Feeling like all your days run together? Time to rethink your morning and evening routine.
While this has been something many of us have struggled with for years, the pandemic has truly added significant stress and overwhelm when it comes to the structure of our days. One of the best things we can do to start offsetting these costs is to create daily anchor points in the morning and the evening.
What do I mean by this?
Find your routine. And make it non-negotiable.
A routine is a regular and repeated action that requires deliberate practice and a higher degree of effort and intention than a habit. This is especially important because it means it is something you have to be actively engaged in rather than doing on auto-pilot.
A routine can also, when done frequently and, ideally, consistently, elicit pathways in your brain that help you either get energized for or come down from your day. Like the way the sun’s rising and falling impacts our mood and function, these anchor points can take this deeper and give you a sense of rooting into your life by the deliberate action you are taking in the present moment.
How do I create that?
Your routine can be short or long but should be consistent and with intention.
Perhaps it is waking up, turning the coffee maker on, washing your face, and reading the morning news. Maybe it includes a few sun salutations or some morning breathwork. Your evenings may become about the small hygiene practices -- washing your face, brushing your teeth -- or may go deeper and include drinking tea and journaling or meditating, doing yin yoga, or rolling out your body for a few minutes.
Tips to make your routines “stick” and to really add the most value to your life include:
Draw a connection to everything you are doing to a value or intention. Don’t just stretch or read the news. Ask yourself why you are stretching and reading the news? How does this deepen your connection to your life? This is also a way to weed out behaviors that can creep into our routines, such as checking your email first thing in the morning. Again, spend time asking yourself why? Does checking your email before you have even got out of bed start your day off the way you would like? What about hitting the snooze button 3-4 times? How does that contribute to the start of your day? It may not be enjoyable getting out of the warm and cozy heap of covers you are resting under but what is the subtle shift you make when you tell yourself your goal — in this case, the time to wake up — is negotiable?
Try to establish (at least part of) your routine without your phone. And if not, at least try to eliminate the distractions our technology can bring. For example, I have been getting up every morning before Everly wakes up and spending some time writing. I like to write on my computer. It allows the words to come out at a pace that better matches my thoughts. But when I begin to write and forget to put on “Do Not Disturb”, the chime of a new email or the allure of checking the news or social media can hit me and become a distraction to my morning routine. To help with that, I have a post-it note next to my computer that says, “Your morning is not for anyone else but you — everything else can wait.”
Make your routines so accessible and easy that you would have to spend more time talking yourself out of them than just doing them. This gets a bit easier after making sure your “what” connects to your “why” but we know that there is still a major hurdle we have to work through when it comes to execution in our lives.
I used to imagine a morning where I would get up, turn on the water to make coffee (we use a Chemex), do some yoga, meditate, journal, wash my face or shower, brush my teeth, make coffee, start my breakfast and then write a bit before Everly wakes up.
I still think this sounds like a wonderful morning routine. AND this is not accessible for me right now. Not because I couldn’t do it in theory but because the motivation I have and the resistance my brain has in the mornings are too high to push for all of that right now. When I sat down and got honest with myself about the things that were really important to me in the morning, especially before Everly got up, I distilled it down to wanting to connect to my mind, body, and emotional being every morning. I wanted to slow myself down and not get so caught up in my thoughts and the anxiety that hyperconnectivity brings.
Focus on the 1% changes. Instead of expecting this ideal routine would be waiting there for me because I was energized about it, I focused on small microshifts to allow myself to truly show up for and welcome my mind, body, and emotional self into the day. My routine continues to change as I get closer and closer to those self connections but right now, involves me waking up and not checking my phone at all while in bed and before I get up, drinking a glass of water, turning on the water for coffee, showering or washing my face, brushing my teeth, doing some morning stretching or a morning meditation, then grabbing a small amount of cold brew coffee and sitting down to my computer to write. I wait to make actual coffee until Ev is up with me and we have started our day and I make breakfast for both of us since I like to eat with her.
Two things I am currently working on are not opening my phone at all at this time and then trying to close out my email app the night before so that I am not tempted to check my email when I open my computer. I do check for any notifications on my phone lock screen to make sure I did not miss anything I need to tend to (like missing several calls from my mom which may mean something happened, etc). I am still working towards my ideal morning routine but I am also aware that this would require I get up earlier than I already am and I do not yet have enough buy-in to wake up earlier than I already am — which is absolutely okay!
Make sure the activities align with the goal and are exciting to you. Now that you have made sure your “what” both connects to your why and is accessible, make sure each of the activities align with the goal of each anchor; morning routines are meant to energize and connect you to your day, and evening routines are meant to allow you to unwind and set yourself up for sleep. For example, I use a face scrub with peppermint oil in it in the mornings which gives my face a gentle slap in the face and feels fantastic after I do it. I also make sure that I get both coffee and creamer I really enjoy so when I make that cup of fresh coffee, I can sip my coffee with intention and enjoyment, rather than rushing through.
Now it is your turn.
What routines and anchor points can you set up for your day? How might this shift the way you engage in your life and connect to yourself and the world? Are there particular resistances you can feel coming up when you think about setting a more intentional routine — things you “know you shouldn’t be doing” but still do? Remember, the goal is not to shame yourself for what you do or feel, but to give yourself permission to shift the narrative and the control to yourself. You can check your email if you want to. That is not inherently bad. Just ask yourself the why question and how it contributes to the start of your day to see if you want to keep doing it.