The Why Behind a Morning Routine
If addiction is defined as continuing to do something despite negative consequences, then I have been addicted to the Cortisol Sandwich. The Cortisol Sandwich is my name for my former morning routine which involved waking up very groggy, pouring coffee before my eyes were open and opening my laptop for an assault of news, email advertisements and clickbait. Before I had even properly greeted it, the day was off and running and I was reactively chasing it, responding to emails, feeling scared or angry by headlines that were written to make me feel scared or angry. It felt like really the rudest possible way to wake up.
And I’d read enough articles to have a few suggestions of how to implement some simple morning rituals but they never stuck. And they didn’t stick because I wasn’t clear on my WHY. I’m reading Holly Whittaker’s book Quit Like A Woman and her morning routine was a big part of her very holistic based-on-her-own-intuition approach to finding her best alcohol and drug-free self. Her morning includes waking up early to a real alarm clock, water with lemon, meditation, journaling and cranking the music and dancing - all before even looking at her phone.
The WHY that I had missed is that it isn’t just to feel more organized, productive and focused, but that by starting the day with intention and some stillness (and why not some silliness too) we are better primed to be less reactive and our body will spend less of the rest of the day in fight or flight. Calming the mind for just a few minutes stimulates our parasympathic nervous system, increasing our capacity for clarity, creativity, compassion and keeping it cool. Plus it increases our happiness quotient. We are more spontaneous and laugh more when we are relaxed rather than stressed!
So whether you’re giving up alcohol for Dry January or for the foreseeable future, or if you’re just curious about questioning your relationship with alcohol, it helps to realize that minimizing that feeling of needing to take the edge off in the evenings actually starts with just a few focused minutes in the morning.