What happens to your day when you reach for your phone first…

Maybe your alarm is on your phone.

So you wake up, reach over, turn off the alarm…and while you’re there, you check your notifications.

Just for a second.

Maybe you check Instagram. Then look at the news. Answer a text.

And somehow, twenty minutes later, you’re still lying in bed scrolling.

We’ve all been there.

And this is one of the easiest ways to set yourself up for a completely different kind of morning.

Your phone gives you stimulation and little rewards without requiring much effort.

Swipe. New thing.

Notification. Fun thing.

Next swipe. Oh, I want to buy this thing.

It’s incredibly easy to keep consuming because there is always something else waiting for you.

And what if you want to go for a walk or exercise or meditate? 

Then you’re asking yourself to switch from that to something that requires effort.

Get up. Get dressed. Go outside. Exercise. Meditate. Read an actual book. Focus.

All of these require effort and can feel challenging or uncomfortable.

It’s not that your brain has been "depleted of dopamine" because you looked at your phone in the morning. Dopamine is much more complicated than that.

But you have started practicing a particular pattern:

I feel uncomfortable. I reach for something immediately rewarding. I feel better for a little bit.

And when you repeat that pattern, it becomes very easy to keep looking for the next easy hit.

Why choose the thing that requires effort when you can have something interesting immediately?

Why go for a run when you can scroll?

Why sit quietly with yourself when you can be entertained?

Why do something that feels hard when your phone is right there offering you something easy?

This is one reason I think the first few minutes of your morning matter so much.

Not because you need to have the perfect morning routine.

But because what you do first starts setting the tone for what you expect from the rest of the day.

The early morning is ripe soil

There’s another reason I love the early morning.

In Ayurveda, the period before sunrise has traditionally been considered a powerful time for things like meditation, prayer, study, movement, and other practices that help you connect with yourself.

And you don’t have to become one of those people who wakes up at 4:30 AM to make this useful.

Please don’t start waking up at 4:30 AM if you’re going to bed at midnight.

That is not the point.

Right now, where I live, sunrise is around 6:30.

Maybe you wake up at 6.

Maybe 5:30.

Maybe 7.

What matters is finding a wake time that works with your actual life and the amount of sleep your body needs.

Because the power isn't just in the number on your alarm clock.

It’s in creating a little space between waking up and being immediately swept into the demands of the day.

Think about what happens once your day gets going.

Your phone starts buzzing.

Work begins.

Emails pour in.

People need things. And they want them now.

There are appointments and errands and responsibilities and decisions.

Your attention gets pulled in a hundred different directions.

But early in the morning?

There can be a little pocket of quiet. And maybe even joy.

You get to meet yourself before you meet the rest of the world.

And I think that is one reason this time can feel so powerful for practices that help you create change.

It’s quiet and you haven't filled your head with anyone else's content or thoughts yet.

You haven't spent your energy reacting to everything around you.

There is space to move your body.

To breathe. Or meditate. Or journal. Or pray. Or just sit quietly with your coffee or tea.

To simply be awake and remember that you are a person before you are an employee, spouse, parent, caregiver, student, friend, or whatever else the day asks you to be.

That is the kind of morning I want you to create.

Not a morning where you squeeze as much productivity as humanly possible into the first hour of your day.

A morning where you have a little space for yourself.

And please don't make your morning routine an obstacle course

This is another trap I see clients fall into all the time.

You decide you're finally going to become a morning person, so you create a morning routine that would exhaust most people just reading it.

Meditation. Journaling. Workout. Stretching. Sauna. Cold plunge. Breathwork. Reading. Supplements. Elaborate breakfast.

And somehow you need to do all of this before 8:00am.

Then your tired morning self looks at this entire list and says:

Absolutely not.

I don't blame them.

Don't build a morning routine for your ideal self.

Build one for your tired self.

What is the smallest version of the habit that you can actually do?

Maybe it's a ten-minute walk or five minutes of stretching or drinking some water before you caffeinate.

Maybe it's simply getting out of bed without picking up your phone.

Start there.

You don't need to prove how disciplined you are.

You just need to start building a relationship with yourself where you can trust that when you say you're going to do something, you actually do.

And sometimes the best way to build that trust is to make the promise to small to fail.

Try this instead

Tonight, instead of making a list of everything you're going to accomplish tomorrow morning, try to:

1. Give yourself a realistic bedtime.

Work backward from when you actually need to wake up.

Your morning starts with getting enough sleep.

2. Set up your morning before you go to bed.

Put out your clothes.

Fill your water bottle or prep the coffee.

Pack your bag.

Know what you're going to do.

Remove as many decisions as possible.

3. Put your phone somewhere that makes you get out of bed.

Give yourself a little friction between waking up and scrolling.

4. Choose one thing to do before you give your attention to the world.

Move.

Meditate.

Walk.

Stretch.

Write.

Pray.

Whatever makes sense for you, it doesn't have to be impressive to anyone else.

5. Give yourself permission to start small.

The goal isn't to wake up tomorrow and suddenly become a completely different person.

The goal is to create a morning your body can actually live with.

Because consistency doesn't come from repeatedly forcing yourself to do things you hate.

It comes from creating something you can return to.

You don't need more discipline, you need a better relationship with your body.

I think this is the part that gets lost in so much health and productivity advice.

We keep trying to override ourselves.

We're tired, but we push harder.

We're overwhelmed, but we think we need to add another thing.

And when we can't stick to that thing, we blame ourselves.

Then we make an even bigger plan and the cycle starts again.

But your body isn't the enemy here, it’s just giving you information.

And the more you understand how your body works, the easier it becomes to work with it instead of fighting against it.

Your evening self isn't bad for making ambitious plans.

Your morning self isn't lazy for wanting to sleep more.

And you don't need to choose between discipline and compassion.

Because you can create structure that actually supports you.

You can prepare for the person you're going to be tomorrow.

You can give yourself enough sleep.

You can protect the first few minutes of your day.

You can stop handing your attention to your phone before you've even had a chance to check in with yourself.

And you can use those early morning moments as a little pocket of time to move, breathe, think, connect, and start again.

You don't need to become a morning person.

You just need to start treating your morning self like someone you care about.

And that starts the night before.

With love,