What’s your morning routine?

What’s Your Morning Rou­tine?

I’m cu­ri­ous to hear if you have a morn­ing rou­tine that sup­ports your well-be­ing, or

how to do you get go­ing? Do you drag your­self re­luc­tant­ly out of bed or jump en­thu-

si­as­ti­cal­ly?

Mak­ing love, self-plea­sur­ing, grab some carbs and drive to work, cof­fee, juice,

jour­nal­ing, get­ting on your phone & lap­top, or sleep­ing in, what’s your pat­tern? Feel

free to give us ideas in com­ments be­low.

Some peo­ple are blessed with an abun­dance of fuel that gets them up at dawn,

an­tic­i­pat­ing the un­fold­ing of their day. Of­ten for me, get­ting back into the 3D phys­i­cal

plane has been chal­leng­ing.

The ex­ten­sion of ‘day­light’ hours with led lights and tempt­ing de­vices shifts our

cir­ca­di­an rhythm to late nights and slum­ber­ing morn­ings.

For some of us, the mem­o­ry of hav­ing to get up for school and work is enough to

keep us un­der the cov­ers. Our in­ner child be­comes re­sis­tant. Do you have some­thing

to look for­ward to, or re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that you en­joy par­tic­i­pat­ing in?

I am both amused and in­spired by the young, of­ten male, doc­tors, ath­letes and

pod­cast­ers who speak about get­ting up at 4 am, hit­ting the gym be­fore dunk­ing in

cold wa­ter, jour­nal­ing and pre­paring their nootrop­ic cock­tail, ready to work on one of

their many digi­tal en­ter­pris­es and in­come streams by 7 am. They are not my role mod-

els, though I’ve found much of the knowl­edge im­part­ed by these rou­tines to ac­tu­al­ly

be use­ful.

Quite the op­po­site, most of the old souls I hang out with are hap­py to come into

their day slow­ly, per­haps with the ex­cep­tion of those with young chil­dren. They would

pre­fer to med­i­tate, lis­ten to mu­sic, sip their tea, have some leisure­ly sex, maybe put on

some clothes and be ready for ac­tiv­i­ty around 10 am. Where do you fall in that spec-

trum?

Since I’ve been writ­ing about the ag­ing process, I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly aware that the

body and soul re­quires more dis­ci­pline, rather than less as time goes on, to main­tain a

vi­brant state of liv­ing. It’s not enough to brew a cup of cof­fee and take a walk. The

present world, and the stress­es most of us are un­der, re­quires an ath­lete-in-train­ing at-

ti­tude to­ward our dai­ly rou­tine. Is that true for you?

In my youth, I ac­tu­al­ly was a ’morn­ing per­son’, mean­ing that I woke up ear­ly. Even

in my 20’s (which was the last time I had a 9-5 job), I would wake up at 4 am to med­i-

tate, make my­self a beau­ti­ful break­fast, leav­ing time to ex­er­cise or nap be­fore work. I

nev­er liked be­ing rushed.

How­ev­er, with self-em­ploy­ment, hor­mon­al changes (and liv­ing with peo­ple who

like to stay up late), I be­came a per­son who en­joys wak­ing up slow­ly when the sun hits

my face, stay in bed to read, med­i­tate, slum­ber, and think about if there is any rea­son

to get out of bed.

I am very hap­py when I have morn­ing ap­point­ments, and I ‘have’ to get up. Those

are of­ten my best days. But to do that for no rea­son, ex­cept that it feels good, is usu­al-

ly not mo­ti­va­tion enough.

So here’s the short ver­sion of my morn­ing rou­tine, and I will add some more de-

tails in the notes be­low. I fu­ture blogs I will ex­plore in­ter­mit­tent fast­ing, dopamine re-

sets, bul­let­proof cof­fee/tea, nootrop­ics.

Typ­i­cal Morn­ing:

Al­low­ing sun­light to come into my bed­room.

In the state be­tween sleep and wak­ing, re­view­ing dreams and pon­der­ing what I

want to ac­com­plish to­day.

Go­ing out­side to pee, putting on some mu­sic or lis­ten to the stream out­side my

win­dow, tun­ing into na­ture.

Get back into bed, sit­ting up, read­ing or med­i­tat­ing.

It takes awhile for my brain to ‘kick in’, but at a cer­tain point I can feel it en­gag­ing

in wak­ing con­scious­ness.

Stretch­ing on a heat­ed mas­sage ta­ble, mov­ing the body and some core warm

ups.

Bare­foot walk­ing.

Drink­ing warm al­ka­line wa­ter (a pint or quart) with lemon & some sea salt on my

tongue.

Jump­ing on tram­po­line long enough to get heart go­ing.

Cold show­er / cold plunge.

I of­ten mas­sage my whole body with co­conut oil and brush it with a sauna brush.

About 3 days/week: phys­i­cal ex­er­cise, gym, swim, bike ride.

2 hours af­ter warm wa­ter: Matcha tea with but­ter and col­la­gen. (Recipes in an­oth-

er blog)

Breakfast 2-4 pm

——————

Morn­ing Rou­tine when in trop­ics:

Drink warm wa­ter

Get up for sun­rise a few mile beach walk

Swim

Go to cafe to write

Late morn­ing col­la­gen/but­ter/caf­feine

Break­fast around 1-2 pm

Fur­ther tips:

Set­ting goals for the day while in be­tween wak­ing and sleep­ing states: It re­al­ly

helps me to be spe­cif­ic, if I have a few goals, to imag­ine what it feels like to en­gage

with the en­er­gy and com­plete them. What emo­tion would I feel to see that project

com­plete to­day?

I used to be a to-do list per­son (though I do keep them for spe­cif­ic re­minders) and

my list would of­ten ex­pand to more than a dozen items. I found from teach­ing this ma-

te­r­i­al, to lim­it my men­tal list to 3 items only. Some­times only 2. That way if I get in a

pro­duc­tive mood, it’s ok to move with the en­er­gy and com­plete a bunch of ‘gen­er­a­tor’

tasks. How­ev­er it feels more sat­is­fy­ing to know that I can do 2 things in a day. For a lot

of peo­ple that would seem too sim­ple, even out­ra­geous­ly lazy. That’s over 700 lit­tle

projects com­plet­ed in a year! I don’t in­clude in that list things such as shop­ping, sex

dates, laun­dry, mak­ing meals, hang­ing with friends, trips to hard­ware store. Those

things just flow nat­u­ral­ly. The list is about projects that re­quire me to over­come a cer-

tain in­er­tia to fo­cus on ef­fec­tive­ly.