Ahhh, morning routines. Delightful things. They’re supposed to make you more productive, more grateful, more calm, more-pretty-much-whatever-it-is-that-you-want-to-be.

You might think that the perfect morning routine can make every minute of the day perfect too.

But there’s no such thing as the perfect day, and we all kinda know this. Life and humans are way too messy for that, even though we also know that the mess can be mighty beautiful.

But I do agree that the way you start your day is important. A glass of water when you wake up? Good thing to do. Maybe some meditation or reflection or just quiet time to yourself, or with yourself and God, can ground you and is probably a lot better for you than immediately checking your social media accounts.

But the thing is, in the interest of the “perfect” morning routine, we humans have sort of (ahem) gone a bit overboard.

Articles, blogs, videos…there are a ton of them waiting to tell you how to spend the first ten, twenty, thirty, even sixty minutes of each day in order to have a better day.

Me? I’m thinking that an hour long morning routine is taking sort of a bit much of the actual day. Of course, there’s advice about that too – get up at 5, or 6, or 4:30 in the morning.

Yeah, I’m never going to get up at 4:30 in the morning so that I can take an hour to do every conceivable good morning routine thing that there is.

And let’s be honest here – you can make a morning routine so “perfect”, it becomes just another task on your to-do list, instead of a way to prepare for and embrace (and be thankful for) another day.

Also true – we don’t all have the luxury of time to ourselves in the morning, no matter what hour we set the alarm for, and all that advice telling us to do all those things in the morning, things we don’t have time to do because the baby needs tending and the bus won’t wait for us and working out doesn’t work for us then…well, you can sort of start believing that you’ve failed before the day’s even gotten going real good.

The truth is that the best morning routine for you is one that works for you. Not for me, not for your friend, not for the motivational speaker with a zillion followers.

You.

It might be a glass of water and a quick thanks-to-the-Universe that it’s not raining.

It might be ten minutes of meditation and breathing in the newness of the day.

It might be journaling your heart out, or just jotting down three things you’re thankful for today.

It might even be a workout.

But whatever it is, it needs to work for you.

And whatever you do, don’t be fooled into believing that you’re not the best judge of that.

Is there such a thing as “the” perfect morning routine?

I don’t think so. I think that the perfect routine for you is perfect for you, and mine is perfect for me, and they might not match much but that’s okay because they don’t have to. We don’t all have to do the exact same things.

Of course, we should all probably have a glass of water in the mornings.

~xo,
LuAnne