How To Create Your Personal Morning Routine

Ever wondered how you can set up a personalised and sustainable morning routine? Then I've got some ideas and insights for you. By knowing why you want to change in the first place, we can then focus on what your new morning routine can look like.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this talk about morning routines.

My name is Doris.

I'm a yoga teacher here at Inside Timer.

I mainly do hatha yoga and yin yoga classes and I'm also trained in trauma-informed yoga,

Just to give you a little bit of background about me.

And I've kind of tweaked my morning routine over the years and I find that it's such an important start to a day and that it makes such a big difference,

So I'd like to share my thoughts on mindful morning routines with you and maybe also help you implement your own personal morning routine,

Where the emphasis really is on personal.

So just to tell you perhaps about my morning routine,

So that also changed over the years and I think that's a very important point that your morning routine or your routine in general can and perhaps even should change and grow with you because your needs will change over the time,

You might have kids at some point,

You might have a different job,

So that's just factors that play into account but also simply your needs are very important.

So currently my morning routine is that I wake up at some time and then I immediately go onto my yoga mat and meditate for 20 minutes.

I've started with 10,

I've worked up to 20,

I don't think I'm gonna go even farther because that's really a good time for me.

After that I scrape my tongue and then I do some oil pulling and as I do that I usually walk around the house,

Maybe tidy up a few things or just get things ready,

That's a great time to just set my day up.

After that I brush my teeth and while I've been oil pulling I also make myself a coffee and then after that my oral hygiene is all taken care of,

I then pour myself a cup of coffee and then ideally I sit on the balcony or on my sofa and this is when I turn my phone on.

And this is kind of the importance of my morning routine is that it gives me structure on how to implement my phone,

Social media and any digital products into my life.

I know a lot of people struggle with picking up their phone first thing in the morning and knowing that I only do it afterwards kind of is really easy for me to not do that because I know that I'm not allowed so to say,

I mean I know I am allowed but I know it comes later and then I feel like with my coffee then I'm ready to check my messages and that just has a very mindful touch to me and that's something that I've been doing for years now.

When I'm on holiday I don't do it or when I don't have time in the morning and I think this is very important too to allow circumstances to also interrupt your morning routine knowing that you'll get back to it because that's in my opinion the beauty of a morning routine is that it's something you can live without because we also don't want to be too attached,

You know,

Kind of like that cup of coffee in the morning.

Ideally we would be able to also start the day without it but then maybe after a period of time where we've had visitors or we were on holiday knowing the next day you're coming back to it feels really nice and that's to me a really important factor about a morning routine.

I think people tend to over schedule time and routines so a really important thing that I'd like to share is that a morning routine can take five minutes or less and it's really really important in my humble opinion to start small,

Even smaller than you might want to.

So when I hear that people want to start meditating regularly they start with ten minutes and if you have no meditation experience whatsoever ten minutes is a really really long time to sit still even if you're guided.

And also you didn't have that time in the beginning so now making ten minutes in the morning that might be a lot so I think once you have a routine and even if it's short you can always add to it.

So I think it's really viable to find your foundation.

So what's your foundation?

Is it meditation?

Is it journaling?

Is it physical yoga?

Is it breath work?

Whatever it is.

Obviously these are more things to do with mindfulness and yoga practice.

We're here on Inside Timer.

It could be completely different things but these are most likely things that you're interested in and things that also I know about.

Just think about what is the foundation that you'd like to start with.

Maybe you even can connect two small things but I really make it small so say meditation and tank scraping for example.

And then the second step or perhaps the first it really depends from where you're coming from is knowing why you'd like to change and why you'd like to have a morning routine that way because very often when we want to change or implement something new into our lives we don't really know why or we don't really have our personal reasons saying changing your eating habits or changing anything about you.

It usually comes more from a place of I should or I have to rather than I want to.

So really understanding why do I want this.

Why do I want to have a mindful morning routine?

Is it to manage my mental health,

My anxiety in the morning?

Is it to feel grounded for the rest of the day?

So this is really something that I invite you to think about.

Perhaps even write down if that's something that you practice and find your own personal reason.

You don't have to share it with anyone.

It doesn't have to relate to other people because it's personal to you.

That's the key.

It can have any reason and that's going to be valuable.

So there's no right or wrong answer to the question of why you'd like to implement or change your morning routine.

And then once you have these very very key factors I really would invite you to stick with this and to try it out for you know two weeks,

Three weeks.

I mean there is this saying of it takes 21 days to implement a new habit.

So perhaps three weeks is even a great time or perhaps even longer.

And then see how you go.

If you find yourself missing a day trust me you won't be the first,

You won't be the last even if it's four or five days.

I think we then tend to set back and decide we're not doing this.

This is fine.

It will take some time.

So if you've missed a few days,

If it didn't work out I really recommend to keep trying and setting yourself up.

I remember when I started meditating sitting still was a struggle and I was even in yoga teacher training at that time.

My body started itching.

It was quite tough to be honest.

So there might be some obstacles in the way.

It might not be the easiest but with persistence,

With patience and with most importantly self-love and understanding of when you don't have the time or when maybe you felt like the meditation was quote unquote better even though we try not to labour things like that.

Keep on track.

See it as a journey and see it as a journey that can evolve.

And this is where I just want to touch on my last point but I don't want you to get carried away.

So this is just building up or increasing so to speak your morning routine.

So like I said perhaps you've started to meditate five minutes a day and then you want to tone scrape.

So perhaps then you'd like to do seven or eight minutes.

Ten is quite a step from that if you know what I mean.

But if you think that you can do it then you can also do it jump to ten and then maybe stick with that first.

Again just take some time.

I remember switching from ten to fifteen minutes meditation felt quite a lot at the beginning and now I'm at twenty and that feels really natural.

But I also know twenty five would also then confuse me now again.

So just taking baby steps and then once you've maybe are at a length that you're happy with or included things that you want to have then that's perfect.

It's not something in my opinion that I want to keep stacking if you know what I mean.

So I am for example interested in journaling regularly and I've tried to do it in the evening and I just know that something like this in the evening is not really working for me.

But also I already have quite a long morning routine as it is so you know there might be some things that you'd like to do.

It's worth to see okay is there other other times during the day when I can do these practices or just finding priorities or perhaps.

I think we think of routines as only something we do daily but then you know that you can have weekly routines you can have monthly routines.

So this is something that you can also think about but I really really even though it might be counter-protective to what I've just said really try and set your bar almost too low.

I don't think there is too low because even if you say I want to meditate a minute a day that's great because it's already a minute more than you've ever done.

And if you add this all up over the year this is three hundred and sixty five minutes which is six hours almost.

That's quite a long time that you've been meditating so this is an encouragement from me to you to find what works for you personally.

Know why you want it and really start slow.

You might have already experienced this with morning routine but really if it's something quite new to you and if the practice is new to you I really recommend to set the bar low.

Thank you so much for listening I hope this was insightful I hope you feel inspired.

I would love it if you reviewed this leave me a message sharing your thoughts with me.

Perhaps attending one of my regular classes you can see that all on my profile and of course don't forget to follow me and I'm wishing you a beautiful rest of the day wherever you are.

And I wish you the best of luck with implementing your new morning routine and I know that you can do it.

Thank you and take care.

Reviews

Thank you for some good tips and routines. Also that if you miss a couple of days, don't give up. 🙏🏻🧘🏼‍♀️💟☮️

Wonderful suggestions and insight, Thank you Doris! Love your yin yoga classes 💜

Very interesting and helpful! Thank you!