The Morning Routine Starters

Sustainable progress isn’t about reinventing your life, it’s about gaining momentum one small system at a time.

I’ve always felt I would’ve learned so much more in college if I didn’t have to juggle everything else life was throwing at me. Especially during undergrad, I felt like nearly 75% of my efforts on figuring things out were for non-school related things. Instead of math or science problems it was finances, or finding good friends, or gaining an understanding of the lay of the land on campus. There was just so much noise that my ability to absorb what was happening in class never felt as sharp as it could’ve been. I guess there’s something beneficial to finding your way outside of the classroom but I definitely feel I could’ve learned more during class if I wasn’t worried about establishing a good budget.

All of these routine starters and suggestions I’ve provided through A BetterLife have come from this idea. These are the same Morning Routine Starters I’ve been sharing on Instagram: simple ideas meant to quiet the noise and help you start your day with clarity. Through effective systems, I want to alleviate some of the noise in our lives so we can focus on what’s most important to us. Maybe that’s college courses, maybe it isn’t. That’s not my place to decide for you.

Where I do want my place to be is in giving you the opportunity to actually choose where to spend your time, instead of feeling pulled in a million directions.

The Routine Starters being posted on Instagram are super simple ideas. Really, none of these are routines you haven’t heard of before. Yet, I feel they’re worth posting because we take them for granted. We may feel they aren’t the massive change we need to get to where we want to be but this is so far from the actual truth. See, that urge for massive change in hopes of a new result is natural but uneccessary. Of course it makes sense to want to shake things up when the status quo isn’t working. But change isn’t sustainable. That big lifestyle adjustment takes tremendous amounts of commitment and motivation to continue in the long term. That’s not to say shaking things up doesn’t work, there’s just another way that isn’t as glamourous, yet works just as well.

Momentum is what we need to get to where we want to be. Momentum doesn’t start by disrupting your life because what’s existing isn’t working fast enough. Like I said, that’s just change.

Change is sketchy to predict. Momentum isn’t.What is in motion will stay in motion, and momentum is motion.

When you’ve got positive momentum aligning with your ideal way of being, that impact isn’t going to suddenly change because you lost motivation or got tired. Momentum feeds on itself. It becomes contagious, and those days where you have no motivation or energy not only become easier to get through, they become more infrequent. Momentum continues to get closer and closer to its end point because it’s already in motion.

Again, what’s in motion will stay in motion. It’s literally a universal law.

These Routine Starters may seem obvious or feel so tiny there’s no way they’ll make a true impact on your life but I promise they aren’t. Again, drastic change isn’t what most of us need. A gentle push in the right direction to get the ball rolling is.

I started with the Morning Routine Starters because the morning is the first chance we have to nudge ourselves in a good direction for the day. A glass of water, a quick yoga session, writing down a big goal you have, whatever the routine starter is that you choose, they all nudge you in a direction that’s aligned with where you want to go. That’s the beauty of options, and of only choosing the best one out of them all.

By starting small, you don’t interrupt what you already have going on. drastic change would be trying to implement three of the starters. That’s a lifestyle change. I’m betting that if you’re looking for these starters to begin with, you’re already doing some great things for yourself. Why open the door for those to get interrupted by an effort to change an entire morning routine? Coincidentally, whatever’s in motion will stay in motion unless something interrupts its trajectory and provides resistance. A drastic change is literally that resistance. We want to accelerate the good in our lives and slightly alter the bad. This really goes for more than just routines too.

These starters are intended to help accelerate the good you already have going on. They intended to help you automate a portion of your morning so you not only are building momentum, but you’re also saving time.

For example, imagine you wake up and immediately begin with a quick re-reading of a big goal you have. It takes five seconds but it’s leaving a much longer impact on your morning. You’re still in bed while you re-read but now you’re up, and you’ve knocked something positive out already. Not even 5 minutes into your day, you’ve already done something good for you. What does that do for your mental? Does it allow you to get up easier since you’ve used your brain for a quick sec? That would save time. Does it sort of send you into the next step of your morning routine since you kickstarted the very beginning of it? Would also save time. Shit, maybe you still press snooze and fall back asleep but even then, you’re going back to sleep with your goal in mind.

Reading that goal puts your mind into a place of direction. One where your next step is clearer. Throwing away the next 15 minutes on your phone while in a half-awake slumber just doesn’t align with what you read. It’s such a simple habit to start and yet it’s impact could actually allow you to save some time in your morning by reminding you of your purpose.

Again, these routines are not groundbreaking, yet they can actually help if given the chance.

Of course, procrastination is always looming over these beautiful theoretical solutions — which is alos why it’s so important to start small. To find nondisruptive ways to alter your actions towards A BetterLife. By starting big and relying on motiviation, you’re leaving yourself open to alot of chance. Are you motivated enough to keep the new lifestyle going day in and day out? Are the changes you made actually the best choices? What about whatever you replaced? What happens to what you used to do?

All of these questions can add up and begin to eat away at an initially big, beneficial change if you haven’t built up momentum with it. Hence, the Morning Routine Starters. Those big changes can happen -and they definitely can work- but why not start small and build up to them knowing it’ll be damn near impossible to get tired of reading one sentence every morning.

BetterLife aims to help young adults in college or the workforce regain clarity and allow for them to spend their time on things they find most important to them. The obligations you don’t enjoy will always be there, but automating the small things gives you breathing room for the big ones. Start tiny. Pick one habit that builds momentum instead of demanding motivation. Those are the foundations that last, because they fit seamlessly into the life you already have.

Ideally, solutions that ellicit big change come. But when they do, we have to be prepared to keep them going long term. Otherwise it’s just this two steps forward, two steps back game. No one wants to do that. That’s an effort that becomes exhausting in so many facets of life.

Big change will always tempt us -and sometimes it’s necessary- but if you start small and stay consistent, momentum will take care of the rest.

That’s how A BetterLife really begins.

I write a newsletter on living more deliberately that comes out every other Sunday.

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