prioritizing the things you want to prioritize, and you're not just getting caught up in the grind of work.
Which as entrepreneurs is really easy for us. It's super easy to get wrapped up in everything that needs to get done and not make time for yourself.
But by creating a morning routine that focuses on your values and what's important to you, you're ensuring that you're keeping certain things sacred in your life.
You're making time for yourself.
You're staying grounded in the meaning and the purpose of why you're really here.
If you don’t have a morning ritual, it’s really easy to put off mindfulness and mind/body focus. So having one allows you to fully show up for the rest of the day.
And if you heard my recent episode on having a fucked up brain -- which I’ll link in the show notes -- you know that stability can make a huge difference in your mental health as well. Especially with online businesses, where you can feel like you're always online, giving your brain that space to reset and focus is really powerful for your overall health. It helps you to not build stress.
So without further ado… I want to talk about the morning routines of 3 of my favorite influencers, women who are insanely successful, to see what they’re doing to start their days off right.
Gala Darling
Let’s start with one of my personal favorite influencers, Gala Darling.
If you don't know Gala Darling, she's a best-selling author and speaker whose business is built around radical self love. She’s also a big fan of EFT Tapping, which, if you don’t know what that means, is an emotional psychology technique that balances your energy.
So, Gala Darling has written that she’s definitely fallen off the wagon with morning routines. Which is super relatable.
But in her morning routine, she tries to wake up at 7:30 or earlier. Does some gentle stretching and then half an hour of exercise before she showers and gets pretty for the day. And then makes a healthy smoothie that she takes with her vitamins as she starts checking her emails and getting into the workflow. She also takes time in the mornings to set intentions for the day in her journal.
And Gala Darling has said that what she doesn't do is just as important as what she does in her morning routine. Like, sleeping in until 10 or 11 just doesn't do it for her, because she knows that she gets her best work done first thing in the morning.
But the most important thing for her?
Start your day off by raising your vibration to one of joy and excitement. The only rule she has for morning routines is it has to feel good and it has to be focused on you, not other people. So, no Instagram scrolling. She recommends meditating, singing, working out, stretching, journaling, and a gratitude practice.
The best part is, you can change it up! Do whatever you want to do on that day. As long as you're taking time to focus on yourself and positivity, you’re starting your day off right.
Jasmine Starr
Jasmine Star is an entrepreneur and photographer who specializes in social media and branding. You might've heard her before on her podcast, the Jasmine Star Show, or seen her around Instagram.
Jasmine has a really incredible story about how she got to where she is right now, but all you really need to know is that she is super successful, and she says she gets her best work done first thing in the morning.
So Jasmine had said that she wakes up every morning at 4:30 AM. Which sounds really early.
But she knows she's a slow starter, and because she never hops out of bed like, ‘hey world, here I am!’, she knows that she needs a lot of time in the morning to just sit and be and get ready for the day.
Because what do you need to optimize your mornings if you're a slow starter? You need time to prepare for the day and do all the things that get you into a space of creativity and work flow.
For Jasmine, that looks like taking 45 minutes every day before the wheels start turning to have a cup of tea, take a bath, take time to stretch and do yoga, pray, and read. All the things that she knows help get her ready for the day.
Then she starts work at 5:30 in the morning totally ready to go, and it's perfect because that's when her mind is the most sharp.
And Jasmine has said that the first things that she does at work are the things that need her full attention, like writing podcasts and social media posts. Because that's when her cup is overflowing with creativity and focus, and she knows that that's when she can give the best of herself and the most of herself to her audience.
And this is the way she looks at her morning routine. Jasmine says: “I give myself 45 minutes of utter decadence. It is a gift and a treat.”
Which I think is a really beautiful way to look at it, especially if you struggle with morning routines or you're not a morning person. To look at it like you're giving yourself a gift is so powerful.
Gabby Bernstein
So the third person I'm going to feature is Gabby Bernstein. If you don't know her, she's a #1 New York Times best-selling author who Oprah named “the new thought leader for the next generation.”
I mean, don’t you want to be that successful?! I want Oprah to notice me.
Anyways, so Gabbi wakes up and practices transcendental meditation for 20 minutes. Then she does another 20 minutes of an EFT meditation. Then if she has time, she does an hour of exercise like yoga, pilates, sculpting class, or walking.
So her entire routine can last 1 - 2 hours.
And she does this all even with a baby at home! Because it’s that important to her.
I love these examples because they demonstrate that successful people have time for themselves - their mental health, physical health, and spiritual health.
I mean what’s that quote? If you don’t have 20 minutes a day to meditate then you need to be spending 2 hours a day meditating?
So let’s take a look at 3 main takeaways from these morning routines:
WORK WHEN YOUR BRAIN FUNCTIONS BEST
So one thing that I saw over and over again as I was researching morning routines is that the most successful people aren’t just working when their brains are at 100%... but they're actually planning their schedule around when they know they're going to put out their best work.
And that's the best part of entrepreneurship, right? A lot of times we can make our own schedule.
So if you find that you work best in the morning, or you feel really guilty if you wake up after 10 AM… even if it's hard, even if you're not a morning person… if you work in those hours when your brain is at its most sharp, you're going to fully give yourself to your audience. And you're definitely going to see the results of that in your business.
You might even find that you save time that you can now spend on other things, because you're able to be so productive in those morning hours when your brain is totally on.
FIND YOUR OWN FLOW.
One thing that really surprised me about researching this episode is how different people’s morning routines are.
And I think that’s really cool! It definitely fits into this idea that I talk about a lot of intuitive marketing, where you're doing the things that feel right for you and your business.
The big takeaway is that you shouldn’t let anyone make you feel like your morning routine has to be one way or another.
You can -- and you should -- make it your own and get rid of anything that isn't helping you. Find your own flow.
MIND, BODY, SPIRIT CONNECTION
The ideal morning routine includes your mind, your body, and your spirit.
We see this again and again when we look at morning routines that are really beneficial to the people who use them. They include exercise and meditation, or journaling, or eating something nutritious that gives your body what it needs.
That connection of mind, body, and spirit is a really powerful way to start your day fully aligned.
So if you’ve fallen off the wagon with morning routines before, maybe it's because this was out of balance. Maybe try bringing components of all three of those things mind, body, and spirit into your morning routine and see if that helps you get more out of it.
Because once you see that your morning routine is making a huge difference in your life -- it’ll become a lot easier to keep doing it.
So that's what we're hoping to get out of a morning routine.
And the next step of that is how you can bring those values into your business so that your life isn't compartmentalized, but it's actually an extension of your soul.
When you give yourself the space to align your values and your energy, you're not just fully showing up your business, you're also allowing your business to fully show up for you. You’re going to be much more likely to be in a place where you respect your business instead of resent it, and you're giving it attention and love, which would be a lot harder if you were unfocused, un-centered, and overwhelmed in your life.
So when you take this time for yourself you're actually allowing your business to reach its full potential, and you're really feeding your business’s soul.
So. What practices from this episode are you going to try?
I really love the idea of using EFT more consistently to jump start my day.
I’d love to hear what you think too, so head over to my Instagram @thedirtyalchemy - I’ll also link to it in the show notes - and let me know what you think!
I'm wondering how easy it is for other people to have a morning routine. Do you find that you fall off the wagon a lot? Or are you pretty good about sticking to a morning routine? Does your routine change over time?
And let me know if there’s someone I should have included here who has a really inspirational morning routine, because I would love to hear it.
