I have a pop quiz for you:
What is the best time to start preparing your mind and body for sleep?
If you answered “About an hour before bedtime,” you're definitely on the right track. However, there's actually a better answer…
You should start preparing for sleep as soon as you wake up.
The state that you wake up in carries on throughout the rest of your day.
For example, if you wake up feeling stressed and rushed, then you're going to spend the majority of your day in the fight or flight state. Whenever you're in fight or flight, your body's going to be producing an excessive amount of cortisol. (And as I've talked about before, excessive cortisol is typically the root cause of poor sleep.)
Today, I want to talk to you about several ways you can structure your morning routine that will allow you to have a better day and a better night's sleep.
8 Steps to Help You Create the Perfect Morning Routine
Step 1
Give Yourself Enough Time
The first step to a productive morning is to make sure you give yourself enough time to actually have a good morning routine.
As a working mom myself, I know it can be really hard for me to fit in "me time". I personally like to wake up about two hours before my kids do. I wake up at 5:00 AM. But you don't have to wake up that early in order to have a good morning routine! Just try to give yourself at least a good 30 minutes before you need to really start moving in order to have a meaningful routine.
Once you figure out what time you want to wake up, make sure you wake up at that time every day — even on the weekends. (OK — you can sleep in a little bit on the weekends — but I advise you wake up within a half hour range of your desired wake up time.)
If you sleep in late on the weekends, it can end up shifting your circadian rhythm: your cortisol starts flowing later, your melatonin starts flowing later, and then it can make it hard to fall asleep the next night.
Ever wondered why Mondays can be so rough? That’s a big reason why! So make sure to keep a consistent schedule.
Step 2
Don’t Hit Snooze
The next thing you want to make sure of is that you don't hit snooze. Every time you wake up, hit snooze, and fall back to sleep, your body restarts a sleep cycle.
A sleep cycle ranges anywhere from 1-2 hours and usually hovers around 90 minutes. So if you hit snooze and your snooze is only 10 minutes long, then you're not actually giving yourself enough time to complete a sleep cycle. As a result, you're going to wake up feeling groggy. You're going to have sleep inertia, where your body wants to sleep more, but it can't because of the alarm. So then you just feel lousy when you wake up, and that feeling can carry with you throughout the rest of the day.
So do yourself a favor, and if you're someone who loves to hit snooze, put your alarm across the room. That way you have to get out of bed in order to hit snooze. Once you're out of bed, you're going to have a greater chance of thinking twice about hitting snooze, and you’ll already be up!
Step 3
No Checking Emails or Scrolling Insta
This is something that I fall victim to myself. Try your best to avoid opening up your phone and start checking Instagram or emails first thing in the morning.
As we all know, our phones are highly addictive. They're designed to be addictive. So if you open that phone and you start working on emails or checking social media, then before you know it, all of the time you set aside for your morning routine is eaten up.
I know that I tend to do this on the weekends and I always regret it. So do yourself a favor and tell yourself that you're not going to open up your phone until your morning routine is finished.
Step 4
Avoid Coffee At Least 90 Minutes After Waking
Now I know it sounds really crazy, but I have a good reason for this one. When you wake up, your cortisol levels naturally start to rise and this should give you a good burst of energy. By drinking coffee right away, all you do is send a jolt to your adrenal glands.
Most of my clients have some sluggish adrenal activity because they're typically chronically stressed and their poor adrenals have been overworked. As a result, they have a dysfunctional cortisol pattern, or maybe their body produces even too little cortisol, which is just as bad as too much. So do your adrenals a favor and drink a coffee replacement instead.
My favorite coffee alternative is MUD\WTR. It contains ingredients that give you a nice natural boost of energy and are good for you, such as cinnamon (helps to balance your blood sugar), turmeric (anti-inflammatory), and adaptogens (like lion's mane and reishi mushroom, which help to manage stress). Bonus: it tastes like a chai latte. I drink it every morning — but I still drink coffee too! I just wait 90 minutes first, because that's when cortisol starts to take a nose dive and a little boost is OK.
Step 5
Start Your Morning with H₂O
When you wake up in the morning, make sure you drink a glass of water. You can do this either before or after your coffee alternatives (if you want to drink a coffee alternative!)
The reason why I want you to do this is because we typically wake up dehydrated. We lose a good two liters of water throughout the night through respiration alone. Whenever we’re dehydrated, it sends a signal to our body that there’s danger, which activates the fight-or-flight reflex — and we want to avoid that throughout the day.
Step 6
Eat a Healthy Breakfast
Now I know that there's a lot of research promoting intermittent fasting, and I'm sure it's good for the average person who gets a good night's sleep. However, if you are someone who struggles with sleep, I highly recommend eating breakfast.
Breakfast helps to regulate your blood sugar. Most of my sleep clients have blood sugar issues. The reason why blood sugar issues lead to poor sleep is because whenever our blood sugar bottoms out, our body releases cortisol to bring it back up.
So set yourself up for success by starting your day with a healthy breakfast that's balanced. You want it to contain healthy fats, protein and carbohydrates so that you have a nice level of blood sugar.
Step 7
Get Light Exposure Within 30 Minutes of Waking
Another great thing to do in the morning — and I highly recommend you do this every morning — is to get some light exposure to your eyes within the first 30 minutes of waking up.
The reason why is because getting light in your eyes (and natural light is best, if possible) will tell your body it's morning. Your body will then have a nice release of cortisol (not a big surge of cortisol like you would get if you drank coffee, but a nice gradual release of cortisol) so that you can get a nice boost of energy. That’s also going to support a decline of cortisol the rest of the day so that your cortisol levels can be nice and low at night.
This also tells your body to start cortisol production a good 12 to 13 hours later to prepare for the next day.
If you wake up before the sunrise (like me) or work swing shift, you won’t get the natural light exposure you need for that morning burst of cortisol. That’s where a little blue light exposure can actually assist you (I know — I’m always telling you to avoid it — but it can be helpful sometimes, too!) Try using a pair of Lucimed Luminettes to help get that blue light exposure in the morning to boost your cortisol first thing. (BONUS: You can use the code MURRAY to save 10% on your order!)
Step 8
Design the Routine to Your Liking
For the rest of your morning routine, you can choose your own adventure.
I like to change it up on a daily basis, depending on what I need that day and how much time I have. Some days I'll exercise if I know I don't have time later in the day. I highly recommend exercising if you're a night owl and have a hard time getting moving in the morning, because again, that will give you a good little healthy dose of cortisol.
Other things you can do are to meditate or do some breath work if you're feeling extremely stressed out and need to center yourself. Also journaling is a good activity, especially if you have a lot on your mind that you want to get out on paper.
I also like to spend my morning learning something. I'll either do an online course or read a personal development book. You can change it up just depending on what you need. It's actually the best part of the morning routine — having some time to yourself to start your day on a good, productive and positive note.
Last Step: Get Started
I hope these steps have inspired you to wake up a little bit early and have a peaceful and productive morning routine. That way, you have a less-stressful day and a better night's sleep.
If you're still struggling with your sleep despite of your morning routine, please reach out. I offer one-on-one consultations and it all starts with a discovery call. The complimentary call helps me learn a little bit more about your sleep habits, what you've tried in the past, what hasn't worked, and explain to you how I can help you achieve your sleep goals.
If you're interested in setting up that discovery call, click here to get started→
Sweet Dreams…
Kelly Murray is a certified sleep coach and an award-winning pediatric sleep consultant based in Chicago offering sleep coaching services nationwide.