10 Step Morning Routine for Focus and Stability

“The way you spend your morning has an outsized effect … “ Benjamin Spall

While my evening routine really was just created this spring, my morning routine began more than 25 years ago. It began because I could not “do” my life unless I got my head clear before everyone else got up. As a young mother I had to have my self care covered before other people started having problems and demanding things. The early morning was (and still is) a precious time to me, the time that I lived as an individual, a spiritual being, a seeker of truth, a wanderer in the earth’s mystery. 

Back then, after 7 a.m., all bets were off and life was mostly triage. This reality became more intense fifteen years ago when in addition to my other responsibilities I became a school teacher. The chaos factor has gotten better as the children left home, but I still feel that the hours of dawn, particularly the darkness before dawn, is magical, and holds mysterious answers, if you listen. 

This is the list of actions in my morning routine.

1. Getting Up at 5 a.m. is my secret weapon. Some people get up earlier, but I find five a.m. is early enough. I wake up to the sound of my phone alarm. For twenty five or thirty years I used the same clock radio, but it finally broke. To compensate for the fact that I now use a cell phone, I put the phone on the floor, past the foot of the bed. I can’t hit the snooze, which generally helps, though 4 days out of 5, I wake up spontaneously. I made a rule that I cannot get up earlier than four a.m., and I’m not supposed to get up earlier than five a.m. on a work day. Just so I don’t start the day short on sleep. There is something sacred about the very first moments of the day. So I do not look at my phone to check texts or email until breakfast. I do not check social media either. 
2. I make a cup of tea. This is a very important step. I make the tea, let it steep, and go to do yoga and prayer. By the time I’m done, the tea will be strong and no longer boiling hot, perfect to punctuate my journal routine. 
3. Next I do my exercise and yoga practice.  I started this maybe three years ago. I couldn’t’ do a full push up back when I began, so I started with what they used to call girl pushups where you plank from your knees, not from your toes. (It’s not politically correct to call them girl pushups these days.) Whatever they’re called, I couldn’t do the full version. Soon, however, I was able to do the standard military push up, hands on the floor, toes on the ground, nothing between hands and feet except air. Then I added a plow pose, and then a head stand. In the past I have done camel pose, and sun salutations. If time’s really short (if I sleep through the first alarm) I might skip morning yoga. But not unless there’s no other way. I wouldn’t want to skip so long I had to go back to girl pushups.
4. Prayer and meditation – this is fundamental. I started saying my original mantra, “let go, let God,” back in the 90’s. You say “let go,” while breathing out, and “let God,” while breathing in. You imagine God’s help and care flowing in as you breathe in. The life-giving air that fills your lungs is analogized with the life-giving care of God, who, as I’ve said since I was a child, “brought me into the world with nothing, and who will take me out again, with nothing, in the proper day.”  In the beginning of every day, I remember it isn’t all up to me. Which is critical, because actually it’s not. 
5. I write in my journal on my phone. I go out, get the tea, and settle into my chaise lounge to write. For decades, I wrote with a fountain pen on paper, and I have those journal pages from as long ago as 2000. I started writing every day while we lived in Rome and I was pretty much losing my mind. I would wake up, look at the ceiling, and think “I can’t do it, I can’t get out of bed,” but then I’d think about writing in my journal. Some vague interest in doing this activity – no, I wouldn’t call it enthusiasm, maybe just the deep desire to be heard by some fictional future reader, a child or grandchild who I imagined would find my writing far in the future and would say – wow, she had it tough  – this hope would get me out of bed. After I wrote about my plans for the day, I found I could carry them out. I switched to phone journal because the phone journal is more efficient to store, perhaps, and I had half a mind of trying to turn it into some kind of manuscript. I haven’t done that, yet, but I do have both digital and paper copies of the phone journal, which I feel good about as a writer. On paper, I wrote pretty much every day, but not so consistently as I’ve written in my digital journal, which I’ve entered in every day since November 2021, except for the day that Scarlett graduated from boot camp. 
6. I start cooking breakfast. I go to the kitchen, I set up the French Press and put the water in the electric kettle to boil. I spoon in the coffee to the French Press. I get the water, oatmeal and salt and start that cooking on the stove. Then (if it’s a work day) I get out my lunch bag and pack it with stuff like leftover homemade pizza, apple salad, cole slaw, peanuts in the shell, chocolate chip cookie. I make sure these things are ready on Sunday because I don’t want to worry about figuring out what is for lunch during the morning before work. I pour the water in the French Press and pull the oatmeal half off the stove, turning the stove off. I set out the bowls with brown sugar, the travel coffee mugs with their lids. 
7. I do my bathroom routine Dressed, hair, meds, facial, brush teeth. I do this pretty much in order. I think about what my day will involve and I try to choose clothes that look nice and will be appropriate for that activity. I brush and put up my hair. I wash my face with cold water. It was Lupe, our cleaning lady in 2004, who told me you must *always* wash your face with cold water only. I use face wash and then use a moisturizer and a hyuralonic acid supplement. I brush my teeth and put on “the colors,” my eye shadow, blush, and eye liner. I look at myself and wish I was prettier, but what can I do? I tell myself that even when I was young, I didn’t think I was pretty enough. 
8. I make the bed: I try to do this every morning. Sometimes the dog gets up on his own, but usually making the bed means throwing CB out. I find this so difficult. “Come on CB it’s time to get up,” I say as I pull the blankets back. He gives me a stunned, sleepy look every time, as if every time I suggest he get up, he’s shocked. “But why???” he seems to want to ask. It’s not because Make Your Bed is the title of a famous self-motivation book by General William H. McRaven. It’s because CB can’t stay in the bedroom for the day. He and his sister will likely get into trouble, ripping up the covers, yarn, or even books. And as long as he’s up, I might as well make the bed. 
9. I eat breakfast. I will often check my phone at this point. I also may have a library book and I will read just a couple of pages. 
10. I collect the things I really need and go out the door around 6:30. There are five things. Each of the things has a reason you better not leave without it. 

• Coffee – so you don’t fall asleep or more likely, feel pitifully deprived without it. 
• Keys – so you don’t have to come back in and look for them. 
• Sunglasses – so you don’t have to shade your eyes with your hand while driving east as the sun rises.
• Computer – so you can use it to teach today, if you forget it, all bets are off. 
• Lunch – so you don’t go hungry. If you forget, you can eat in the school cafeteria, but that’s not a “preferred choice” as they say.

And that’s my morning routine. Without it, I’d be so much less able to live my life. In the morning routine I’ve included my spiritual well being, my mental well being, psychological health, physical exercise, sleep – and keeping a reasonable perspective on life. 

Do you have a morning routine? Would you like to build one? The following blog posts have info on routines and how to build your own. 

Related Reading: Morning Routines and How to Start Yours

Elizabeth Larkin in the Spruce gives basic steps to build your own morning routine. 

Zen Habits: the author admits he’s just starting building his morning routine, and lists the plans he’s made … Noteworthy is the listing of 3 MIT’s (Most Important Things) each day. 

Abby at Just a Girl and Her Blog shares her morning routine, including how she includes podcasts, workout video, and spiritual reading, but avoids social media.