Building a Morning Routine

As we begin building helpful habits and say goodbye to unhelpful habits, it can feel overwhelming knowing just where to start. Part of building a healthy lifestyle through habit formation involves creating routine; things you do every day that become a natural part of your life in place of harmful habits like daily alcohol use.

If your drinking life was anything like mine, it’s likely that mornings have not been your friend for some time. The haze, the headache, the queasy stomach, maybe even the “hanxiety” of wondering what you said the night before; the AM hours after drinking can feel like a messy soup of physical and emotional pain and sluggishness.One of the most beautiful parts of living an alcohol-free life has been reclaiming those morning hours and really pouring into practices that fuel me and set me up for an amazing day. If you do nothing else suggested in this program, consider establishing some sort of morning routine for yourself and see how it transforms your life.

A morning routine is simply a few things you do for yourself first thing in the morning, before the chaos of the day kicks in. When we talked about decision fatigue, we noted that our culture has a bad habit of hitting the snooze button a hundred times and then rocketing straight into a hectic day, going, going, going until our heads hit the pillow at night. This is made more intense if you are responsible for other humans, like children or adult family members who need care. What if, instead, we took even just 5 minutes to ease into our day so that we’re centered and ready to go when we step into our first task?