The Perfect Morning Ritual?

Summary

In this episode of the Do Life podcast, Layla Evans discusses the components of a perfect morning routine, emphasizing the importance of sleep, hydration, meditation, physical movement, and positive affirmations. She provides practical tips for listeners to implement these elements into their daily lives, aiming to enhance productivity and overall well-being. The conversation highlights the significance of starting the day with intention and self-care, ultimately leading to a more fulfilling life.

Takeaways

A perfect morning routine begins with a good night's sleep.
Hydration is essential first thing in the morning.
Meditation can set a positive tone for the day.
Physical movement is crucial for morning energy.
Natural sunlight exposure helps regulate circadian rhythms.
Creating personal morning time is vital for mental health.
Avoiding the snooze button is important for productivity.
Positive affirmations can improve self-image and mindset.
Breaking the fast properly impacts energy levels.
Deep work should be prioritized after morning routines.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Perfect Morning Routine
00:58 The Importance of Sleep
01:37 Hydration: The First Step
02:49 Meditation: Setting the Tone for the Day
04:50 Movement: Energizing Your Body
05:59 The Role of Natural Sunlight
07:01 Creating Personal Time in the Morning
08:42 The Dangers of the Snooze Button
12:17 Morning Hygiene and Positive Affirmations
13:23 Breaking the Fast: Importance of Breakfast
14:19 Deep Work: Maximizing Morning Productivity
15:01 Creative Work: Evening Reflections

Transcript

Layla Evans (00:01)
Hi friends, welcome to the Do Life podcast where we talk about life, its challenges, and some common ways to tackle those issues with scientific -based research and little bit of metaphysical properties. Today we are going to be talking about the perfect morning routine. And I get it's not a perfect world. Some of us have jobs and children and spouses and responsibilities and other things that we have to do. But if you could just take one of the things that we talk about today and implement them, then it's a win.

And even if you can't, if you share this information with someone who might be able to implement them, then it's a win. So we're all about changing lives here, people. So let's get started.

So like I said, in a perfect world, we would all be able to implement these changes and live happily ever after. I understand that that's not really, that's not realistic. So I want to tell you all of the information and what you can implement, please do. And what you can't, that's okay. Leave it for someone else. So having the perfect morning routine will start with getting the perfect night's sleep.

We are not going to get into that today. is a whole nother topic and we will be having a sleep is a whole nother topic and we will have an episode on that later. So we're not going to deep dive into that much today at all. But do know that sleep is super important and how you start your morning absolutely depends on how well you slept at night. So with that being said,

I'm going to skip over some of the basics. know, the first thing you do when you wake up is you use the bathroom, obviously. And then the next thing you should do is drink water because, well, maybe it's not obvious. Maybe I shouldn't just say, obviously, you go to the bathroom because some people might not. They might just jump up late for work and get dressed and run and do an hour's worth of work before they realize that they never went to the bathroom. And that's so bad for your kidney and your bladder and your everything. So.

Yes, the first thing you do when you wake up should be go potty. For obvious reasons that may not be obvious, apparently. Second thing you do is drink water. We dehydrate so much throughout the night and you lose a lot of water through sweat and your breath. You lose...

You lose a surprising amount of water through your sweat and your breath at night when you sleep. rehydrating yourself. Yeah, yeah, through your through your skin. Yeah, you lose in. You lose a surprising amount of water every night through your skin and your breath while you're sleeping. So when you wake up super dehydrated, it's it's real. It's a legitimate thing.

So there's a lot of arguments on how much water you should drink. So I'm not even going to touch that. I'm not going to be like, you need 32 ounces, you need an ounce for every pound you weigh. We're not. You can do your own research on how much water you feel you think you should be drinking because that's just, there's too many debates and too many issues that I'm not going to get into. We're not doing that today. So either way, you wake up, you potty, you drink your water.

And then what? And this is where it gets debatable. So when I say our podcast has a touch of metaphysical properties, we're going to get into that right now. So when you're half asleep, half awake, your brain is kind of in that like theta, beta stage. It's not really functioning on all cylinders. It's not ready to tackle on the day. You know, some people say that they need to have their coffee before you can even have a conversation with them. And we'll get into that in a minute why that's not great, but don't.

Don't leave me just yet. So when your brain is still kind of in that groggy state, the best thing for you to do is meditate. And I know like,

If I meditate, I fall asleep. I don't know how to meditate. can't do this. We're going to have a whole, I've already recorded a whole nother episode on meditation with a separate meditation that you can download and everything. And I'll be posting that sometime in the next few weeks. So we're not going to get into that either today, but there's so many benefits of meditation. If you talk to anybody who's successful or rich or famous or, you know, just happy, happy people.

they'll tell you that they meditate first thing in the morning or at night before they go to bed or both or anytime throughout the day. Because meditation's, when you meditate first thing in the morning, you tell your mind what kind of day you're gonna have. I'm a trained facilitator in the six phase meditation. It's one of my favorites because it starts out with compassion and then it moves to gratitude. And then we talk about forgiveness and then.

We vision plan, you vision stack your day, you plan what your day's gonna look like and you ask for a blessing.

No, we're not going to use any of that. So as a trained facilitator of the six phase meditation, I prefer that because it goes through step by step. Like at the end of it, you plan your day and what kind of day you're going to have. And when you have those expectations, if something goes wrong, you're able to just kind of let it slide a little bit more. You're not as.

I find you're not reacting to so much as you are just responding as things happen. It's such a fine line between reacting and responding and that's...

And that's something that not a lot of people understand. So when you meditate, you set your brain up for the kind of day you're going to be having. You're going to be in a more relaxed state. You're going to be in a more responsive state. You're going to be in a more responsive state.

And there's a million different neurological benefits that I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce or remember right now. So again, you can do your own research on some of these things. I'm just telling you what I've learned from all the research that I've done. And meditation, first thing in the morning when your brain is still in that kind of groggy state of state is the best time to meditate and set your day up properly. And then the next thing that you do when you're done meditating,

is also debatable and in a big world with a lot of people on their opinions, exercise or movement, any kind of helpfulness for your body. So.

No, no cat. So anything that you can do to move your body is going to benefit you in some sort of way. So we start out the morning with taking care of our brain and then the next thing we do, do you mind? Rude. The next thing we do is we move our bodies and it doesn't matter if you do yoga or if you do a high intensity workout, if you want to go for a walk, which is actually what I would recommend because the next thing after you move your body is

natural sunlight within the first 90 minutes of being awake? No, Within the first

hour of being awake at some point you

Within the first hour of being awake, at some point, you want to move your body out. No. Within the first hour of being awake, at some point, you need to be outside. You need to get natural sunlight in your eyes, not through a window, not through like a car. I guess that's still a window. Not fluorescent lights in an office space. Actual natural sunlight in your eyeballs for the first hour so that you're awake.

And the reason behind that is it actually helps your cortisol levels, it helps your circadian rhythm. So your circadian rhythm is the natural state where you sleep, you get tired, your body winds down and it starts to go into a sleep mode. Your cycle.

It just helps you regulate every day. It helps regulate a lot of things on a daily basis. Your hormones, your metabolic rate, all of the things. So you want to get your natural circadian rhythm to a, a system. And that's why having consistent wake up times and bedtimes are so important. Not set.

not snoozing, you're a lot, we'll get into that.

So having your circadian rhythms on a cycle is important.

It also helps regulate cortisol levels, is, you know, stress hormones and all of those fun things, which is why you don't want to have coffee before 90 minutes of being awake, because that will also screw up your circadian rhythm. And it'll also screw up your cortisol levels and your stress hormones and adrenaline and all of the things. So. Let's recap so far. So you wake up, you go potty, you drink water.

You meditate, you move your body, you get sunlight in your eyes. Gotcha. So we're now maybe awake for half an hour, 30 minutes. That's the same thing. So now we're maybe awake for an hour or so at this point. We've gone outside, we've gone for a walk, we got natural sunlight in our eyes. And then what? Then, then we go hygiene for the day. So my, my morning routine, the first two hours,

are my time. No matter if I have an appointment planned or I have something scheduled, if I have somewhere to be, I try to make sure that I wake up the same time every day and the first two hours I'm awake are for me.

I wake up the same time every day and I make sure that the first two hours I'm awake are for me because, you know, I understand a lot of us as parents for many years, I woke up stressed out, had to get the kids up, had to get them ready. They're stressed out. The hubs is stressed out. He's going to work, coming home from work, whatever shift he was on. It was just, it was chaos. And now that I have that freedom, the kids are grown and gone. I,

I don't have that stress, don't have that husband works his own shift.

I, I, everybody's, nobody's in the house in the morning when I wake up. It's gone. don't have

I don't have anybody to wake up to any morning. I don't have anybody to wake up to anymore in the morning and it's peaceful and it's heavenly and I can be me for me before I start showing up for everybody else. So when I do my meditation and my movements and I wake up every morning, I'm waking up for me and I'm not doing a bunch of things for I'm waking up for me and I show up for me before I dedicate my time to other people.

So even if you do have small children or a husband or a spouse, if you can wake up 20 minutes before everybody else and just have that moment of breathe, just breathe, just breathe and be you. Even if you don't do a full meditation, if you can just sit there in peace and maybe visualize your day going by in a harmonious manner, you know, the kids are all going to wake up on time and get dressed and be happy. And maybe your day ends up

being amazing and if you could do that every day that would also be amazing. So even if you can't dedicate a full two hours every morning before you dedicate your time to other people, whatever you can is so important for your mindset, for your mental health for the rest of the day. So if it's just a 10 minute standing in the kitchen drinking your water before you get everybody up.

do that. And also, let's, I forgot to talk about the snooze button. Let's, let's get into that real quick for a minute. Do you know how detrimental it is to your body and your brain and your sleep and your cycle and your everything when you hit that snooze button? When I stayed with my daughter in Seattle last year, I crashed in her room and she had an alarm set every five minutes for like two hours and was still late for work. And I'm just like,

What the hell is wrong with you? Don't do that. First of all, when you wake up, the first time you wake up, notice it, pay attention to it. Now that it's been pinpointed in your brain that seeds planted when you wake up, you're awake. Now, sometimes, sometimes you're not, not always, but most of the time, like when you wake up, that first time you wake up, you're awake. The second you make a decision to go back to sleep, you restart your sleep cycle. Your body wants to go to sleep for 90 minutes at least.

So, you know, every time you close your eyes to take a nap or sleep, your body wants to be in a 90 minute sleep cycle. And when you do that for five minutes, the next time you wake up, you don't know your name. You don't know what planet you're on. Don't hit the snooze button. That is the worst thing that you could ever do. Don't hit the snooze button because first of all, your life is a series of decisions. If the first decision you make that day is to delay the day,

What kind of day are you gonna have? How much are you gonna be ready to tackle? You know, they say, make your bed because then you've accomplished something first thing in the morning. Yeah, but if you hit the snooze button 57 times, you didn't accomplish anything. Anyway, so the snooze button is illegal as far as I'm concerned. We don't touch that. We don't do that. You wake up when you're supposed to wake up and you'd be awake even if you don't want to.

I stayed up late last night, I had a couple things to drink, and I don't really do that often. But you can tell I'm all swollen and puffy because I drank last night, which is why I don't, because I'm too vain to be this puffy and on camera. But whatever, I'll probably edit that out. Anyway. So I stayed up too late. I didn't drink as much. I have this bracelet. It's called a whoop bracelet and a whoop watch. It doesn't actually tell me the time, but it tells me about how my body is affected.

with my sleep, with my cycle, with booze, with everything. And it has definitely turned me off against drinking as much as I used to because I see firsthand how it affects my body and my sleep and my system and my cycles. And it's just insane. So with that being said, I still had a couple of drinks last night. We were in the neighbor's pool and then we were in the hot tub. It was a full moon, partial lunar eclipse, super moon. It was amazing. I'm outside anytime there's any kind of

astrological events at all, which is always. But anyway, I stayed up later than I needed to and I didn't sleep as well as I should have and my body woke up at 7 and I normally wake up like 6 37 and I wanted nothing more than to turn over and go back to sleep. But I laid there and I was like, I'm awake. I'm awake right now. If I go back to sleep, it'll be hours before I'm awake again.

So I made the decision to get up and do all the things. And that was the first decision I made for myself today was to show up for me.

And so that's why the snooze button is illegal.

Anyway, where I was prior to the snooze button rant I just went on was after you're done with your your morning time, your workout, your everything, then we go to hygiene. You shower, you brush your teeth, you do your affirmations. If that's the thing you do, you I mean, you look in the mirror and say happy things.

I love this quote from Marisa Peer, if you're going to lie to yourself, tell yourself a better lie. You know, people are looking in the mirror every morning. They're like, I'm ugly. I'm fat. I'm this and that. You're lying. Those are all lies. None of that is legally proven. So instead of saying those negative things when you're standing there brushing your teeth, how about you tell yourself a better lie? How about my jawline is fantastic or,

I really like my eyebrows or have a great personality or whatever lies you want to tell yourself make them better lies do good lies don't tell yourself trash lies don't be down and dirty and negative if you're gonna stand in the mirror and you're gonna look at yourself don't talk down to yourself lie better

And then afterwards, you break your fast. And that doesn't mean that you break your fast at 8 a 9 a 10 a I don't care when you eat, but know that the first thing you eat is breaking your fast. That's your breakfast, regardless of what time of day it is. And it is the most important meal of the day, not eating in the morning, but the breaking your fast. What you reintroduce into your body has so much to do.

with your levels of energy and your metabolism and your your overall body in general.

so your breakfast is most important meal of the day.

And if you intermittent fast, that's great. If you don't, that's great. I'm not here to judge. Again, there's so much debate on what's good and what's not good when it comes to, there's so much debate about what's good and what's not good when it comes to your food and all of those things. we're, I don't want to get stuck in those arguments. I just want to, we're just here to talk about having a good day.

All right, so let's recap again. You wake up, you bathroom, you water, you meditate, you move, you sunlight.

your hygiene.

You eat.

And then the first parts, the first, the early parts of every day are, and then after you're done with all that, your brain is in a more awake state. It's in a more alert and heightened state. So this is when it's really important for you to do your deep work. So if you have things to figure out or calculate or problem solving or anything important that takes a lot of strenuous brain activity, you want to do them now after you're done with your whole

Morning everything because now that your brains awake and alert you've got the sunlight in your eyes It's ready to tackle on the day This is not the time to sit and doom scroll and procrastinate and and be lazy and depressed No, this is when we get shit done. This is when you go and you you are doing all the things and Then you're usually in a good place to deep work for about two to three hours And then you give yourself a break take a break do something completely

different and then you can do another deep work session and then after that if you still have more time then when it gets closer to the evening

When it gets closer to evening time, you have the creative space. So that's when you want creative ideas to flow to you. If you need creative problem solving, you do that in the earlier stages of the evening.

You do that in the earlier stages of the evening. This is going to be a very short... This isn't a very long video. I don't want to bore you. Again, I'm not going to give you a whole bunch of things to do super early in the morning, but whatever you can accomplish is... is better. And there's... I think I'm done talking. This doesn't have to be a super long episode.

Alright. So to recap, the first thing you do when you wake up is you go to the bathroom. The second thing you do is you drink a bunch of water. Third thing you do is meditate, plan your day, visualize your day, something along those lines. Fourth thing you do is move your body. In any kind of way, yoga, exercise, just going for a walk, move your body.

Fifth thing you do is get natural sunlight in your eyes, not through a window, not through a door. You can't get sunlight through a door, why would I say that? Not through a window, not through fluorescent lights, actual natural sunlight from the big thing in the sky outside. And then you break your fast.

And then you, and then you hygiene. You wash your body, wash your face, wash your teeth, wash all the things. You do your affirmations. You look in the mirror, you tell yourself a better lie. You do all the good things. Then you break your fast. You do your deep work and you do your creative work and you wind down and you make sure you have a good night's sleep. We'll do sleep on another episode. We'll do a deep dive into meditation on another episode. So I'm excited to share those with you, but again,

If you want to leave a comment, let me know some things that maybe you struggle with in the morning or if you have ideas or helpful tips, please leave them in the comments. Like share, follow, go to my web page. If you want to go deeper, it's Layladawn does life dot com. And I would love to hear from you. Subscribe to my newsletter. I love you guys. Have a great day.