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Today, Becky and Kristen discuss the importance of having a morning routine to get the day started off in a healthy way.
Kristen had a life-giving instead of a life-sucking morning today by exercising first thing. Every article anywhere discusses the importance of exercising first thing in the morning. Getting it over with in the morning helps Becky and Kristen feel great and feel more organized throughout their day.
Becky feels like she struggles with a morning routine all the time except for when it's a break for her kids from school. Then her kids sleep in later and she can get a lot done like exercise, read her scriptures, pray and other things in and her cup is filled up and she is then ready to go and face people. This is not the norm for her, however, because on school days her boys are up before 6a.m., so getting up even earlier is challenging for her.
Summer will be here for her soon enough and then she can have her mornings to herself
again. But as soon as summer is over, she will go back to not having that time in the morning again.
The morning routine is a habit that can be built in if we take it in small chunks. It's very rewarding but sometimes waking up at 4:30 a.m. to meditate or to do anything at all might not be feasible for people. Kristen was able to do this much more easily when her kids were babies and little. She would get up before them and clean the house, journal, or meditate.
This helped her feel centered and when her kids got up, she was ready to do the mom
thing with her kids. This made her feel like a better human and a better mom and that she had control over her life.
A morning routine is a great way to love and take care of yourself. It shows you that you matter to yourself.
When Becky lived in Texas several years ago, her kids got to go to school later in the morning so she had from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. all to herself and she felt amazing as a result. Now, in Tennessee, she is getting three kids ready for school and out the door between 5:45 a.m. and 7:45 a.m. and then she is exhausted, so she often takes a nap then for a little while and then goes about her day.
She wishes she could exercise before she even got her kids out the door so then she'd at least feel a little more awake.
Kristen thinks that you want to find what works for you and what is actually sustainable. You want to ask yourself, "What works for me?" "What makes sense?" When you continue pushing it off until later, later often never comes. So, if you can find one or two things that you know you CAN do early in the morning and show yourself that you can do them, that gives you the confidence to know that you can do it. Find something that makes sense for you. If going to the gym at 6 a.m. and doing aerobics isn't fun for you because you hate bouncing around at the gym with people at 6 a.m., that won't last very long.
We also judge ourselves a lot for not doing enough and that shaming only makes it worse for us.
Becky used to have a friend she walked with in the early mornings and now she doesn't anymore, so maybe it's time to make some new friends.
The idea is not to judge yourself and to just do something that feels good and right for you. And sometimes we get into a funk or a rut and it is hard to get out of it. We stay in the pathway of least resistance and the comfort zone we are in. Kristen just made it happen today because she was inspired by seeing other people walking out of the gym this morning who were already done with their workouts. So, she just decided to get on her spin bike at home and get it done with and it felt really...
