How to build the morning routine that is right for YOU

Many of the top CEOs, business leaders, and ministry leaders around the world are building the perfect morning routine for themselves. It's really important. If successful people are claiming their routines lead to their success, then why not copy them? Why can't we share in that success?

What does your routine look like now?

I'd imagine it starts out with you rolling out of bed probably about 20 to 30 minutes before you need to leave, right? Yeah, exactly.

What are you like in this state?

Well, you've probably hit snooze a few times and need to get to the job so you jump out of bed as fast as you can and what do you do? You go to the bathroom.  Do your hair. You brush your teeth. You likely grab a quick bite to eat. If you drink coffee, you guzzle down some coffee to get you going with cream and sugar, and you're out the door. Within 30-60 minutes you are completely out of the door and ready to go. No rhyme or reason to our morning; just a tornado of actions to get us out the door as fast as possible.

We likely do not have a process for our mornings, so we leave the house in a ball of stress. The ball of stress follows us into our car or train and then into our office at work. We are in a constant state of stress, leading to chronic fatigue and chronic anxiousness. We start every morning like a lion is chasing us. When we get up our heart rate goes up and stays that way until we hit the pillow in the evening.

HERE IS THE THING:

Your mornings matter. It's incredibly important for you to be locked in for whatever you do if you want to be the best version of yourself while you perform. I would recommend 30-60 minutes every morning where you're locked in working on you. Most people love to work IN their lives, but very few work ON their lives. What we notice is the most successful people in the world work on their lives. If you want to be successful and be great at what you do then a routine will act as a foundation.

Why you need a morning routine RIGHT NOW

The first reason you need a morning routine is that you are more focused in that first hour of your day more than any other time throughout the day. Yeah, I know it seems almost unbelievable but yes, that first hour has the potential to be your best. It doesn't feel like it when you're in a fog and in a haze rushing around to get to work or school. But that is only because you got up so late. As I said, CEOs and business leaders live by this because it's so important and has provided tangible results. It has in my life and it has in theirs. 

When you decide to wake up earlier and carve out this hour, you will find out you are most focused in this hour. If you've got an hour where your brain functions better, take advantage of it. Don't allow an opportunity for an advantage to go to waste. Later, I'm going to talk about a few hacks I use to even kick this hour up a notch to make it even more impactful for me.

The second reason why you need a routine is to help you beat stress. That's right. We wake up so stressed out in the mornings these days. I mentioned that thing about a lion chasing us, there's actually some science behind that. In the morning, your body is awakened by a hormone in your body called cortisol. It's your stress hormone. It's the thing that reacts to the light from the sun and helps you wake up. In one sense, it's great that you have high cortisol in the morning because it does wake us up. But a lot of us suffer something called chronic stress. Chronic stress is manifested when cortisol is often (or always) activated. This ages us faster and creates an environment for chronic disease.

I do not need to be a doctor to tell you that chronic stress is plaguing the modern western world today and a lot of it has to do with adrenal fatigue and cortisol releasing at wrong times of the day. Our cortisol is elevated because we live our lives all throughout our day like a proverbial lion is chasing us. Whether it's that a boss is upset at work or your spouse is unhappy, or kids are screaming or you have a deadline to hit, or maybe you have a project that needs to be due, or that you've got too many things on your plate. Whatever it is, these seemingly small issues act as the proverbial lion chasing us. Heart rate elevates. Palms get sweaty. More coffee gets chugged, and the vicious cycle continues.

What does that do to our mornings? Well, that puts us in one or two places. One, your cortisol is going to be through the roof when you wake up, leaving you in this tire but wired feeling where you're extra jittery and awake, but just kind of tired at the same time and you're trying to figure out, what the heck? Am I tired? Am I awake? What's going on? Usually, we turn to coffee or some food to kind of supplement that. The second way we wake up is with very little cortisol. Very little cortisol is a result of adrenal fatigue. Now, adrenal fatigue has got many definitions, but the basic definition is that adrenal fatigue is an overproduction (or underproduction) of our adrenal glands, where we've got hormones out of whack (Your HPA axis). This is otherwise known as "burn out".

Financial guru Dave Ramsey always says, "Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else." His principal is equally applicable to morning routines. Spend that hour and live like no one else, because no one is doing the morning routine other than these very successful people. That way, later you can live like no one else. What do I mean by that? First, it leads to greater longevity. Most of us want to be around for our grandkids and our great-grandkids, you're going to be less stressed. Second, you will experience success in your job, being successful at school, or with your family. Then three, how about the relational aspect of being stress-free in the morning? Being stress-free, you are able to better engage with your spouse, better engage with your kids, better engage with your brother or sister, mom, dad, etc. 

A Morning Routine is an investment in YOU

What's the catch? How do you actually do this? Well, slow down for a second, you're successful already. Imagine just for a second, if you could perfect your craft a little bit.

When I was playing in the NFL  for the Chicago Bears, I remember we went to the NFC Championship in 2010. I remember coming out on the practice field, my first practice and I thought, "You know what? I'm going to jump the gun a little bit, I'm going to be 20 minutes early to practice, get some work in." What did I find? Well, I found some of the most well-known athletes and veterans on that team already out on the field, working. They were stretching, working with trainers to get loose. They were throwing footballs, catching balls, and doing quick-foot drills. You see, the practice is typically scheduled where there is a warmup built into the practice, and then another warm-up before the full team period begins. There are already two warmups built into everyone's practice schedule, but what were these veterans doing? They were getting a third warmup. They were perfecting their craft. bring great goes beyond doing the status quo. They went above and beyond and their careers reflected it.

Imagine if you could be that in your life. YOU, taking your power hour, perfecting your craft, and working on your life. See that hour it as an investment in building a better you that will be a more relaxed, more productive, and more joyous version of you.

What is holding you back from being your best YOU?

What are the things you're doing in your morning that you shouldn't be doing that are costing you? Maybe you're reading to this and you're thinking, "my morning is not that bad. I've already gotten most of it figured out, so there's not really too much I need to work on, and maybe if there is, are the little things". Let's evaluate and see if you are missing something in your life that a morning routine can help.

Not Getting Enough Sleep

You're probably not already getting enough sleep, so when you wake up in our morning, you are exhausted. You've got bags under eyes, your skin is flushed, and you were up all night watching Netflix. Maybe you went to bed at 12:30 am because the phone or TV screen kept you awake and you needed to wake up at 6 am. So you got five and a half hours of sleep and say, "Oh man, I better just pound some coffee and get going." Well, in order for you to perfect your morning routine, you're going to have to really have a good night's sleep. I recommend seven and a half to nine and a half hours of sleep for Type A personalities. However, Dr. Michael Breus, wrote a fantastic work on sleep chronotypes called The Power of When. You can take his short quiz and figure out exactly which chronotype you are when you should go to bed, and how long you need to sleep.

Another book I highly recommend is Adrenaline and Stress by Dr. Archibald Hart. I recommend everyone read this book. He recommends 8-10 hours of sleep for that Type A person. You think that's ridiculous, but as I said, it's an investment. It's an investment on your soul and on your body. If you want to try to beat time by sleeping six hours and working 18 of them, just remember that at the end of your life, you're going to lose a few years from chronic stress and getting stress-related illnesses. Make sure we see this hour as an investment. 

I will say one study shows there is not any reason for a person to sleep MORE than 6.5 hours. Because of the wide range of results in sleep studies, it is important to look into Dr. Breus' quiz to see which chronotype you are so you can get the optimal amount of sleep for YOU.

But what about sleep QUALITY, not QUANTITY? Maybe you do sleep seven, eight or nine hours a night, but you just feel like you aren't profiting from those hours. Well, there's a great app called Sleep Cycle. You can download it. I'm not getting paid for recommending it, but I do use it a lot and I've recommended a lot. it's 99 cents on the app store. This app can help you track your sleep and it gives you a wide variety of data to look at. You're able to track different things you did throughout the day. like whether or not you meditated, drank coffee or tea, or were stressed out. This will give you better data to look at to see what is causing sleep issues.

You're able to track things that you've done throughout the day, put your under your sheet on your mattress, and fall asleep. Then when you wake up, you'll get a percentage of how well you slept. You'll see the graph of when you were in... from the top being awake and all the way bottom to being deep, deep sleep, REM sleep, your rapid eye m The app will track your movement and noise during sleep. When you awake, you'll see your graph with a percentage of how well you did, along with how much deep sleep you had.

For most nights, when I first started using the app, I was in the 60%, 70% range, which is not good. You want to be 90 plus percent every night. Each night I was able to tweak things to increase my percentage based on the data I was putting into the app. 

Another thing you can try as a sleep hack is eating honey before bed. I found when I ingested raw local honey I was getting about 11% better sleep each night. Go for raw and unfiltered honey so you can also hack your allergies as the honey will help you better adapt to the pollens in your area.

You eat too many Carbs

Most people today in America have a fat fear. We don't want fat in our diets, we want good "healthy" carbohydrates in the morning with protein, but we don't want fat because fat basically gives you a heart attack, at least goes that logic. So people are spoon-feeding themselves oatmeal, frosted flakes, and yogurt.

The last thing you should be doing is putting tons and tons of carbohydrates in your face when you wake up. These carbohydrates give you a nice spike in glucose that we perceive as fuel. While we do, of course, get energy from that instant oatmeal, a tray of fruit, or a bowl of cereal, your body quickly runs through that energy in 2-3 hours. What happens next? A glucose drop. This sets you firmly on the "glucose rollercoaster", forcing you to ingest a granola bar or some chips. Up and down you go, living life on the blood glucose coaster of doom. Your mood goes up, then it goes down. I worked in the corporate world for a few years and all I did was hear people say, "Oh, I'm starving." Well, it's 10:15 am and you ate at 8:00 am. You shouldn't be starving. There are people in Africa starving. You shouldn't be starving at 10:15  in your cubicle, for crying out loud!

I'm going to suggest something more like a high-fat diet with high, good quality fat. Your brain loves to run off of something called ketones and so becoming fat-adapted by ingesting high quality, good fats like coconut oils, avocado, and grass-fed butter are key. Fat from grass-fed animals and pastured eggs is also good. If you're doing that in the morning, it helps to keep you satiated a lot longer and your brain is actually thankful because it is your brain's preferred fuel source.

 

You are over-reliant on Coffee

Listen, I love coffee. I'm all about coffee. But if you're drinking too much coffee and you're never taking a break from coffee you are addicted to it and you are putting your hormones at risk. Your body has a set of hormones that it needs to function properly and in times of chronic stress or fatigue, you could become over-reliant on coffee to do the work of your hormones for you. What that does is it puts your body in a hyper-drive mode with fabricated alertness via overconsumption of coffee. Then when you come down off the coffee, you just crash back into the state that you're in. 

Your body is supposed to naturally produce cortisol, your alert, or stress hormone. During seasons of chronic stress or adrenal dysfunction, your body can begin to overproduce cortisol or produce it at the wrong times, creating even more chronic stress. Eventually, your body could cease to produce it at all. 

There are some great benefits to coffee, obviously. However, the chronic use of caffeine is putting your body in an overactive state' so when your body finally needs to rest, it cannot. Consider cycling on and off coffee on a 6-1 or 5-2 day split. Or try the week-on, week-ff method.

Checking your email too frequently, especially at night

The first thing many people do when they wake up in the morning is roll over, slap their alarm and start checking emails on their phone. Don't act like you don't do this! Wow. Well, talk about something to make you start chasing a lion right off the bat. Checking your email? Most of us find our email inbox is the bane of our existence and yet, and like me included, we roll over and we immediately start checking those emails.

When you check that email and it's negative,  you start your day with a proverbial lion is chasing you and that goes over to your breakfast, your interactions with your wife or your husband and your kids. Then that chronic stress goes with you into your car ride, and then with you at work. How can you expect to be successful with that background hum of stress? The only way you're successful in those moments is if you've got some sort of innate ability to combat chronic stress, which most of us don't have, or it's just by chance and you get lucky or something quickly turns the day, but that's certainly not a way to give yourself the best opportunity to be successful.

What I do on my morning routine (You can do it too)

Wake up before everyone else

To start off my morning routine right, I wake up earlier than you need to. You've got to be up at least an hour before you HAVE to be. I need to have the mindset that I have beat my "competition" out of bed in the morning. This gives me a psychological edge, knowing that I began working out, meditating, or reading scripture before others. Not only do you need to beat your "competition" out of bed, but you also need to beat your family out of bed. I have 3 small children. Once they are awake, my me-time is gone. Since they wake up at the drop of the hat, I need to be up when it's still dark, which is why I wake up at 5 am each morning. 

Meditate

Meditation, that's right. 80% of the top CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies use some form of meditation throughout their day. What better way to start your day than to be fully in line with exactly what your mind is doing. And your mind is a funny thing. Most people think their brains are continually growing because they look back on their lives and they see when they were three years old and then they turned four that they grew and their brain got better at five and six and seven and eight and nine etc.

But once you hit a certain age, your brain actually likes to stay where it is. This is called homeostasis. It doesn't actually like to get better on its own. You have to actually start working with it to get it better. One of the ways we do that is through meditation. Meditation helps you align yourself, your heart, your soul, and your spirit with your brain. This sort of "training" allows you to become "mindful", granting you more control over your thoughts and emotions. 

For the Christian, the core reason we meditate is not for the physiological benefits. Meditation is a spiritual discipline we use to engage God. This is the core purpose. Aligning with the will of God centers us on what is most important so we can go attack the world in a Gospel-centered way. However, we still do get the physiological benefits of meditation like focus, gratitude and stress reduction, so we might as well be thankful for them as we receive in meditation.

A few years ago went through a bout of serious adrenal fatigue, and had all the stress and anxiety that comes with the hormone fluctuations that adrenal dysfunction brings. Meditation was a huge part of my recovery. It was a massive part of my road back to health because it allowed me to see what my mind was doing and saying, and to be able to tell my mind that everything's okay in those moments and help seriously reduce my stress. I'd recommend an app called Calm. It's a blue app. Calm app is fantastic. It's got all types of meditation to choose from. It's a fantastic app. I think anybody who's ever wanted to perfect their morning routine should pick this app up and use it. If you'd prefer a more overtly faith-based meditation app, I recommend Abide. I use it frequently as well.

Prayer

I'm a Christian and I believe that I'm in touch with God on a daily basis when I pray. I think if I've got the first hour of my day then I want to use it to talk to the most important person to me and that's God. I want to be praying through my morning. I want to be praying and I also do that through reading the Bible. Some people that's not going to resonate with you and you're going to say, "Well, I'm not a Christian, I believe a different faith." That's fine. I still think this can have value for you. You can still have value in meditation and prayer by linking up for whatever it is you want to link up with. That may be your God, or just deep thinking, deep knowledge, thoughts, whatever that maybe, you can have value in this. But, whatever gives you purpose, if that's what you're living for, you need to connect with it. A smart man once said that religion is what you do with your solitude. This is an hour for your solitude to engage, to enjoy whatever it is that gives you purpose. For me, that's God and I want to link up with him as much as I can in these moments. While you can take advantage of a focused time outside of prayer, I'd still recommend Jesus. You can learn more about him here.

Deep breathing exercises

The third thing you need to do to perfect your morning routine is something called deep breathing exercises. Deep breathing, not only has an actual physical effect, it has an emotional and mental effect as well. The physical effects of deep breathing are that you are drawing in more oxygen into your body. You're allowing your body to circulate more oxygen through it and that actually does help you relax. But mentally, you're just able to breathe in all of the positive things in your life and breathe out all of the negative things while you're doing this. You just practice by going in through the nose, out through the nose and that helps you relax and you can do that by... whether that's 10 breaths, 20 breaths, some of the meditation in the Calm app even incorporates that as well.

Proper morning nutrition

If you are going to nail your routine, then proper fuel is PARAMOUNT. If you start your day putting junk gasoline into your car, you're going to perform like junk. That just is what it is. Garbage in, garbage out. I encourage proper nutrition.

We have already talked about taking in high-quality fats like coconut oil, MCT Oil, Grass-fed butter or Fish Oil. Add in some avocado for additional high-quality fat. It is also a great idea to get in nutrient-dense foods like greens (Spinach, Kale, Arugula, Bok Choi, etc.) They are packed with phytonutrients and fiber among other things. Good pasture-raised eggs with some vitamin K2 and vitamin D3 should also be a staple each morning.

You can even do a bulletproof coffee at this point, that's grass-fed butter, MCT oil from coconuts, and good quality coffee. I like Bulletproof's Brain Octane Oil instead of regular MCT oil. Bulletproof harvests the highest quality MCT's for their product. You could do something like my inflammation scavenger smoothie if you are looking to start the day with a large number of greens and want something anti-inflammatory. it is packed with about four or five servings of greens.

Being kind to yourself

Be kind to YOU. This may seem kind of silly, but the mindset is a huge part of starting your day off properly. Be gentle with yourself. We're so hard on ourselves and so many people are hard on us. We go to our work and our bosses are hard on us. At home, our spouses and our kids are hard on us. Everyone is so hard on us, but we really need to be okay with ourselves. Listen, it's okay to not be okay. You're not perfect. You're never going to be perfect. You've got to enjoy the process of growing yourself as the years and the days and the months go by. Enjoy it and give yourself a break. Some of us are harvesting some of these bad memories that we had in our childhoods, where our parents or friends or family members weren't very nice to us. Don't believe the lie that you need to be emotionally hard on yourself. You can be kind to yourself AND become successful.