morning rituals

Do you have a morning routine? One that doesn’t involve spraying your hair with dry shampoo and flying out the door with a bagel hanging out of your mouth? I’ve been really interested in other people’s routines and have been reading Daily Rituals by Mason Currey, on the things that novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and more do each day to set themselves up for success.

I drink a LOT in the morning; hydration is a big part of my routine. The first thing I do every day, and most constant part of my daily ritual, is reach for a bottle of water. This is the one thing I can’t live without; I feel so much more awake and refreshed when I drink 2-3 cups right when I wake up. You can fill it up the night before and keep it by your bed so it’s ready for you in the morning, and sip on it while you get ready for work.

If I have it available, I’ll take a daily shot of fire cider for gut/immune health as well, otherwise, it’s a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar diluted with water. It’s definitely an eye-opener and once my current batch of kombucha is finished fermenting I’m going to try and make my own. Speaking of kombucha, I drink a glass of that as well if I have some while I sit down to start work. (Stay tuned… I’ll be posting a ‘booch guide in the near future.)

Somewhere in there, I make breakfast and herbal tea (I rarely have caffeine… I KNOW. I’M ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE). Lately, it’s been a couple soft-boiled eggs with black beans, salsa, and spinach. A truly lazy meal, but it works! If not that, it’s usually some sort of spinach-based smoothie or a coconut yogurt bowl like in the photo above. I’m a creature of habit.

I then check my email, go through my to-do list in Asana, and get to work. Depending on how I’m feeling, I either tackle the easiest things first or get started on the big projects if I’m already energized and focused. The earlier I wake up, the more focused I am, especially if nobody else is online and it’s easier to focus on things that require a lot of my attention.

Other than that, there are some new things I’ve been trying to add to my routine that haven’t fully made their way in yet. The big one is NOT looking at my phone before I can even fully open my eyes.

We’re all guilty, and I’m definitely working on it. For about a week straight I committed to keeping my phone on airplane mode through the night and not taking it off until 30 minutes after waking, during which time I’d read a book and wake up in the natural morning light instead of having a blue beam shining into my eyeballs telling me how many unread emails I have to get to. It was great, but I let it lapse a bit and am still trying to make it into a habit. We can’t all be perfect!

On the weekends if the weather’s nice, I’ve been trying to get out and take a short, 15-minute walk around the block within the first hour of waking as well. It’s really nice to take in the fresh fall air, especially when the neighborhood is quiet. The picture above is one of my running routes and where I go for longer walks.

So that’s all. It’s not super exciting, and as much as I love a good maca-chaga-superfood-latte-elixir-smoothie [insert 10 more buzzwords here], my routine is pretty simple.

What things do you like to do for yourself in the morning?