Blog Short #259: If Your Mornings Feel Stressful, Read This
Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash
If your mornings feel stressful, you may need a new morning routine.
You might think morning routines are a luxury, but they pay off. The benefits outweigh the time spent. They don’t have to be lengthy or complex. You can individualize and streamline yours to fit your time constraints.
Today, we’ll review the components and benefits of an effective morning routine, along with a list of activities you can choose from to create your own personalized version.
The Three Necessary Components of a Morning Routine
These three components come from Charles Duhigg, the guru on habit formation. If you’ve not read his book, The Power of Habit, I’d highly recommend it.
1. Anticipation
Rather than rolling out of bed and jumping into a flurry of activity to get yourself out the door on time, a morning routine should include time to anticipate and plan for the day ahead.
Activities associated with this are:
- Going over your to-do list
- Organizing your calendar
- Adopting an attitude of positivity
- Reminding yourself to stay flexible
- Scheduling some space for breaks
- Considering what you can accomplish
However you do it, the goal of this part of your routine is to set yourself up for success and to review how you can do that realistically.
2. Relaxation
Activities related to this component help you create a calm, thoughtful mindset. You want to go into the day relaxed and ready to pivot when necessary.
For many people, anxiety is highest in the morning, which is a normal physiological response built into our brains. By including calming activities in your morning routine, you can reset that response and reduce anxiety before stepping fully into your day.
Activities associated with this component are:
- Meditation
- Having some quiet time with a cup of coffee or tea
- Drinking water and hydrating your body and brain
- Exercising
- Writing in your journal
- Creating a gratitude list
3. Connection
The last component is establishing a connection with someone or something. Activities to create connections include:
- Eating breakfast with family members
- Walking your dog
- Chatting with a friend over text
- Reading something that inspires you or has a spiritual message that connects you to your faith or something larger than yourself
It’s any activity that connects you to others, provides a sense of community and belonging, and helps you connect with yourself.
A Sample Morning Routine
Here’s my morning routine, which has morphed over the years depending on my job and whether kids were at home. It’ll help give you an idea of what you can construct for yourself.
Currently, I work for myself and have no kids at home, so it’s easier. Even so, you can include all of these elements in a shorter routine.
- Make coffee, sit on my bed, and review my daily to-do list. A note here is that I find it better to make the to-do list the night before, so I’ve already thought through what needs to be prioritized. You might feel more pressured if you wait until morning.
- I currently meditate for 30 to 45 minutes, but I used to get in only 10 to 15 minutes, which was fine.
- Write a quick gratitude list.
- Read 2 or 3 paragraphs of something inspiring.
- Drink a full glass of water.
- Eat a small, highly nutritious breakfast (not heavy).
- Four days a week, I walk 2 to 3 miles. I used to do this in the late afternoons and weekends when I had a job that required me to be in the office early.
My whole routine takes a good hour to two if I’m walking. You can shrink yours down to 30 minutes or less if you need to, and still get amazing benefits.
Here are some of the most common benefits.
Benefits of a Morning Routine
1. Being proactive instead of reactive.
When you start the day knowing your goals and tasks, the timeline for completing them, and when you can take breaks, you have a sense of control over yourself and your work. Even if you need to pivot, you can stay flexible while remaining in control.
2. Emotional regulation.
Creating a calm mindset before starting your day increases your ability to monitor and regulate your emotions, both internally and in response to your environment. You may still react, but with more control and less intensity. Regular meditation, in particular, will help you with this.
3. More Organized and Intentional
Pre-planning your days and tracking your tasks throughout the week helps you step back and see the big picture, enabling you to act more intentionally and with greater accuracy.
Viewing the overall landscape rather than becoming overwhelmed by stress-filled demands is one of the main advantages of a regular morning routine. It allows you to remain mindful as you traverse the demands of each day while keeping your emotions in check.
4. Reduced Stress
When you have more self-control, stay organized, and approach your day with a positive attitude, you’re less stressed overall. You can also better analyze your work and activity load to make improvements.
5. Increased Energy
Three activities in particular that help stabilize your energy are drinking water, exercising, and meditating. When you incorporate any of these into your morning routine, you start your day with more energy and can sustain it longer.
Eating a nutritious breakfast helps stabilize blood sugar and conserve energy.
Many people aren’t aware that their brains are 70% water. When you aren’t sufficiently hydrated, you can’t think well. Drinking a glass of water soon after you get up in the morning will help you mobilize your thoughts for the day.
Exercise increases the action of neurotransmitters – dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine – tied to mood stabilization, motivation, and energization.
6. Development of Other Good Habits
A regular morning routine is a keystone habit. Keystone habits are those that unintentionally lead to the formation of other good habits.
For example, if you cultivate calm every day in your morning routine, you become a better listener, negotiator, soothing presence, and friend. Your relationships might get a lift.
It’s like exercise. When you exercise regularly, you automatically eat better, get up earlier, and take care of your body.
Keystone habits create positive energy that initiates other good habits without effort.
7. Positivity, Confidence, and Happiness
Effective morning routines don’t make problems disappear, but they enable you to see them in a more positive light and approach them successfully. When you feel more grounded and connected to yourself, your confidence naturally arises.
You can see the silver linings in stressful or difficult situations. You can use them to push up rather than sink in.
You have a sense of self that extends beyond what you do or what happens around you, which improves your overall performance. It’s a win-win.
How To Start
If you don’t already have a morning routine, select one or two of the activities we’ve reviewed today and begin incorporating them into it.
Don’t do everything at once. Start slow and build up. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself or add too much activity, which can create stress instead.
You must be mindful of your time constraints, so work within that. Start with the activity you have the least resistance to. If sitting quietly with a cup of coffee for ten minutes is the most you can do initially, start with that.
After a few weeks, you’ll enjoy it so much you don’t want to miss it. Then slowly add other activities.
Choose a day to start and monitor how you feel each day. You can tweak as you go. And, if you already have a morning routine, you might be ready to upgrade it. Either way, enjoy your morning oasis!
That’s all for today.
I hope you have a wonderful Christmas or the holiday of your choice! I’ll be back to you in the first week of 2026.
All my best,
Barbara