It feels like for my entire life I’ve wanted to be a morning person, but am actually not so much a morning person. We live in a society where waking up early is celebrated and you are given so much praise if you manage to accomplish 10+ things before the average person stirs. But, alas, this just wasn’t how my body operated naturally. I was more of a 9am person naturally, and imagine the shock and horror of all my 5am club friends when they’ve already solved world hunger and I’m just now hitting snooze for what would be the first of ten times.

If I sound bitter, it’s because I spent a lot of time being bitter about it. I felt like something was WRONG with me, inherently. Why was I so tired?! Why did I not even remember turning off my alarm?! I remember in college I got an app that made you solve math problems to turn off the alarm (now this was on the crappiest/cheapest Android smartphone). The first day it went off and I groggily rolled over and started solving the problem. I liked math and considered myself a Math Superstar and so I had put the level at “hardest.” WELL, I couldn’t get it right. I was livid. The alarm was blaring and despite my multiple efforts I couldn’t solve the problem! 

I later read the reviews, which were terrible, and found out that most of the equations did not follow simple order of operations and therefore were not solvable.

BUT, in that moment, I instead ripped the battery out of my phone, threw it across the room, and fell back to sleep.

That’s one of many stories about me and sleep. Once my sister proclaimed she thought I was dead and she tried to shake me from my zombie-like stupor. And when I took a poetry class, my professor said she thought it was “odd” that I chose to write a poem about accidental napping.

Clearly, sleep is a Big Fucking Deal™ to me.

When I set out on my entrepreneurial journey, it felt like, LITERALLY, everyone was talking about the 5am club. People were working out, cooking and eating a real breakfast, raising children, cleaning their house and their inbox all before the sun rose. Not to mention journaling, meditating, getting in a quick yoga flow, and also solving world hunger. I, on the other hand, was turning over in my bed and opening my laptop to start work from bed around 9-9:30. I felt like a fraud, a fuck-up, like this would never work for me because of a stupid wake up time.

As I grew more successful, better habits did form. I actually got out of bed, brushed my teeth, and put on a bra (sometimes). But the wake up time never really improved. And this sense of guilt always lingered. In the back of my mind, I thought, well dammit, if ONLY I could get up early, then I’d be a millionaire.

This belief lingered through all of my up-leveling, through hitting six figures, through being booked out and then overbooked out. Honestly, I remember the moment that the belief got challenged and rocked and I was finally given this permission slip I had unintentionally been seeking for years.

I went to a retreat with some business friends and at some point someone asked what our normal morning routines were. One of the girls there who I really admired lazily replied that she gets up around 9 or 9:30 and eventually starts work by 11.

I think I died and went to heaven.

Because here she was, in allllll of her success (multi 6-figures, y’all) saying that SHE DIDN’T WAKE UP EARLY. Like that the belief disappeared. I felt cured. I felt like a new woman. She has no idea the impact such a simple response had on me, but it was epic.

I’ve since passed this permission slip onto many others. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are perfectly fine in every single way possible just as you are.

The funny thing here is that once I dropped this crazy belief system, I noticed something interesting. I started getting up a bit earlier. Like, naturally. It’s like those crazy stories where people say I FINALLY STOPPED DIETING AND LOST 100 POUNDS. The mind is a funny thing, y’all. 

But the point is, I actually don’t care what time I wake up. I try to keep it consistent because I know for me that leads to better quality sleep, but there’s no shame or guilt around the times. I built my business schedule around honoring that I will not be available to others until 11 and even if I get up at 7 (which often I do! Naturally!) I just spend the morning on ME, for ME.

The moral of this story isn’t to say that 5 or 7 or 9 or 11am wins. It’s to say that you are fine, exactly as you are, and if you could stop shaming yourself for every single thing you do, life would be a lot more simpler, exciting, and fun.

And that’s my big problem with “morning routines” in general. I don’t doubt the effectiveness for some people, heck, I do things pretty routinely too. BUT, this idea of telling people they HAVE to do all of these things to be successful or win life is a recipe for disaster. It leads to a shame spiral if you don’t manage to complete it, and it ends up with people just checking the boxes and not actually getting anything out of their said routine. 

It becomes just writing your gratitude, without actually feeling it.

It becomes just saying your affirmations, without actually believing it.

It turns you into a wellness zombie chugging celery juice and doing yoga without even considering why.

That’s not the point here. My mornings are sacred. My gratitude practice involves writing and daydreaming and meditation and visualizing all the things. That takes time! If I was trying to cram it into a 5 minute window on my 50 item checklist to do in one hour…. It wouldn’t work the same, right?! And all of that to say, you don’t have to do it my way. But you do have to do it with some sort of intention and meaning. It’s not just an item to check off.

Here’s what I did to find my best morning situation:

First, I fucking relaxed. So after *the event*, I noticed I was naturally getting up a bit earlier. And I thought to myself, I want to use this time for me, whatever that means. I truly didn’t know, but I knew I didn’t want to jump right into work.

So one morning when I got up, I just went to the couch and sat there and relaxed. And I let ideas come to me to see what would feel good to do. Of course my mind went to all the things I “should” do, but I asked myself if I really wanted to actually do those things. And then I put on my scientist hat, and did some things, and recognized what felt good and didn’t.

I didn’t look to external sources to tell me what to do.

I went internal and judged how things made me feel.

And if I LIKED them, then I did them more.

And if I DIDN’T like them, I released them. No big deal.

There are absolutely no rules, just FYI. Even the rules you are thinking of right now aren’t actually rules. Just conditioning and habits and ideas you’ve adopted as beliefs. Except maybe feeding your cats first thing, that might be a rule. At least it is in my household, because they will not leave you the heck alone without some breakfast.

Anyway, I found my own routine and here’s the shocker: it changes. OFTEN!

And that’s okay!

How I look at it now is that I want to get myself into a feeling and a vibration of my next level success. So sometimes that’s meditating, sometimes that’s journaling, sometimes that’s pulling cards, today that looks like writing this blog post because I felt inspired to do so. I want to take whatever action feels like it’ll help me BE the person I want to be. For me, that person values freedom and flexibility, so of course, I need to start doing that now.

So, I guess that’s the consistent thing that happens. I ask myself, who do I need to BE to have everything I want in life. And I let that answer inform what comes next. Sometimes I have 3 hours to play with this idea, and sometimes I have 1. The biggest piece of advice, or thought I want to pass onto you, is to do what you can to release the shame around not doing things the way that xyz book tells you to. 

You can be everything you want to be using exactly what you have right now. There’s nothing left to fix or change. 

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