A Balanced Way To Organise Your Morning Routine (without creating more stress!)

It’s a new year, I’ve set my intentions and planted the seeds that I want to germinate. Now how do I create a morning routine or ritual that will allow me to be effective and meet targets, be flowing so I can feel balanced and centered and fit in the music, dance, learning and adventure I want to?

“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time,’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.“

– Lao Tzu

I’ve been playing with my time system, “schedules,” routines and rituals for the last couple of years to see what “flows” best for me. It has always been the bouncing between being effective, productive and getting things done, and being fluid, spontaneous and listening to the pull before taking action.

There is a fine balance somewhere! I know it!

Wanted to start by sharing where this principle came from.

As a facilitator, I believe my two main jobs are to create and hold the space and to plant a very clear intention into the space. If I’ve done that well enough and then stay present and follow my intuition, the result is usually astounding.

After seeing how this played out time and time again in a room, I decided to try and apply this to the way I facilitate my own life. Why not?!

Here’s how some people plan their routines or rituals.

1. Set specific times
2. Place specific tasks next to the times
3. Get stressed out when they aren’t performing or have a blockage at that time
4. Have everything back up due to something running over time, then trying to stick to the “plan” and getting stressed over it all
5. Wondering what happened, why they even bothered and resort to believing morning routines simply aren’t for them!

Here’s how I’ve come to manage my routine and time effectively and fluidly.

Push vs Pull paradigm

Before I share this, this will only make sense and fit into your map of the world if you firstly have a belief that sometimes pushing an action is not as powerful or timely as getting pulled into action. You also need to have a belief that forcing things is sometimes the cause of the friction that leads to stress, inaction or ineffective action. You need to believe that sometimes nature and our own nature has a way of guiding and giving us signs that unless we create space for them, will be unheard and disempowered.

Instead of stating specific times that specific tasks will get done, create spaces or periods of time where you have certain intentions on what the end results will be. This is without defining how the end result will be achieved.

For example, my morning routines used to be:

Get up at 6am, drink lemon water, do my yoga, then meditate, then visualisations, then affirmations, then 750 words, then breakfast, then…

Very structured and you can imagine if I forget to or just don’t feel like doing one of these things I can feel like I’ve let myself down.

Instead, now I just create a space for 5:30–6am where my intention is to get into my body. I might do yoga, I might play in a tree, do Qi Gong, or something else. I can do anything knowing that I have this amount of time and my intended end result is getting in my body. The how doesn’t really matter.

I can then apply that to the rest of my morning routine and to select times during the day where I have space to be a little more “flowy.”

So start by working out how you want to feel after your morning routine, then what will achieve that feeling for you? Create spaces, plan the intention and be open to the how being different each day.

Enjoy the process,

Al