The Power of a Morning Routine, Part 3 of 3

Catherine A. Wood  00:00

Hello, hello, welcome to the prosperous Empath cat here. I’m recording today’s episode several weeks prior to the end of the calendar year as I wrap up my own work for 2023 and gear up to take a break over the holidays. But this episode is going to drop just after the new year. So Happy New Year. I’m so happy you’re tuning in today. Just some context for today’s episode too. So today’s episode is actually the final part of a three part series that I’ve been sharing about habits. In Episode Two weeks ago, I talked all about what is needed to become consistent in developing a new habit and then following through. And last week on the podcast, I talked all about how my own relationship to habits, which has changed over the past decade and what I notice about people who have a good practice in being consistent with habits and and how that tends to evolve over time. I also shared some of the kind of crazy habits have been practicing more recently, including cold plunging, and coincidentally, prior to recording today’s episode, I had just taken my 54th plunge in over the prior 54 days in a row. So we’ll see how that fares as we enter the new year many people have been asking me if that’s going to be my next annual habit that I take on for the next 365 Or I guess what, 311 days, and I’m not sure the jury remains out on that. But for now I am cold plunging in the ocean every day. And as you’re dropping, as this episode is dropping, I have just returned from vacation, which will be my first Gosh time away from living by the sea where I have to find new bodies of water to plunge in and hopefully find new companions to blend with. And I think that’s something that we always have to consider when the circumstances of our life change or the people that we’re surrounding ourselves with change. How can we set ourselves up to when with our habits because habits certainly become a lot more nuanced and challenged to become consistent with when we’re traveling when we’re visiting family when we’re on vacation when we’re traveling for work. So I guess time will tell about how my own journey goes. But in today in this in this really final episode of this three part series, I really want to take you back to the beginning of my own journey with habits and being consistent in daily habits because it wasn’t always like this for me. I have been practicing habits for the past decade. But when I first started out in my coaching journey, I was wildly inconsistent with habits. It was something I longed for. It was a problem in my life that I wanted to change. And I felt like I did not have the knowledge I didn’t have the skill set. I didn’t have the willpower or Gosh, that commitment muscle to be consistent with much of anything besides work. And I think that that is extremely important for, for for you and for my listeners to be mindful of because I think so often that journey from from transitioning from being an ambitious Empath, where we’re so often focused on what we’re producing what we’re creating our goals, our drive our ambition, to really transitioning into becoming a prosperous, and Beth is starting to include ourselves in the mix. Really looking at how we can set ourselves up for success so that we can continue to grow and evolve and maintain healthy relationships and scalable success without being at the expense of ourselves, our own well being and our burnout. I cannot tell you how many empaths I have spoken with over the years who have all experienced burnout who have all learned how to take better care of themselves at or on the brink of being burned out or or some essentially sometimes even just feeling a need to walk away from their relationships, their business their career because they haven’t learned how to have it all they haven’t learned how to show up and operate in a sustainable scalable way. So that’s a little bit about what we’re going to talk about on the podcast today. And just to start, I really want to bring you back to the beginning of my own journey. And the question that my own coach asked me, that finally made the difference for me, because you see, when I started training as a coach, I, of course, had my own coach. And something I really appreciated about my coach is that he had this iron clad commitment to working out, he worked out every day of the week, doing CrossFit or stretching. And it was, it wasn’t even an effort. It was just a natural commitment, something that he just woke up and prepared for. It was almost as if it’s how he drank water that that was the the relationship he had to working out. And I was always so impressed by it. And it felt so unattainable for me. Now, mind you, I woke up to work. Every day, at the beginning of my coaching journey, I was also working full time. So I was burning the candle at both ends, working my nine to five, and then coming home and working my five to nine, because I was so committed on building my business so that I could quit my day job as a Senior Economist with the Federal Government. Now, I was extremely motivated by this goal and loved the coaching work. But it was also a bit of a setup for disaster and burnout, because we can’t maintain that schedule indefinitely. So talking about having a morning routine is something that I brought to a lot of my coaching calls, it was something I said I wanted, it was something I committed to something I declared and never followed through on and I always had some reason, some excuse, some circumstance or breakdown or someone else’s need that got in the way. And I remember one day on her coaching call, he asked the question that literally made all the difference. And he asked me, cat, what would it take for you to be willing to follow through on your morning routine? Now, I think that our willingness, rather than our willpower is typically one of the mindset shifts that’s required in order to really start developing a consistency muscle around a habit. And that question was incredibly powerful for me, because I realized that I wasn’t managing myself around my own morning routine, I was saying I wanted I wanted it, I was declaring that I wanted it. But I wasn’t being willing to have it. Like I wasn’t actually willing to move the circumstances of my schedule, my routine, my my client calls in order to honor that morning routine. And I think that, in general, when I started, when I actually allowed myself to experience a morning routine, I started to find a lot more balance in my day to day and this is something we talked about, on the first episode of this series that I think in particular, for us as prosperous empaths it is Uber important for us to be consistent with our own habits. Because when we prioritize ourselves when we start our day, when our first breath starts with us, our own needs, our own well being our own self care. That creates a mindset shift that allows us to reprogram our own nervous system so that we can have an orientation towards our own needs, our emotions, our feelings, our wants, rather than the feelings needs and wants of other people because as empaths we are so gifted at sensing other people’s feelings, needs and wants. And we actually have to reprogram our own nervous systems in order to be tuned in with our own with our own experience and with our own needs, wants and feelings. And building a muscle around consistency with a morning routine or any type of healthy habits in the morning is a really empowering way to start to create that shift away from people pleasing and external orientation towards the need. Have other people rather than an internal orientation towards your own needs, it’s not to say we don’t get to prioritize other people’s needs and well being and emotional needs as well. Because truly like i, that is a huge commitment of mine, I always want the people in my life to be well to be resourced to be cared for. And I do a much better job at caring for everyone else, when I start with myself, when I truly fill my own cup and show up resourced for work. Not surprisingly, when we do start with filling your own cups, we get to serve and care for and support others from a place of being fully resourced. And we also have a better internal monitor of knowing when we start giving to other people at the expense of ourselves, versus when we’re showing up fully resourced to care for other people, we can actually do so from a much more open hearted and generous place, while also being more boundary. And then finally, when we do have that better connection with our own internal, our own internal radar, about our own limits, we can start to draw that line and become more generous but boundaried. So that we avoid building up bitterness and resentment and resignation, in our relationships and in our relationship to our work and our careers and our business. So for me personally, I believe that developing habits is one of the most invaluable skill sets that a prosperous Empath can commit to, and set yourself up for success, it is truly one of my success habits. So, returning all the way back to the beginning of my own journey, when I think about what I needed to develop a habit back in 2014. I will say it looks a lot different now than what it looked like back then. But I do think that there are probably four characteristics or attributes that can really set you up for success when you’re when you’re just beginning to develop a new habit. So the first is something that I touched upon at the beginning of the episode, which is the invitation to commit to a habit that is based in something that pleasures you something you desire, something that brings you enjoyment. When we focus on habit creation, rather than New Year’s resolutions, we get to have a much more empowering perspective towards it, we get to look at what what new habit what new practice, what new way of being do we want to cultivate in our life? What do we want to nurture in our morning routine? What do we want to allow more of in how we start our day, or even sometimes how we end our day? Rather than focusing on what do we want to fix? What do we get criticized for what do we know we want to correct about ourselves that is just such a setup for fits of starts and stops and disappointment. So rather than having that fixing, problems solving orientation, look through the lens of pleasure and enjoyment and desire. What’s something that you perhaps already do inconsistently or on occasion, that you would love to do every day that you would love to practice more routinely. Now, the second factor is something that I’m sure every good coach is practiced in. And this is the idea of making it a smart measure something that is specific, measurable, actionable, and a future result in time. Now, for me personally, this isn’t something that I am as mindful of anymore. But I do think when we’re starting out having a specific, actionable future trouble goal that you can work towards, is a way to start building that muscle in learning how to trust yourself, and then following through on what you say you want. Now, in the book, find your unicorn space by Yves Brodsky, she talks about the eye the importance of smart measures in finding your unicorn space or truly finding that, that practice that habit that I’ll see towards you and being fully self expressed, because she says that when we have a clear, measurable future level goal, our community can, can get jazzed up by our goal, and help provide that social proof, that accountability, that really that reminder that, that, that momentum that we sometimes really need when we’re trying to do something on our own. So having that clear goal, whether it’s, gosh, for me, one of the most impactful SMART goals that I’ve created around habits was meditating, every day for 31 minutes for 40 days, this was a practice that I had to take on as part of my Kundalini yoga teacher training. And the teacher brought a lot of reverence and rigor to the components of our year long training. And she always said that, you know, when you’re starting to build a new muscle around meditation, in particular, which you’ve probably heard me share before, if you’ve been tuning in, I have a love hate relationship with because it can be really hard for me to meditate seated. But she really, she really instilled the value for us in doing it every day for 40 days. And if we missed a day, which I did on my 31 Minute Meditation journey, that we had to start from the beginning, I think I was on day 36, when I traveled. And I didn’t prioritize it, I didn’t carve out the time for my 31 minute meditation. And I had to start all the way from the beginning. Now, I would, I will also say that one of the reasons I was willing to start from the beginning was because I had my accountability partner and all of my colleagues who were committed to this same practice and brought that same level of reverence and excitement and rigor to their practice, it allowed me to have a lot more willingness to honor the intention of the practice. So really, that’s the second and third aspects of what’s needed to develop a habit. The second one is having a smart measure, having a very specific future goal in time. So what by when what you want to create, and by when I will say when you’re starting out that, in my experience, it’s helpful to have something that’s not too far out in the future. And also, not too, not too short. Because for a couple reasons, when we create a goal that’s based too far in the future, it’s really it feels almost too far away, it doesn’t feel attainable or possible, it can feel a lot more improbable or unlikely, which can be a setup for false starts or disappointment or start stop. And then when it’s too short, it doesn’t necessarily feel like that much of a challenge. And it also doesn’t feel like that much of a reward when we accomplish it. So we might not bring the same level of commitment or reverence to the practice. And then the third that and then the third piece is the is the is the component around social accountability, that we’re just naturally more accountable to external forces than we are to ourself. And I think if human nature didn’t work this way, I may not even have a job because I think that that’s one of the key components of a coaching relationship is that they provide those external accountability structures. And they also are a reminder of the future version of ourselves and our businesses that and our leadership that we’re committed to creating. So really, the coaching structure serves as that investment in our future dreams. And that willingness to put something on the line, which just naturally has us commit to things more fully and wholeheartedly. Now, I will say that, for many of us, I think this can be a real struggle, because we think that we should be accountable to ourselves. And in my experience, that’s just not how human behavior works. And there’s no shame in the fact and the, the, the truth that we just were oriented that way. And so creating that social accountability or those external accountability structures, whether it’s a buddy or a community or a group or even a coach can be really helpful. And then the last component is just the reminder that when we’re developing Being a new habit, we are essentially learning how to trust ourselves, or learning how to declare something that we want, and discover who we need to become in order to fulfill on that goal. So I invite you to be gentle with yourself because this is a practice over perfect. So as we wrap up today’s episode, I actually want to read you a excerpt from my book. Back in 2020, I wrote belonging overcome your inner critic and reclaim your joy. And something that I was blown away with, from the feedback about the book is that the single lesson the single chapter, that made the greatest impact for my readers that people reached out to me about most was the chapter on my morning routine. And I think that that makes a lot of sense, because I can’t tell you how many client conversations I’ve had with folks over the past decade around this real longing for a morning routine. And so I want to actually want to read a chapter from my book, which I’ve never done before it feels a bit vulnerable. If you have the book, this is day nine, if you’re interested in reading the book, you can. We’ll include the link for the book in the shownotes for today’s episode. So with that, this is day nine, compassionate living. When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. Marcus Aurelius. When left unhealed our past will dismantle us, it will disenfranchise us from our gifts and our creativity. While we will continually search and long for this experience of peace, joy, wholeness and belonging, we will look for it in all the wrong places. We will strive and go after our goals with more enthusiasm, but it will be an insatiable need, that can only be met from within versus an externally driven model. Yet, we will continue to go after one goal and the next and the next. In an effort to feel that momentary sense of having achieved something and feeling good about ourselves, then we will be back to the rat race. Attempting to prove externally will can only be sourced from within. Debby Ford wrote, most of us are trained to look outside of ourselves for the love we need. But when we let go of our need for love from the external world, the only way to comfort ourselves is to go within, to find what we strive to get from others and give it to ourselves. We all deserve it. We must allow the universe within our divine mother and father to love us and nourish us. That’s taken from the dark side of the light chasers. Self Love is not a formula or a problem to be solved. It lies within and is abundantly available to us. We must become more committed to meeting our needs for ourselves in how we treat ourselves, nurture ourselves, communicate with ourselves, and choose to be compassionate with ourselves from moment to moment. When I first launched my business, I catapulted myself into my work seven days a week, all hours of the day, it was anxious to leave my day job which I felt smothered by and felt I had finally come alive again, fully able to share my gifts and make a meaningful impact. While this work ethic served me in smoothly transitioning out of a cubicle and into self employment. It cost me significantly as well. It cost me relationships with friends, who had known me to be someone else, and it cost me my relationship with myself. In the sprint to achieve my goal, I lost sight of me, my personal needs, what it meant to nurture myself take care of me and maintain a sense of balance and wellbeing. At a certain point in my work with clients, we discuss self compassion and well being, we look at how they can prioritize themselves and take better care of themselves. When Cindy first called me, she was leaving an unhappy marriage and moving back home. In our efforts to be content. She had lost sight of who she was and what brought her happiness. She had created this joyless cycle where she took care of her husband and tried to meet all of his needs, over performed at work. All in order to prove she was good enough, Cindy had finally realized the joylessness and trying to do more and accomplish more to feel better about who she was. She realized that she needed to change how she was treating herself, so that she didn’t leave one marriage in home, only to reinvent the same patterns elsewhere. In working with Cindy, we discovered, she felt like she was always running, trying to catch up throughout her day. She felt like she was one step behind and could never get on top of things. I shared with Cindy, that typically, the way we start our day dictates the way our day goes. So I asked about her morning routine. She said she tried to wake up by 7:30am Each morning, so she’d have time to eat breakfast at home, before heading off to work. But she routinely snooze your alarm clock and had to eat breakfast at work. I could tell how angry she was at herself for failing to break this habit. I asked, What is your experience of being kind to yourself? Cindy, clearly confused, told me why she shouldn’t be able to just get up earlier and not snooze her alarm clock. I shared with her that often when clients don’t understand the question or the ideas I’m presenting, they’ll typically answer a different question. And I reflected that that seemed to be the case here. And I asked again, Cindy, what is your experience of being compassionate with you? I don’t feel like I deserve to be compassionate with myself. She eventually responded, I am routinely late to work and behind in my deadlines at the office. And I don’t feel like I’ve done enough to merit being kind to me, she added. That makes sense. I said often we feel like we have to prove something in order to take care of ourselves and nurture ourselves. And typically that is the egoic part of ourselves speaking and thinking for us. I shared with her that self compassion is not a zero sum game, and she didn’t have to build a case for why she deserved it. We discovered how she would treat herself in the morning if she was more committed to inherently believing she was worthy of being whole and loving herself. When we get present to an altered reality for ourselves, we can interrupt the unhealthy scripts and rewrite them for ones that serve us and have us treat ourselves with self love, kindness and compassion. Just like Cindy began that day. The next time I spoke with Cindy she shared that she had minimized the number of times she snooze her alarm in the morning and was enjoying cooking breakfast at home for herself before heading to work. When I first began my business, I had no sense of boundaries around my time or well being. I woke up to work and my life became about work rather than about me. This was not the first time I had experienced these workaholic tendencies. When I was in graduate school to obtain my MBA and working full time, I exhausted myself working nonstop and came down with a severe case of bronchitis that caused me to be out of work and bedridden for three weeks. Oh man, I remember that. As I launched unbounded potential, I saw these unhealthy patterns get repeated through regular sinus infections. For the first two years in business, I had at least a dozen sinus infections requiring antibiotics each time and exploring deeper what caused me to work nonstop and get sick repeatedly. I recognized that fundamentally, I didn’t believe I was worth it. I didn’t believe I belonged. I can attest that one of those first years I got bronchitis I got a sinus infection seven times. One winter, I was on antibiotics, one winter on seven occasions for the same thing off. Okay. My personal morning routine is one of the greatest transformations in my life. It is the single starkest contrast to how I live my life today. Simply put, my morning routine is all about me. I had to begin prioritizing me before I believed I was deserving. I took impeccable care of myself. Because I was committed to something more fundamental than work. I was committed to myself. When I first began working with clients, my client calls would often begin at seven o’clock AM. However, to accommodate my clients in Bangkok and Sydney one year I often had calls beginning at five or 6am. That was wild. I now find this so embarrassing. To admit and honestly a little a little hard to, like, hard to remember that feels like such a contrast, given my commitment to self care and normal work hours these days. These days, I find myself regularly up by sunrise beginning calls at 10am. To take advantage of my most productive morning hours. Previously, if I couldn’t sleep, I would get up and begin working. These days. If something on my mind prevents sleep, I get up and I write it down for the next day so that I can sleep peacefully through the night. Or if I wake up early, I may take an early morning bubble bath and candlelight and enjoy my glass of warm lemon water followed by coffee, but I do not jump into work. My morning routine has come a long, long way. But it’s not set in stone, it’s flexible. If I don’t make time for something every morning, I do not make a big deal of it. giving myself permission not to need to get it perfect. makes it that much easier to begin a new the following day. Here’s the thing and this is key. I am not committed to getting it right with my morning routine. I’m committed to the experience that a morning routine makes available for me. I’m committed to relating to my morning routine, as self care, self love, and self compassion. Not a checklist I measure myself against and certainly not something I need to do perfectly. This is certainly how it used to be but I have won that battle. Your morning routine is your morning routine, there’s no right way to do it. No need for perfection. Your morning routine is your sacred time. If you believe you have no time to prioritize yourself, wake up an hour earlier for you. If you have kids, wake up before them so that you have some time for yourself before all your time is for them. If you think you need the sleep, then you likely need time for you even more. Now, I totally want to acknowledge the privilege that I currently experience as a single married woman, no kids. But I and I look forward to sharing with you how my relationship to my morning routine shifts as we as we one day have a family but that I still hold true this same. All of these same practices for my mama clients and listeners as much as my childless listeners. So I’m sharing my morning routine with you below as a place to get curious and discover what works for you. This exercise is not static. My morning routine works for me they’re time tested, and they delight me. They’re also rituals that expand and evolve over time. So I’m just going to interrupt here. My morning routine has shifted somewhat from when I when I published the book back in 2020. So I’m gonna, I will share the elements of my morning routine that are the same. My puppies are sneezing in the background bless you. And I’m also going to update update as I read or as I as I record this episode with the aspects of my morning routine that are no longer the same. Okay, so let’s jump in. I start with a glass of warm lemon water while I’m having my citrus elixir and then coffee I journal, I write a letter to God and share with the divine part of myself what is present for me what I’m grateful for when I’m struggling with what I want, what I need whatever is true for me. Then I write a letter back to myself from God. I write back to myself from the intuitive part of myself that already knows and has access to the answers. We all have access to intuition. This ritual allows me and continues to allow me to connect with my own subconscious and divine self in a way that hardly any other practice does. This is such a potent practice that I continue to commit to every day. When I was younger, I only journaled when I was upset or heartbroken about a boy I never journaled regularly. I hated it. I didn’t believe in its inherent value. And I only had a super disempowered relationship to it. But one day I just decided to put down my own resistance and try it. I can’t emphasize enough how much of a difference this exercise and practice has made for me. And literally, I write two letters the first letter is dear God. And the second letter is dear Catherine and I signed letters love Catherine and love God. All right, next. Next I read these past this past year is the first year since becoming an entrepreneur that I read more than one book per month, or read for 30 minutes or an hour, depending on how much time I can a lot, it makes a big difference for me, it fills me with curiosity and new ideas. Now, this is something I still do. And this is something that’s evolved over the over time because in the past decade, I’ve regularly only read personal development and leadership books as part of my morning routine. But this year, I’ve found that I’m really yearning for more more books for sheer pleasure, more, more of a desire of wanting to reap lessons and insights from reading about lived person’s experiences. So whether it’s historical fiction, or autobiographies, or just a novel. And I’ve loved it, it’s really kind of reinvigorated that part of my morning practice. Sometimes I don’t recommend reading for clients, sometimes we can use reading, to distract ourselves from taking action. But for me, reading is an access point inspiration that I leverage. And this is something that has been true for me my whole life. Now, this is where I would say my morning routine shifts a little. So in the book, I was practicing CrossFit. But now three years, gosh, four years later, I have two dogs. And I don’t live close to the same CrossFit studio where I had an amazing CrossFit community. And I don’t live close to the same yoga studio, which I loved. Now I’m closer to the sea. And I’m also close to nature. So typically, at this point in my morning routine I work out. And that’s still true. But now rather than doing CrossFit or yoga, I go for a run. And I think that it is really easy to run, not only when you have a dog who needs to go outside and get some exercise and go to the bathroom, but also when you live by such beautiful natural surroundings. So these days, I run 3045 minutes an hour, I’ve been a long distance runner in the past, I love to run and it’s an easy practice for me, and I take one of the dogs, some days, I will walk some days, I’ll walk with my husband. But most often I would say that I go for a three to four mile run with one of my dogs. And then I come home and I go for my daily swim. Now the cold plunge in the ocean is something I’ve shared about in past episodes, so I’m not going to talk about it at length here. But I will say this, I used to absolutely hate working out in the morning. But I’ve come to realize that the energy, the focus, and the sense of early morning completion and satisfaction that I get post workout is simply more important to me than the resistance of staying comfy and cozy home in my PJs with my slippers on and a candle lit. All nestled on my couch. That’s it, I still experience resistance, I still sometimes have the case of I don’t want us, but I just don’t listen to it. And I also say that over time, the commitment is just louder than the circumstances that get in the way. The I don’t want us take much less and less brainspace as I just simply honor my commitments. From there I come home and shower. And let’s see from here are all say the morning routine also has shifted a little so in the book, I would make a smoothie or green juice. But I will also say that over the past year, my diet and my relationship to my body has shifted a lot. So these mornings I am I tune in a lot more to what my body is wanting to be nourished by whether it’s more protein or carbs, or granola or rice and beans which my husband is always making and now me more often. And I really appreciate that practice. I really appreciate how much joy I gain from eating my breakfast when I’m tuned in to what my body wants. After that, I’ll head to my office and I’ll write down my priorities for the day if I haven’t already, and then I will check social media and email and whatever other to dues I have for the day. Now this is something that has been such an important practice and it’s really around the technology play piece, I have so many boundaries in place so many settings in place on my iPhone so that my access to my social media and my email is limited to the hours that I want to be on email and social media. And that’s it. So, for today’s episode, I actually want to leave you with the practice that I offer at the end of I want to leave you with the practice that I offer at the end of this chapter in my book, and it is this taking action time to begin living compassionately, starting with your morning routine or with your sacred start. As a coach, I follow likes to say, this is so crucial. I hope you truly understand that by taking care of yourself first, you can honor both yourself and everyone else in your life more powerfully and generously. Start anywhere. If my list supports you in starting great, but start somewhere and I invite you to start today. First, take three grounding breaths, in through the nose. And gently out through the mouth. Journal below what your ideal morning would look like if you removed all of your current commitments and circumstances and started with nothing. How would you envision your ideal morning routine. Write in detail all your emotions, thoughts, feelings, the experience you would have? Practice I invite you to practice free writing on this for the next five to 10 minutes. If you’re listening to this while you drive, practice meditating on it, don’t close your eyes if you’re driving. Maybe you’ll jot down or take a voice memo later. But I really encourage you to practice not allowing, not allowing your perfection to get in the way of practicing incorporating or reinventing your morning routine your sacred start in the new year. Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode. It was such a joy starting off 2024 sharing with you about a practice that is deeply sacred, deeply a part of my daily life. I’ll leave you with an invitation to join us for our next non networking Power Hour. If you’ve tuned in before you know that this is our monthly community call for Empath entrepreneurs that we host in conjunction with our unbounded mastermind community. It is a deeply supportive, generous high level coaching community and we’d love for you to drop in and join us. Our next one is coming up here on Monday, January 22. At 12 noon Eastern time we will drop the invitation and the link to join us in the shownotes thank you so much for tuning in. I wish you a wonderful 2024 And I look forward to sharing. I look forward to sharing with you in this New Year. Bye for now.