I stopped trying to optimize my mornings. Here's what actually happened.

Not every morning looks like this. Most of them don't. This is the one I keep building toward. (Maleficent only comes out when I have the time to enjoy her company.)

Once the kids graduated, I thought mornings would be mine.

That's the story we tell ourselves, isn't it? Once they're grown, once the house is quiet, once nobody needs anything from you before 7am, the mornings will just become yours. Peaceful. Intentional. Like the Calgon commercials from our childhood after the woman gets taken away to the luxurious, relaxing bath.

They don't. An empty house doesn't hand you a routine. It just hands you the silence and, if you're lucky, a little extra time. You are the one who has to figure out what to do with it.

For years before that, morning meant getting the "have-to" things done. Dressed. Face washed. Lunch made (lunch might be an overstatement). Out the door. Roll the clock back even further, it also meant whatever was on my kids' list of needs that day, and making sure the fur-kid(s) were set for the day. Because we all know pets are the human kids' responsibility, but our responsibility is making sure the human kids are taking care of their responsibility for the fur-kids' sake. Don't they call that the circle of life or something?

Nobody warns you that when the kids are grown isn't a finish line. It's just the next version of the same question. Now what do I actually do with this?

The One Thing

I didn't overhaul my mornings. I changed exactly one thing.

I move before my brain wakes up enough to argue with me about it.

This didn't happen all at once, and it definitely wasn't this glamorous, effortless process. Back around 2018, I was trying to get consistent with working out and failing every time. The problem, was that I planned my workouts after work. By 3pm I had nothing left to give a gym. I was also certain I did not want to get ready for work in a gym locker room, ever, for any reason. So the whole thing needed to be quick, at home, and not something I had to replan every week, because I was already a teacher planning things constantly and I had zero bandwidth to plan my own workout too.

These were the college years, so while my kids weren't home, they hadn't really moved out yet either. So, for a while working out at home meant carving out a corner of my dining room and getting very comfortable working out while people walked through mid-set. The Peloton itself lived in what we lovingly called the craft/crap room, because a spin workout is not something you do without a door you can close. Trust me. Nobody needs to see that. There is a reason they keep the music loud and the lights off at SoulCycle. Thirty of your closest friends gasping and huffing along to the same playlist. Different rules apply there.

Once my son graduated and bought his own place, that room briefly became the guest room. Once my daughter moved out too, it became something better: a dedicated workout room and office, with an actual door I can close. I found I was so much more consistent once I had a space I didn't have to build and unbuild every single day. A door changes everything.

Not a metaphor. An actual door, to keep the space mine a little longer.

Now it's 4am most days, Peloton or strength training, before anyone or anything else is awake to negotiate with me. And before you say anything about the 4am part, this isn't hustle culture. I was already an early riser, it is my favorite time of the day when the house is still quiet and dark. My brain just works better before the day and the group chats and other noise begin to compete with my attention.

The Phone Thing

If I am being fully transparent, I do use my phone before my workout. But not for mindless scrolling. There are two apps I use each morning. Horoscope, then my meditation app. In that order. Save your judgment.

Understand that I don't cancel plans because of a Mercury retrograde. However, after 22 years of teaching, I have tracked many full-moon cycles and their impact on student behavior. My conclusion - if the pull of the moon's gravity can change the tides of the oceans and also cause even the sweetest class of students to behave suddenly like little gremlins you fed past midnight, then the rest of those planets must have some sort of impact on our energy as they move around this spinning rock we live on, right? So...I check in each day to see what they are up to so that if things seem a bit Twilight Zone-y I have a little insight. That insight also makes practicing those meditation tools and breathing through the chaos a bit easier.

Horoscope, then meditation, then movement. Then the world gets to have me.

As soon as the sun lights the way, no AirPods, no podcast, just Clover pretending she's never heard of a leash before. Best hour of my day. She has no idea.

The Weekend Version

Weekday mornings are about getting out the door before the day catches up with me. Weekend mornings are the version I'm building toward.

5am. After horoscope, meditation, and journal, and as soon as the sun is sharing enough of its light that we don't need a flashlight, a 3.2-mile walk with Clover, my dog, who is kind of an asshole and deeply beloved anyway, no AirPods, no podcast, no audiobook telling me how to fix my life. Just quiet. Then, if Florida hasn't exceeded the "feels like" temperature upper limit that I can tolerate, the porch, coffee I actually get to taste instead of inhale on my way out the door.

A Saturday porch and a Monday Peloton aren't two different mornings on two different days. One is training. The other is the destination. I'm building toward more mornings that feel like the porch.

The Science, Briefly

Here's the actual research behind it - I am not just making this up to get you up earlier.

A very simplified explanation - when you first wake up, your brain is dealing with something called sleep inertia, a temporary dip in the executive function in charge of decisions, self-control, and talking yourself out of things. That fog typically lasts anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. At the same time, cortisol naturally spikes in that first hour after waking, which is your body's built-in wake-up signal, not something to fight.

When you choose to move during that window, you're working with your biology instead of against it. When you wait until the fog clears, you're negotiating with a fully awake brain that's had time to build a case against why you should absolutely not do the thing that you have decided to do. So it is not weak willpower keeping you from getting that workout (or whatever you are trying to accomplish) checked off your list. The problem is your brain is waking up a little faster than your body is getting moving.

The Invitation

Your version doesn't have to look like mine. I'm not telling you to buy a Peloton and put it in a spare room.

What's the one thing you could change tomorrow? Not ten things. One. The thing that's actually yours before it belongs to your inbox, your kids, or the group chat.

Yours before it's anyone else's.

Move first, that's it

It doesn't have to be a system with fourteen steps. No one is asking you to get a personality transplant into someone who loves 5am. You just need to make one decision, and then do it before the negotiating starts.

One decision. Made before I have time to talk myself out of it. That's the whole system.

If you want somewhere to put that decision once you make it, that's what The Shine System™ is for, check it out here, a daily practice for women who are done adding ten more habits to a life that's already full.

What did your mornings look like before you changed one thing? Be specific. Tell me below. I'll be reading every one.