Episode 228: Morning Rituals for the Real World: Prioritizing Self-Care as a Caregiver
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Show Transcript
The other day I was thinking about a conversation I had with someone on how they spend their mornings and how they think they should spend them.
As we were talking about morning routines it became very clear that both of us had a similar understanding of what we think the world thinks we should be doing.
I’m sure at some point you’ve pieced together a similar scene of what a perfect morning should look like. It might include waking up at 5 am. Never touching your phone until you’re two hours into your day. Meditating, journaling and some form of exercise before you do anything else. A nutritious breakfast. Getting time outside as the sun rises. Prioritizing your day (although I’m sure in this scenario you did it the night before). And then successfully getting to work with the focus this routine must certainly bring you.
Right now you are either wishing that someday you could have just one morning like this or you’re scoffing at it saying this is a load of crap.
I agree… with both of you.
Some days I would love to have had a morning like that. Other days I would say there’s no way I would want that to happen.
But have you ever asked why you think you should be having a morning like this?
When did waking up before 7 or 8am become the ideal? Why can’t you touch your phone before 9 am? What good does journaling or meditation do for you that early in the day?
Who’s telling me and the rest of the world to do this?
Why is waking up before the sun a sign of being an accomplished person?
It’s mostly because people started studying the habits of successful people and then wrote books about them. If you google morning routines you will find pages and pages of how quote unquote successful people send their mornings. Tim Ferris’s book Tools of Titans, a book I held on to for so long because it was so thick I could use it as a stand up desk for my computer, was written back in 2016. The study of habits is a very lucrative book topic and as these authors promote their books the narrative grew to tell you what you should do because of what these people are doing.
You can read how Shonda Rhimes wakes up eats breakfast, exercises and then writes from 8am to noon. If that’s how we get another season of Bridgerton I’m good with that. You can read how Tony Robbins get’s his day started or how many miles a media executive runs every morning.
As soon as you read that article, watch that news segment or find yourself in the middle of a conversation about mornings with a friend you either feel like you should aspire to do better or feel defeated because you know there is no way you can do anything like that.
Because after all… your life is really wearing you out right now.
I get it.
In sharing with my friend what I do in the morning I was putting it up against what all of us think is the benchmark and it made me wonder why do we even think this is what the perfect morning should look like? And as a caregiver how does that even work for us?
Let’s be clear… many of these “successful” people have to get up at 5 am to do these things because they know they’re going to spend 8-12 hours working and waking up before anyone else is the only way they can get it done.
Did you hear that? Waking up before everyone else so they can focus on just themselves. That means the rest of the world is sleeping while these successful people are caring for themselves because that is the only time they have to do it.
They’re driven and disciplined enough to stay with this schedule every single day. You might even read that waking up at the same time on the weekends as you do on the weekdays is the only way to stay on the perfect sleep schedule.
So the message we’re consistently being fed is this is what these titans of industry do in the mornings. They’re successful. So we should all try to have mornings just like theirs and if we can’t then that is why we aren’t successful.
If you’re caring for a parent who has Alzheimers, a spouse or partner who has cancer or a child with a disability you don’t care what the head executive at apple does when they wake up. There just isn’t enough bandwidth for you to even pay attention long enough tor read the whole article that lays their routine out for you.
There is a small part of you that knows there might be some truth to the importance of a morning routine but feel that it is completely unobtainable and so you feel left out or check out of any conversation concerning it because you think the standards are too high.
Let me tell you this… perfect isn’t perfect.
What is perfect for Bill Gates isn’t perfect for you. Just because Oprah can work on self care until noon doesn’t mean that’s what you should try to do. Let’s be clear… successful people also have the means to do a lot of what they chose to do.
But even what is perfect for your friend isn’t what should be perfect for you. In our conversation I shared with my friend that I do wake up early in the morning because that is when I can actually write. All of these episodes have started at 5:30 in the morning when my brain wakes up and starts writing for me but my body wants it to shut the hell up until I finally roll out of bed and stumble to my computer. I write as I watch the sun rise. I don’t get up bouncing with energy, grab a glass of water and go out for a brisk walk. But my friend does get up and go for a walk before she starts her day, she just doesn’t get up before 7:30 to do it.
What happened, though, was as we shared our morning routines we were putting them up against this false ideal of the perfect morning. Until it hit me and I said.. well perfect is what it is for us.
Meaning do what feels right. If you like to take walks in the morning, do that. If you like yoga and meditation before 7am put that mat down before you go to sleep.
Most importantly don’t let what someone else does with their time cause you to invalidate the importance of what you do. Perfect for them isn’t perfect for you. If you don’t like to walk or can’t, if you wake up two hours later than you think you should ask yourself why those goals even matter to you.
You might notice what I’m not telling you is morning routines don’t matter. If you’ve listened to this podcast long enough you know I believe they do. When I first start working with a caregiver I look at their morning routine first.
Morning routines matter… but they have to matter to you. They help you set the tone of your day and give you the ability to prepare yourself for what you need to do. I don’t care if that is washing a huge pile of your parent’s soiled bed sheets or spending the day at the hospital with your spouse. All of the things you do each day as a caregiver are just as important as what your wife’s oncologist does every morning to prepare for surgery or to see patients. Because in your world… what you do is the most important thing you can do for that loved one. In order to do that consistently you need to consistently care for yourself.
That might mean you wake up 15 minutes before everyone in the house does so you can sit quietly with your cup of coffee or tea. It could mean that after you drop your child or parent off at their school or appointment you go for a short walk down the block and back. Maybe your meditation happens in the car after the school bus pulls away or when you get back home from picking up groceries because the lack of noise in the car makes it the perfect spot.
Perfect is what works for you.
Morning routines matter because it signals to your brain - this is happening. My day is happening and I want to start it off feeling a certain way. If you take a look you’ll find you do some things every single morning. Some of the things are because you have to. You have to make sure you husband takes his medicine. You have to make breakfast for your child. You have to make sure you change your dad’s Cath bag.
For some of you that time in the morning might be the only guaranteed moment you have for yourself each day. That’s why it’s so important.
What you do with that time only matters if you choose something that matters to you. Not running if you hate running. Not going for a walk if you can’t in the morning. Not waking up at 5am because someone else does.
Finding time for yourself in the morning matters. What you do with that time has to be important to you.
I was really happy to have fallen into the morning conversation with my friend because I realized that most of us don’t share what we do with our mornings because either we feel they’re inconsequential or they're not good enough. Maybe if we shared things like this more, if we share our personal stories and things that are going on in our lives it actually helps us see things from a different perspective and allows us to validate our feelings by sharing them with someone who cares for us.
Maybe in sharing you’ll be inspired or hear an idea that you’d like to consider. Maybe you’ll inspire that person to do something for themselves in the morning. It’s a simple conversation that all of us can have. But most importantly I think it’s a conversation we should have with ourselves.
Are you doing anything for yourself in the morning?
What more could you do for yourself in the morning?
What little change can you make that would help you come closer to loving your caregiving life?
I’d love to hear what your answers might be to those questions. If you get my newsletter every Thursday you can simply reply back and tell me what you do for yourself or ask me for a little help in figuring that out. If you don’t get the newsletter you can send me a message through the website www.loveyourcaregivinglife.com and while you’re there sign up for the newsletter and you’ll have access to me via email each week.
Thanks for listening.
Links mentioned in this episode
Tim Ferris Tools of Titans
