You are what you repeatedly do.” — Will Durant

When I first start working with clients, setting up daily rituals is one of our first steps. I call it your Daily Destiny Morning Practice – a prescription of actions first thing in the day that sets the tone for your entire day and brings you into alignment with your unique vision.

That’s what this blog is about, and don’t worry, if you’re not an early riser, like me!, or only have 15-30 mins this is for you too.

Best-selling author and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss (whom I love) has interviewed hundreds of successful people in a huge variety of fields about their morning rituals, and has picked out several key features to build his own routine around. It all starts with making his bed. 

“It’s hard for me to overstate how important this ritual has become,” Ferriss writes in his book Tools of Titans.

“No matter how shitty your day is, no matter how catastrophic it might become, you can make your bed,” Ferriss writes. “And that gives you the feeling, at least it gives me the feeling, even in a disastrous day, that I’ve held onto the cliff ledge by a fingernail and I haven’t fallen. There is at least one thing I’ve controlled.”

An incredibly early start is often a feature of the morning routines of very successful people, but that’s not me! Ha! I have never been an early bird yet that hasn’t stopped me from a consistent morning routine. 

And so, if that terrifies you don’t worry, it is more than possible to create a good morning routine without getting up before the sun. 

Daily Destiny Morning Practice 

First ensure that you have a set time and place to consistently build your own personal morning practice one piece at a time. Examples of what might be included in your practice are prayer, journaling, gratitude, mantra or yoga. 

Begin with two to three smaller routines that you can easily implement and stick with this for a few weeks until they turn into a habit, then you can add additional activities.

I call this ANCHORING – which is a practice that is already in place like brushing your teeth or making coffee. This is a habit that can anchor the beginning of a morning practice. 

Then you will STACK — The new habits/rituals you want to add to the anchored habit. This is how you create space to hold your rituals in a systematic way that will most likely set you up to win. This is actually how I wrote my first book, I already had meditation as an anchor so I stacked 30 minutes of daily writing to my meditation. It worked like a charm, before I even ate breakfast and looked at my phone I had already meditated and written my “quota” for the day. This made writing my book a very fun and easy process. 

Your morning practice is like drinking water. For me in my life, it is non-negotiable to live in my Destiny! I feel “off” if I don’t do some version of my practice. Even if it is 10 minutes. I also know that most of the time I wake up with anxiety and my to-do list, my practice allows me to pause, connect to God and to the energy I want to make decisions from all day long. If I don’t pause, even for 10 mins, I will most likely make decisions from a disconnected place. So it’s a must for me! 

Sure, things like travel, houseguests and changes in routine may interrupt your ritual temporarily but the cost of not reinstating it is high. It is one of the reasons why most people get stuck and disconnected. 

Your Personal Practice is like a container that holds you. It’s a place to rest, rejuvenate, lean, heal, get downloads in and connect. It will be like daily spiritual food! 

The more you work with and enjoy the life-wide benefits (lightness, centered, connectedness, embodiment and peace) of your personal practice that you build, the more you will experience the fall out when it is skipped or not prioritized! The benefits will be the thing that keeps you coming back. 

Also, your morning practice is organic – it will evolve as you do. It is a place for experimentation and testing where you get to finely tune regularly. As long as you decide that there is always going to be a “placeholder time frame” in the morning for you to do the rituals needed in the season you are in, the more likely you will keep this commitment to yourself. 

Some parts of your practice will stay in place for a long time and others won’t. It is most effective to start simple and build onto your personal practice as it becomes reliable! 

Once you’ve considered what your morning routine should look like, the next step is to make a firm plan. 

You don’t want to leave too many decisions for the morning itself when you might be groggy and not necessarily in the best shape to make the right choices for your day. 

For example, you might know now that a 20-minute kundalini practice is a great way to start the morning and will leave you clear minded, energized and in a high frequency for the rest of the day, but you might not feel as motivated when you wake up. If a plan is in place, you’ll be more likely to follow it and enjoy the benefits.

Write down how you’d like your mornings to look and then plan out how long this will take you. It’s like a personal sacred appointment with yourself. Put it in the calendar and write down what you will be doing and prepare what you will need for the practice. Perhaps it’s essential oils, candles, yoga mat, music… whatever it is, make sure it’s accessible. 

I also highly suggest that you keep your phone off until your practice is done. Prioritize yourself and your connection to God before the world. I personally turn off my phone at night and it doesn’t get turned on until my 45-minute practice is complete. Because once the phone is on, I am distracted. 

Remember that your morning routine has to work for you, and if you’re suddenly finding yourself more stressed about missing parts of it than you were before you even had the routine, then it isn’t working for you. 

Simplify, make it easy, and be adaptable and go with the flow! 

If you miss out on sections of your routine, then that’s fine. 

As long as I do 2 out of the 4 practices in my routine, I feel like I have come out winning and I am connected to the right mindset and energy to start my day! 

If you’d like to dive deeper into the topic of making the best out of your mornings, I loved reading The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. The author goes deeper into how your morning practice can actually lead to your full potential. 

Now that you know how to harness the power of a morning practice, what will you do with this opportunity? 

Whatever it is you want to pursue, my hope for you is that you will use it to create a sacred space to help you create the most fulfilling life! 

Britta XO