Do you just hate mornings?

…Do you hate getting up because your kids wake you up or do you feel groggy in the morning or even wish you were a morning person? I feel you!

We are talking all about mornings today!

How to get up and get moving – and even, dare I say it, have good mornings. Even if you’re not a ‘morning person,’

I’ll see you inside! xo, Janeen

>> CLICK to Watch on YouTube

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Have you downloaded the Mamas Who Do app yet?! Download the app and get instant access to my FREE mini course: The Follow Through Formula. I’ll see you there!

Oh and! I’m teaching a free workshop next week called The 5 Productivity Mistakes Busy Moms Can’t Afford to Make – Especially if They’re Feeling Burned out and Behind. To register go to workshop.janeenalley.com and I’ll see you there!

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Janeen: Hey there, my friends. Welcome back. We are talking about getting up and getting moving and having good mornings today. So I am excited because I feel like I have found something that works really well for me. This is not a one size fits all kind of podcast. I’m gonna talk to you about. What works for me and why, and ways that we can wake up and not feel super groggy.

[00:00:25] I think one of the pain points for people is when they stay up late and they struggle to wake up in the morning, and then they feel like they’re reacting to their day, and it’s really easy to get burned out when we’re living that lifestyle and we’re kind of in that head space. So I just wanted to talk about mornings today and what I have done over the years that have really helped me to feel more awake and alive and feel better.

[00:00:49] actually, I have been in spaces in my life where I haven’t been taking care of myself, and this is why I am pretty strict on my systems and my routines even when [00:01:00] I travel or we’re at a family reunion, I’ve mentioned before that my husband’s family loves to party until the wee hours of the morning, or maybe not even the wee hours, like when I’m waking up, they’re still up they haven’t gone to bed yet and I don’t do well living like that. Not that I’ve ever stayed up that late, but staying up late and waking up late isn’t something that feels good to me. And I spend some time coaching on this, and so I wanted to do a podcast about this today. We get a lot of advice about what creates a perfect morning, getting up "on time."

[00:01:39] and creating a routine that helps us to be the most productive and the most alive and the most amazing human being ever, whether or not you’re a morning person. I also find really interesting, I am not a morning person. I’m gonna talk a little bit about that, but like I said, I don’t really feel like there is a one size fits all approach to your mornings.

[00:01:59] What I [00:02:00] recommend for sure is that you are taking notes and you’re thinking about what’s working for you and what’s not working for you, and you continue doing things that work really well for you and leaving the rest behind.

[00:02:12] Like I said, I think that there’s a lot of really good information out there, and I have learned some things about mornings from other people, which I’ve really appreciated. But I want you to just kind of take all this information with a grain of salt knowing that something that’s working for someone might not be your specific cup of tea.

[00:02:30] So wherever you’re at creating your morning routine or what it is that you’re doing in the morning, I want you to just focus on working on one thing at a time. Anytime you’re trying to change a behavior, you just wanna work on one thing at a time and improve from there.

[00:02:46] So I think sometimes we get a lot of great morning advice. We get inspired by something that lights us up and we’re like, okay, I’m gonna do all the things. I’m gonna wake up at five to make sure that it happens. And we try to incorporate your ideal on the very first [00:03:00] day. And of course we’re gonna crash and burn with that cuz there’s just too many things that we’re trying to incorporate and we end up not being able to hold onto some of these new routines. And so we end up drawing inaccurate conclusions about ourselves, like, "well, I’m just not a morning person", or "I’m just not cut out for this," or "I can’t do this," and none of that is true. Like I said, I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a morning person. I definitely don’t bounce out of bed every single day. I like to take my time getting up, and what makes mornings easier for me for sure is making sure I go to bed at a really decent time for me, and again, that’s personal. I know that there are some things that we can do to maximize our sleep and increase the quality of sleep that we have, but I also feel like what works for one person isn’t necessarily gonna work for everyone. And that’s gonna depend on your, your body rhythms as [00:04:00] well as your lifestyle and what your family dynamics are currently.

[00:04:03] But one of the things that I do love to say, one of my mottos I guess in my life, is that your day starts the night before. So I do try to really think about setting my future self up for success in the morning by what I’m doing the night before. I kid sometimes with my kids, and I’ll ask ’em, "you know how I’ve grown up sleep in right?" And they’re like, "You go to bed early, mom," because I’ve said it so many times, so if you really want to sleep in in your life, just think about going to bed a little bit earlier.

[00:04:34] That’s how I have been successful doing it. I’ve heard other people talk about it like that, and I know for me this is something that works just because I also know that trying to keep the same schedule seven days a week helps us to get up in the morning. And helps us to feel more alive instead of feeling groggy. If you’re sleeping in on the weekends, and you are trying to wake up at five or six o’clock in the [00:05:00] morning on weekdays, it can be tricky. It can be hard on your body. So like I said, I’m neither a morning person and I’m not a night person either. Not a night person either. I have a joke with my friend that we are day people,

[00:05:12] I am a day person. I used to stay up later at night and get things done and sleep until nine o’clock in the morning. So I’ve kind of been all over the place as far as where I have been functioning in my life, and I feel like I’ve landed in a really good place right now. And again, I think it’s because there’s structure and there is routine that works for me right now that I have kind of fine tuned and tweaked over time.

[00:05:39] What I do love to do though, even though I’m not a morning person, I don’t like wake up and bing, I’m ready to go. But I do love to get things done in the morning. And the reason why is because it’s quiet and my brain has a really easy time staying focused. It’s easier for me to be creative. I do my best thinking in the morning, [00:06:00] and I also just love to kind of just chill out.

[00:06:03] It’s a really quiet time during the day that I can be more meditative and I just enjoy that. I enjoy doing that as part of my self-care routine. Doing nothing, I think during the day just to be able to focus on infinite possibilities is really important. And I know people don’t often think like that, but I, I love to do that.

[00:06:26] And I think when I’m not doing that, that’s when my life starts to feel frantic and chaotic and very kind of confined into this place, which creates overwhelm and stress for me. So like I said, I think we have problems when we wish we were getting up at a different time of the day. You might want to wake up earlier just to have a handle on the day, a better handle on the day like I was just talking about.

[00:06:54] You might feel like you’re just reacting to your day right now, are putting out fires all day long [00:07:00] and you might long for some quiet time. That might be a really good reason to start to focus on waking up earlier with some of the things that we’re gonna be talking about in the podcast today, you might also wanna wake up and get something done.

[00:07:13] Like you might wanna wake up and start an exercise routine and you just feel like you can’t be consistent unless it happens earlier on in the day. I totally get that. I don’t wake up and exercise right away, but I do have a consistent routine of getting to the gym.

[00:07:27] But if I don’t exercise or work workout before 10 in the morning, it is definitely not gonna happen. So if you need to wake up earlier to to do that, that might be something that you’re focused in on and a reason why you’d like to get up earlier. But lemme just tell you. This happens all the time.

[00:07:43] There are the plans that we make for our life, and then there’s what we actually do. , I think we are more content with our lives. I think we are happier when we do the things that we say we’re going to do. When we become more [00:08:00] aligned with the way that we plan our lives when we’re doing our highest level thinking.

[00:08:07] I think when we wish all the time that we were able to do things differently than we actually do them I think that causes a lot of discontentment, a lot of unhappiness, a lot of friction in our lives, and it doesn’t create a great relationship with ourselves. So if you are struggling to follow through with your amazing ideas, I have the perfect course for you.

[00:08:30] It’s called the follow through formula, and you can find it on my app. I have an app that has a free mini course on there, the follow through formula. All you need to do is just download the app so if you’ve got an iPhone, it’s the Apple App Store.

[00:08:42] If you have an Android phone, it’s the Google Play Store, but the app is on there. It’s called Mamas Who Do, after the podcast, and the, the course, the mini chorus that I have on there for you is free.

[00:08:54] Here’s the thing that I want you to understand when it comes to our plans. We make [00:09:00] plans

[00:09:00] and we think we’re going to love it. We think we are going to love executing on our plans. We plan for that. But that is not the case. One of the things that has really helped me out is understanding that when I make a plan, I can just plan on hating it the whole time. , at least initially, and I know some of you’re like, wait, what?

[00:09:21] Like what’s the point of doing that? I want to love my life. That’s why I want to follow through on this plan. That’s not true. What you want are the results from your plan, but the thing is, is. . We also think in loving those results, that we are going to love the process. And I’m not saying that you can’t get to a place where you do love the process, but at first, this is the part that’s really hard is the process.

[00:09:47] It’s developing this routine. It’s creating this new habit. And that’s what we don’t want. We don’t want to go through the process. Actually doing the dang thing. Because it’s messy and it’s hard [00:10:00] and it’s really uncomfortable. And that’s not what we want. We’re in the middle of it and we’re like, this is not what I signed up for.

[00:10:06] Or not even in the middle of it, it’s starting it. Like getting out of bed and we’re like, no, this is not what I want. Nevermind . Abort. Abort. I changed my mind. we’re not doing this. Okay, but we also don’t like not getting results. We don’t like that. We want the results that come from developing this new routine that we think is going to be amazing.

[00:10:30] In this case, today we’re talking about waking up early. We want the results that are going to come in our lives because we are in the habit of waking up early in our lives. Whatever that looks like for you. I’m not even throwing out numbers today, but I just want you thinking about what it is that you want by waking up early.

[00:10:49] We have to be intentional about what’s hard. Do you want your life to be hard because you struggle to follow through because you’re reacting to your day ,or because you’re burned [00:11:00] out because you’re reacting and you’re just spending your time putting out fires or because you’re not taking good care of yourself.

[00:11:05] Or instead, do you want your life to be hard because you follow through, because you keep your word to yourself and you’re growing in this process and you’re learning to obey yourself. Along the lines of doing that, along the lines of following your plan and going through the motions and sticking with the process, you do get some fun results.

[00:11:29] You want that to be your hard, okay? I want you to think about that for a second. Either way, it’s hard, . So what are you going to choose? So let’s just say you do have this plan of waking up earlier. This is your plan from your highest self.

[00:11:43] And we usually make this plan sometime during the day, right? I know I get all kinds of ideas about how I’m gonna live my best life while I’m working out or while I’m doing something that is helping me to kind of generate these positive vibes, right?

[00:11:58] That’s when you’re making these plans [00:12:00] from your highest self when the sun is shining, or maybe even you’re making this plan the night before you actually go to bed. Now, I have to tell you, I do not decide what time I’m waking up as I’m going to bed, because when I’m going to bed, I’m tired and I, I don’t wanna wake

[00:12:20] early in the morning as I’m going to bed, if I’m tired, I’m like, you know what? You can just sleep in tomorrow. That’s okay. No, that’s not when I wanna plan my day. I wanna plan my day when, again, when I’m thinking from my highest self. Okay, so we’ve made this plan, we’re gonna get up early, and we set an alarm.

[00:12:38] Usually that’s usually what people do, is they set an alarm. So when it comes down to actually getting up, when your alarm goes off, you’re gonna hate it. just plan on it. You’re going to hate it, and I totally get it. I hate it too. I hate it when my alarm goes off in the morning. And actually, I’m gonna tell you, I actually don’t set an alarm in the morning.

[00:12:57] I know that also is gonna blow some of your minds, [00:13:00] right now, but I’m gonna talk a little bit more about that in a second. But I promise you the hardest part of this whole thing is actually not the alarm going off, it’s the drama that we generate in our minds after the alarm goes off. The drama will always be there.

[00:13:18] And I think over time the drama minimizes for sure. The drama minimizes in our minds after we have an established routine, but it’s still there. from day to day every morning. I don’t wanna get outta bed, but it’s not this whole big whine fest anymore like it used to be. The whine fest used to sound like this, "but I don’t want to," "but you should get up."

[00:13:38] "But it’s so warm and cozy in my covers." "But you said you wanted to," "I just feel so tired right now… just five more minutes." And then I’d hit the snooze button and prolong the drama . I would just make it like 10 times harder for myself because I would listen to this conversation and inevitably I would cave.

[00:13:57] I would give in to the drama. [00:14:00] I honestly think the snooze button was one of the cruelest inventions ever made. Because it perpetuates the struggle. And of course, I’m being facetious. It’s not the cruelest. I mean, we could definitely debate that and I would lose, but in the moment when you’re waking up in the morning, the snooze button is not your friend.

[00:14:17] Why would you do that to yourself? Just eight more minutes of sleep? No one can get good quality sleep in eight minutes, I promise you. But there is this sense of relief in putting off the inevitable, which is getting out of your bed. There is this instant gratification that comes from hitting the snooze button, telling yourself you can get eight more minutes of sleep.

[00:14:44] let me just tell you, eight more minutes of sleep is going to do diddly squat for you. We cannot rest. It’s not restful or relaxing when you subconsciously know that that stupid alarm is going to go off again in eight minutes. Okay. I mentioned a second ago, I don’t [00:15:00] use alarm clocks. And you might be surprised. I rarely use one unless I’m flying, and then I do sometimes because I don’t wanna miss my flight. But I try not to.

[00:15:09] I’ll try to get later flights in the day so I don’t have to do alarm clocks, . But on a regular day, I actually don’t need an alarm clock. I go to bed early enough that it’s not a problem for me to wake up by myself by six o’clock, and I say by myself, which really actually isn’t true. My husband Merril wakes up an hour earlier than I do to lift weights and so I hear him moving around and waking up, and I like to wake up around six. So when he comes back in our room to take a shower for work, I wake up and I get outta bed.

[00:15:40] I need to be out the door by seven 10 to pick up my son from seminary and take him to school. So occasionally, occasionally I’m in bed till maybe six 30. Some mornings, like maybe two mornings. This whole year I’ve stayed in bed till 6 45 . So I, I know that there’s some flexibility there, but I [00:16:00] also know

[00:16:00] what my body needs at this point in the game. so I know that if I am sleeping until 6 45 in the morning and it’s harder for me to get outta bed, is probably because I need the extra sleep. There just wasn’t a good night of sleep the night before or you know, for whatever reason. . But in that time, between six o’clock, normal getup time to 7:10, when I actually have to leave my house to go pick up my son who’s in seminary at our church, my husband drops him off on his way out the door to work, and then I pick up Isaac an hour later.

[00:16:33] In that time, in that window of time, I drink my lemon water and I have what I like to call my sacred morning time before I actually leave my house. And that looks different depending on the time of year. And I can tell you what I do right now, but it will be different probably in a month down the road or in three months down the road because I’m constantly tweaking my morning.

[00:16:53] And some of you are thinking, wouldn’t that be a luxury to just not even have an alarm clock and to just be able to get up at six [00:17:00] o’clock in the morning? Now I have to tell you, this is something I’ve trained myself to do. And it’s because I hated this process of this drama, this morning drama that I would have.

[00:17:13] I think, like I said, it helps out so much more for me to go to bed at a decent time at night so that I am able to wake up at six o’clock without the drama. And I used to tell myself, if only I had enough hours in a day to get it all done and what I would do in order to make that happen was I would sacrifice my sleep.

[00:17:39] But let me just tell you, no one has enough hours in the day to get it all done. I want you to let that sink in for a second. If you’re newer to me, this might shock you. . No one has enough hours in the day to get it all done. This is the difference between people who are burned out and people who are peacefully [00:18:00] productive.

[00:18:01] people who are peacefully productive are very strategic and relentless about what we choose to say no to. So it’s not about getting it all done, it’s about getting the right things done. I used to think the solution was to be able to wake up at three o’clock in the morning after I stayed up until 11 o’clock to keep working at night.

[00:18:21] So I’d stay up really late at night and I’d try to push myself to wake up early in the morning. But listen, sacrificing sleep is not the answer. Sacrificing sleep leads to burnout. And it’s just something that’s not sustainable. And I know from being a health coach and being in the fitness space for over 20 years, there is a myriad of health issues that come from sleep deprivation, including cancer.

[00:18:47] And I know some of you are just like, wait, what? What did I just hear you say? Sleep deprivation. Chronic sleep deprivation is considered a class two a carcinogen. So it’s just like exposing yourself [00:19:00] to chemicals over time that create cancer in our body. But you think about it, it makes sense. We sleep so that we repair, right?

[00:19:08] We sleep so that our bodies can reconstruct and rebuild. If we are depriving ourselves of sleep, our bodies can’t do that. And slowly over time, our bodies start to break down. So the answer. instead of sacrificing your sleep or thinking that you have to stay up later is learning self-restraint.

[00:19:32] In order to do this, we have to get crystal clear on what our priorities are. and we have to learn how to say no to everything else, including yourself.

[00:19:43] So if you feel like every single thing in your life is a priority, it’s not. It’s a lie. It can’t be. And I know some of you are just like, well, you don’t understand my life. Your life is not the exception. I used to think the exact same thing, . I used to [00:20:00] think, but you don’t understand. You don’t understand.

[00:20:03] So if you’re not sure how to prioritize and live your life from your priorities, you have to join me inside of the Burnout breakthrough. Currently, I am doing some live workshops over the next month or two, every single Wednesday at one o’clock Mountain Time, so you can sign it for these workshops.

[00:20:20] They’re all about five productivity mistakes that busy moms cannot afford to make and you can sign up for this free workshop directly at workshop.janeenalley.com. So this is where you need to be specifically if you are telling yourself right now, oh my gosh, I would love to do that, but I just don’t have any time.

[00:20:42] This is where you need to be before you do anything else, before you try to lose weight, before you try to write a book, before you try to start a business, before you try to wake up early, you need to join me inside of the Burnout Breakthrough. I will teach you how to become peacefully productive in this class, [00:21:00] and you will be able to execute faster on the things that you would like to do in your life, and you will learn how to follow through on your big plans and goals and dreams for your life.

[00:21:09] Okay, so let’s get back to cutting down on the drama in the morning. So we wake up and we have this conversation of you need to get up, but I don’t want to, but you told yourself you would, but I would love to sleep in for another eight minutes, . Okay. So the way that you cut that, I want you to learn how to cut that drama, is to countdown.

[00:21:31] Okay. I think sometimes in the past I’ve gone into why it’s important for you to wake up in the morning and all of that stuff. It is really hard to access your big why, why you wanna wake up in the morning, when you’re groggy. As soon as that alarm clock goes off, you’re not thinking, okay, I know that I wanna wake up in the morning to exercise because I’m gonna feel amazing.

[00:21:53] No, you just, all you’re focused on is going back to bed. So the one thing that has worked for me consistently over time [00:22:00] is the countdown. All you do is like, "okay, okay, Janeen, this is it. It’s gonna be painful. But on the count of five, we’re gonna get outta bed. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1." And I throw my legs over the side of my bed.

[00:22:15] This is the way I trained myself to wake up without an alarm. is to do the countdown. It totally cuts down on the drama, okay? You’re not gonna wanna do it, but it’s short and it’s concise, and it’s the end of story. Now. Don’t crawl back in bed. Splash some water on your face.

[00:22:32] Brush your teeth, let the dog out. You know, do whatever you need to do to start moving through the day, okay? Even if it’s slowly, okay, it doesn’t need to be fast. It doesn’t need to be as sprint as soon as your feet hit the floor. But this again, cuts down on the drummer. And for me, I kind of have this visual in my mind when I did this , as far as like silencing the drama.

[00:22:54] There was a time, well, this is again, when we lived in Europe, my husband’s in the military, so we spent four years [00:23:00] on a base in Germany. And we were… we took a trip to Italy, so we were down and the only thing that I wanted to see in Rome was the Sistine Chapel, cuz I don’t do crowds very well. And I, I was like, but I really, really, really wanna see the Sistine Chapel in person.

[00:23:17] That was the one thing, and let me just tell you guys, , I was doing so much thought work, like getting myself through, through the Sistine Chapel because it was like, I mean, I had somebody right here in front of me. I mean, I could. We was touching them in the front. Somebody was touching me in the back. We were just kind of shuffling through and we get into the Sistine Chapel itself, and they wanted everybody to be kind of reverent in there, which I understand.

[00:23:42] But there was this large, loud Italian voice that was like, "Silencio!". It was super loud. And so this countdown timer for me is this "Silencio" for me to just cut the drama. Okay. So I want you thinking about that. I want you just thinking about, [00:24:00] "okay, "Silencio", we are gonna cut the drama. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1." out of bed. Okay. The countdown timer in your mind is simple and it’s really easy to remember.

[00:24:10] Like I said, we’re not focusing on why right now, that is from your highest self. And again, we’re not accessing highest thought patterns, at least I’m not. that early in the morning. Okay? you might be wondering to yourself, what are you gonna do in the morning when you, wake up earlier?

[00:24:27] You get up early and you might be thinking, but I could just sit there. You certainly could just sit there, but you could also have some quiet time to yourself. Like I said, my morning routine is always changing and I think whatever you land on, whatever you wanna try, whatever you plan on doing in the morning, there needs to be an aspect of fluidity to the plan, of course, because it’s not gonna be the same.

[00:24:50] What’s working for you right now, you may have landed on the perfect morning routine for you is going to change most likely in the summertime , most likely in the [00:25:00] summertime when the sun is up earlier. Maybe your kids are up earlier, but either way, I recommend that you are doing some type of quiet something in the morning. I love to call this my Sacred Morning Time, and I’m stealing this from my massage therapist, Karren. She recommends, I think, to every single client that she has that there is sacred morning time in the morning, and the reason why is because it quiets your nervous system. It gives you a moment to just relax into your life.

[00:25:31] and to not take things as seriously as we often want to or think we need to in order to function . So having a little bit of quiet time in your morning is helpful. What I love to do in my morning, I love to just meditate in my morning. I also love to read my scriptures in the morning. That is such a beautiful time of day for me to connect with God and just myself. And I just love that. But it puts me in the right head space where I’m [00:26:00] not reacting to my day all day long. I’m not putting out fires. And what I’ve learned is it is amazing what I actually have time for in my life, but I can’t find that if I’m constantly reacting to my life. I used to tell myself all the time, oh my gosh, I’m so busy.

[00:26:17] I realized I’m not. I’m not busy. I understand we all have things going on, not just me. I have things going on. I know that you have things going on, but I have just made a conscious decision never to talk to myself like that. And being quiet in the morning helps me to realize that. My life is not an emergency.

[00:26:35] Most of the things that are going on in my life are things that I’d love to get done, but I don’t have to. I don’t have to. And when we talk to ourselves like that, I have to get this done. I should get this done. It kind of puts us on the defensive. . So again, start where you’re at and improve from that space. If you’re currently staying up until one o’clock in the morning and you’re waking up at seven 30, you wanna just kind of slowly dial that back.

[00:26:59] Maybe you start [00:27:00] going to bed at 1230 and you start waking up at seven 15. So try going to bed a little bit earlier and waking up just a little bit earlier.

[00:27:08] There is an ideal window of time to be asleep. And research shows that if you’re asleep between the hours of 10 o’clock at night and two o’clock in the morning, you get the highest quality sleep. And I know you want to maximize the seven and a half, maybe eight hours that you have each night to be asleep.

[00:27:27] So you wanna, again, wake up and go to sleep about the same time each day. Even on the weekends. Even on the weekends, my friend, in order to feel refreshed and awake and alive when you do wake up on the weekdays when you need to. So I hope that this podcast episode was helpful for you today.

[00:27:45] I hope that you learned something new and if this was helpful to you, I would love it if you shared it with a friend, so you can share it on social. You can just, Share it right there in whatever podcast app or platform that you’re listening to, [00:28:00] just share it with somebody, that would be amazing. It would help me to get this information out into the hands of people who need it the most -who are the moms , of course the people I love and I feel like we are the ones who truly do make the world go round in so many things that we do, but it’s not helpful when we’re feeling burned out and sleep deprived and tired. So I love you guys. I hope you guys have a beautiful rest of your week. We will talk to you guys soon.

[00:28:25] Take care. Bye.