Create the Perfect Morning Routine

Are you feeling like you need to create a perfect or better morning routine? When I retired, I sure did!

So, I’ve never been a morning person. Well, I’d say I’ve never been an early morning person. I have always loved late mornings! Most of my working and parenting life, I craved days I could sleep in, stay in my pajamas and drink my coffee in peace. When I was a fulltime teacher, I thoroughly loved the beginning of summer when I could do that more often. When I retired though, I realized I would not be happy living the rest of my life as if I were on summer break.

That’s when I discovered the book, The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.

This book was so valuable in helping me find some balance, structure, and routine for my days. We all need routine and who knew that I would actually crave it in retirement?

The Miracle Morning helps you create and personalize a structure to fit your own life and what works best for you. It helps you bring purpose and meaning to your day and allows you to be productive throughout your week. Who knew creating a perfect morning routine could do all that?

Here’s my perfect morning schedule I created to give me that structure & routine from Monday through Friday.

7:00 – Wake up, drink water, and make coffee
7:15 – 15 minute walk, Yoga or Wall Pilates
7:30 – Coffee, Meditation, prayer & quiet reflection
7:45 – Reading & Journaling (Bible Recap)
8:30 – Get dressed
9:00 – Check Calendar, Emails, & get organized for the day/week
- This last one rolls me into breakfast, appointments, chores, commitments and fun for the day!

Coming Soon … read about my Weekly Schedule here!

This routine gets me out of bed in the morning, but also allows me to ease into my day more slowly. Yet, it still brings purpose and intention to the start of my day. I also know that before 9:00 am is MY time and rarely do I schedule anything before 9 in the morning.

How do you Create Your Own Miracle Morning?

First of all decide what is the one habit or routine that you can’t live without? It is the thing that centers you for the other parts of your day. I need my coffee and quiet time. For years I had to run through my mornings and juggle a thousand things, so I don’t take for granted that I can give that to myself now.

The great thing about creating a new routine is that you can change it. I still have the goal of always walking earlier in the morning. I find a million excuses to get to my very favorite part of my morning. It’s coffee and I always want it sooner. I won’t walk in yucky weather and this past winter was SO long. This spring, it rained a lot. I fractured my foot. I got new puppies. You get the picture? But every day I can decide to change it or just relax about it and decide walking later is just always going to be my thing.

Next, realize there are no rules. Try out different activities and keep track of how well the order of them flows for you and gives you the most satisfaction or energy for your day. I would advise picking activities from these four categories as part of your morning:

Exercise (walking, Yoga, gym, pilates, pickleball)
Reflection (quiet reflection, meditation, prayer)
Reading (Bible reading, Inspirational Books, Audible)
Healthy/Productive (drink water, make bed, get dressed, 5 minute hot spot)

Reading or listening to Hal’s book The Miracle Morning will give you so many great ideas for how well this book can change your mindset and life. I highly recommend reading or listening to it on Audible. It truly was a great place to start building a healthy life routine!