Show Notes
On this episode with meditation and wellness coach Sage Howard, we discuss:
Why mornings are so darn important
A little of the science behind our nervous system (including our sympathetic and parasympathetic states get triggered)
A few ways morning rituals can improve our creativity, health, and relationships
Then we get super practical with a bunch of ways to not only create a morning routine but ALSO raise the likelihood that we can make that morning routine stick
Fun fact: Since I recorded this episode with Sage, I’m proud to say I was inspired to start my own morning routine and so far it’s brought so much more slowness, presence — and okay, yes, ease, purpose and joy to my life.
Play-by-Play:
[0:29] Who is Sage?
[0:44] ICYMI – Brief recap of Episode 401 with Angel Perez, CEO of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling
[1:41 ] Today’s focus: How can morning rituals improve health, creativity, and relationships? How can you create a morning routine that actually sticks?
[4:15] Interview begins: Sage shares a story of her earliest memories with morning rituals
[6:42] What is Sage’s relationship to mornings?
[7:21] Morning A: Tuning into the outside world and constant productivity through phones, email, work, news, and podcasts
[8:22] Morning B: Tuning inward by choosing meditation, journaling, yoga instead of reaching for the phone
[9:30] Why do mornings matter so darn much?
[12:15] The science of morning routines & your nervous system
[15:12] What are some of the ways that morning rituals can help us?
[20:25] Is it bad to reach for your phone first thing in the morning?
[24:18] How do I actually start a morning routine?
[26:08] A list of practical ideas to choose from in your morning and why they work
[26:29] Water, coffee, or tea
[27:06] Wake up your body by stretching
[27:36] The power of breathwork
[28:11] Singing and dancing
[28:33] Incorporating nature
[29:09] Why and how should you try meditation?
[30:05] Journaling
[30:56] Reading
[31:48] Setting intentions for the day
[32:20] Joy and laughter
[33:18] What has Ethan tried in his mornings?
[34:49] How do you make the morning ritual a more consistent part of your life?
[44:14] Episode Takeaways
Relevant Links
Show transcript
Sage Simpson 0:00
Music.
Ethan Sawyer 0:08
Hi, friends. Ethan Sawyer, the College Essay Guy here, and it's my goal on this podcast to bring more ease, purpose and joy to your life through the college admission process. And if you're ever wondering, How did Ethan land on those words, ease, purpose and joy? Well, to be honest, it came from a little conversation I had with today's podcast guest sage. Howard sage is a meditation and yoga teacher and a wellness coach who I've known for more than 15 years. And I can say, from knowing her that long, that she fully embodies, or I'll say, and I think she'd prefer that I say that she fully strives to embody E's purpose and joy in her own life. In case you missed part one of this episode, I chatted with Angel Perez, who's the CEO of the National Association of college admission counselors, on his personal journey with burnout and how that led to him prioritizing self care. One of the things he talked about was a morning routine. And because you know me, if you've listened to this podcast before, I heart the practical. So I reached out to Sage and asked if she'd be willing to come on and talk about concretely, specifically, how can you whether you're a student, parent, counselor, or just awesome human being listening to this create your own morning routine. Here's a fact that blew my mind. According to a study published on reviews.org and this was in like a month ago, 89% of Americans say they check their phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up. And I found that pretty astounding. But also I looked at that and I was like, Oh, it me, but I sort of reflected. And I was like, you know, there has to be a better way to start my day anyway. On this episode, we talk about, among other things, why mornings are so dang important, we get into a little of the science behind our nervous system. Sage talks about, you know, sympathetic and parasympathetic states and how those get triggered. A few ways that morning rituals can improve, not just our health, but our creativity and even our relationships, then we get super practical, with a bunch of ways to not only create a morning routine for yourself, but also raise the likelihood that we can maybe even make that morning routine stick. Hope you enjoy the episode. Hi sage. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Ethan, well, I feel so much joy just talking to you. I think that's why I'm when I'm laughing. So I want to say a little context for our listeners. One of the things that inspired me, well, two things inspired me to bring you on stage. One was you shared in our counselor community recently about morning rituals and about why they're so important in your life. And I thought to myself, This is too good to Like Share on just a webinar slash workshop thing. I want it to be a podcast that will live evergreen in the universe, because it was so practical and so heart based. And I think that that's one of those. Are two of the things that I strive for in my work. Is like, how do we provide, how do I as College Essay Guy, provide resources that are practical, but that are also coming from a heart centered space, as it were? And then the other thing is just the impact that you've had on my life for the years. We've known each other for the past, whatever it is, 1517, years. And I think you know this, but I'm not sure to what extent you know this, like your direct and indirect impacts have changed the way that I think about food, the way that I think about, like my use of plastic, the way that I think about like where I want to live in the future, like where I want to retire to. And so you've just had huge impacts on my life, and I want more people to know you and to know about you, and so I'm just present to gratitude this morning.
Sage Simpson 3:49
Oh, my heart is so soft, like it softens Hearing you say that, because I know deep in my bones that the most radical change that we can have on the planet is really tuning into what really matters to us and living in alignment with that, but we often don't know unless people reflect it back to us. And so thank you. So
Ethan Sawyer 4:12
I want to talk about morning rituals. What is your earliest memory of a morning ritual being important to you?
Sage Simpson 4:21
The earliest memory I have is a ritual that my dad and I called sitting. And I was born and raised here in Montana, where I am right now, and from the time that I was about five or six till the time I was 10, my dad would wake me up before the sun even came up, and we would get on clothing that would camouflage in with the environment and walk up the hill close to our house and nestle in. And you were talking about how the forest smells in the morning, we'd Nestle up into the Juniper. Am the cedar, and he would always bring this big thermos of hot chocolate, and in silence, we would drink hot chocolate and just watch the world wake up. By that, I mean, we got to see elk and deer, Great Blue Heron and geese. And I remember this one particular time there was a huge black bear that came within 10 feet of where my dad and I were sitting, and then a baby cub. I didn't know to be scared. I just trusted my dad, and he held me in his arms, and I could feel his heart beat against my back and the preciousness of those mornings, and it wasn't like he had a bunch of extra time, and it wasn't like he didn't have a lot to do because he worked in construction and had a very full household of my younger siblings and I, but those precious early mornings and then watching the sun come up and feeling gratitude for the sun and gratitude for the day and the simplicity and the groundedness, those early mornings with my dad set the stage. And it's not like, Oh, I've had a beautiful morning ritual for my entire life, from the time I was six years old, but those early mornings grounded me in safety and love and belonging and being a part of something larger.
Ethan Sawyer 6:27
Yeah, I'd love to double click on that about the sort of, I would say, like a word that we talk about often is balance, sort of like coming into balance and share more about, sort of like maybe your relationship to morning rituals. You've talked about it with me, sometimes about, like the story of two mornings, but I'd love to just hear about your relationship to mornings as it were, yeah.
Sage Simpson 6:50
Well, over the course of my life, it shifted my mom, when I was a teenager, she would take me to step aerobics first thing in the morning before school, which was awesome, because my mom did kind of what the step aerobic teacher told her, but mainly she did what she wanted. And so that sort of set the stage of I get to dance my own dance. So she was very informative in that. And then when we traveled, my mom and I would run every morning, and still running in the morning gives me a sense of groundedness and connectedness. But I found that, well, especially my time in Los Angeles, I was sucked into sort of what I would call a morning, a a type A sort of morning that you are, that I at was when I lived there, sucked into the phone really early in the morning, sucked into email, sucked into work, sucked into reading the news or listening to the news, or constantly listening to podcasts or something else, immediately reaching to the outside world for some sort of soothing or this idea that I needed to be productive very first thing in the morning and starting off in a very sympathetic state, a very activated stress state, and what that led to was a constant need to prove myself and to people please, and constantly looking to the outside world. And it led to adrenal fatigue, and I mean, quite frankly, almost a nervous breakdown when I was living in Los Angeles, and then I know that it was a very complicated time, and so it's not to downplay but COVID really slowed things down in a way that shut down society and allowed me To tune into more of a morning bee, which is simplifying, really simplifying and choosing, instead of reaching for the phone, first thing, choosing meditation, choosing to journal, choosing yoga and choosing to tune into the inner Guru, the wise self, the part of me, and that is in all of us that really knows that we have everything we need, and that there's a space of peace and tranquility, even amidst the chaos of a big city like LA or even amongst the big chaos of the world that we're living in, we have the power to shift, and those small shifts in the morning became a very different life. Why
Ethan Sawyer 9:30
do mornings matter so darn much?
Sage Simpson 9:33
Mornings matter so darn much because they set the tone of the day simply. And there's a natural process. If we look to nature, there's a natural cycle that every single day, we go through this natural cycle of rebirth as the sun comes up and we are greeted by the sun, there's this internal sun that's rising, and this internal life. It's almost like a rebirth at the beginning of the day. And when we set our intention to how we want the day to unfold, and set our hearts and our beings into a space that we want the day to unfold in a certain way, we can first of all tune into the truth of who we really are, our true nature, which I believe every single human being is peaceful and loving and compassionate. It's quiet in the morning, relative just on a what is going on on the planet. It's a relative quiet time so we can tune into the truth of who we are. I don't know if you've read the book, atomic habits. Have you read that book? James clear totally. Yeah. So he starts off the book with a really great metaphor, talking about how when you have a plane and it starts off on the West Coast, you're going to the East Coast, and just by changing where the nose of the plane is a couple millimeters, you'll either end up in New York or you'll end up in Florida. And that's how I think about mornings. It's we don't have to do very much to change the course of our day. By just attuning to what do I really value and prioritizing what we really value, it makes it more likely that we'll remember when the opportunity comes in our lives? Oh yeah, I was going to show up with compassion. I was going to show up with kindness. I was going to show up with courage instead of old reactive patterns. So really, the course of our mornings changes the courses of our days, and then it changes the course of our lives. I mean, you talked about how I've impacted you, in the way that you think about what you eat, in the way that you think about plastic, and how you want to where you want to live. When I remember, I want to cut down on plastic today first thing in the morning, then it it's like I put on a different spectacles. I put on different way of seeing the world, and then I see the world as an opportunity to strengthen all the ways that I want to strengthen. And I realize life is happening for me. It's not happening against me. It's all of these opportunities we have to learn and to grow. Talk to me
Ethan Sawyer 12:14
a little bit about the science behind this, about why morning routines are a good idea, maybe.
Sage Simpson 12:21
Yeah. So you probably have heard, I don't know if you've heard of the parasympathetic and the sympathetic state of the nervous system. Yeah, there's a lot more research that's coming out about mindfulness and about meditation and yoga and journaling and singing, and it all comes back to our nervous system, and we are powerful in that we can change the state of our nervous system, and this is oversimplifying, but our autonomic nervous system, which regulates the part that is not within our conscious control, so the way that we're digesting, The way that we are breathing, our reproductive systems, all of that. It used to be thought that we didn't have any control over that, but we do. And there's two states we're either in, the sympathetic state or the parasympathetic state. The sympathetic state is the stressed state, and stress isn't bad. It's very, very awesome to have, if you are a gazelle in the planes and there's a tiger, you want to have that sympathetic response and run away from the tiger as quickly as you possibly can. And then after the sympathetic state comes online, and you have a trigger that activates it, you get away from the stress, and in nature, the balance is to come back into homeostasis and the parasympathetic, and that is rest and digest. And I really love the phrase stay and play. It's our state of curiosity and connection and connectivity. When we first thing in the morning we look at our phone or we have the news that we consume first thing in the morning the news is like somebody coming into your bedroom and telling you about all of the problems in the world is really activating to the sympathetic state. It's like, oh my gosh, there's so many things that are happening and they're not in our control, so it makes us stressed out. But unlike the gazelle, we can't run away, can't do anything. So the practices that I advocate, that I do for myself, is to get us into the parasympathetic state. First thing in the morning, even with like exercise or breathing, you pop into the sympathetic state, you pop into the fight, flight, freeze, and then you come back down to the parasympathetic state. And that variability gives our body the awareness, oh, we're in control. We don't need to look to the outside world in order to soothe us. We have in our capacity. Be the capacity to self soothe, which changes everything that means, regardless of what happens, I can choose to come back to a place of calm. Does that make sense? Totally Yeah.
Ethan Sawyer 15:11
So before we get into the practical of like creating a morning ritual, I'd love to hear just a little bit more of what are some of the ways that morning rituals can help you. Know us, let's say folks listening, and maybe even I'll ask you for yourself, like, what are some of the ways that you feel like morning rituals have helped you?
Sage Simpson 15:31
The first one is health. The first one is health because I've had such a consistent movement and exercise routine and ritual since I was 13, and it doesn't need to be a lot in order to be really powerful and impactful. I think that my ability to run, to climb mountains, to be functional and use my body in fun and playful ways is is because I've had this consistent practice in the morning, I don't get sick a lot, and I enjoy being in a body. I think a lot of people have aches and pains, and I'm blessed because I have a, you know, pretty healthy genetics, but it's also because I've been diligent and I've prioritized movement and physical exercise, and what that does is that you're more aware of your body throughout the day. So even if I'm on the computer for long periods of time, I'm aware of my physical body and what it needs. I don't tend to get over dehydrated or forget to stretch or things like that, because I tune into my body first thing. So the first thing is physical health. And I really don't think that you have much if you don't have your physical well being, and it's inevitable that that is going to decline. But to the best of our capacity, doing something in the morning for our bodies is key. Is awesome. So I would say health is the first one. The second one is awareness, and awareness of my emotional state and my mental state, and so that I can be more in tune with my needs and for the audience, so that you can be more in tune with your needs and realizing that your emotions are valid and that you can take care of yourself so personal awareness, personal awareness of what's happening in your body, in your state, and that leads to happiness, which I think is the third biggest thing, is that overall, my sense of joy and equanimity has gone up because I don't start off my day by reading the news or taking in things that could stress me out, and when I do look at my phone first thing in the morning, or when I do jump into work, I recognize I don't get as much done and I'm not as happy. I'm not as easily filled with joy, so health, awareness, happiness. The fourth is creativity. And I've recently realized this creativity is exponential. If you start the day with something that gets your creative juices flowing or invites the muse to come through you creativity flowers everywhere in your life, and so you're less likely to just look to the outside world in a way of consuming and more creative in the way that you're thinking about problems and like physical Health, if you do something small, creative in the morning, it has cumulative effects. So journaling, I have written so much over the course of the last let's see four years of consistent journaling, and it's small amounts that lead to a large amount. The fifth is perspective and new solutions. The morning time allows us to reflect on our lives and think about them differently and getting into nature, it also is inspiring to think about things in different ways than screens or just being in boxes, because nature has so many answers in the way that it organically flows and it taps us into the cycles of life and death. And so there's less fear and anxiety about change, because everything is changing all of the time, and when we can be more at peace with the groundlessness and the always changing nature of reality, the more at peace that we can be within ourselves and our relationships. And I think that the final one that I'll say is relationships, when I when we. Care for ourselves first thing in the morning, it allows us to give to the world in a way that is grounded in integrity and kindness and truth and vulnerability, and the way that we are with others spreads simple but profound,
Ethan Sawyer 20:24
as you share that I'm just I'm thinking about morning a and morning B in my own life, and how there are those times where I sort of like what I'm hearing, even in the pace of what you're sharing is there's this kind of like slowness. There's this like quality of attention that when I slow down in the morning, when I have a good morning, when it's like, and I'm, you know, doing things like drinking water and like, like you said, not reaching for the phone. There was this. There was this a fact. What was the Do you remember the percentage that was shared around, how often we reach for our phones early in the morning? Or like, do you know? Do you remember what that
Sage Simpson 20:59
was? Well, it depends on what you look at, but it ranges between 71 and 89% of adults reach for their phone within the first 10 minutes of waking up. It's often before we even pee or look at our partners or tune into our own breath. Yeah,
Ethan Sawyer 21:20
that's so wild. When you share that with me, whenever it was a while back, I've been thinking about that ever since. And so now, each morning when I wake up, I'm kind of like, ah, do I want to be part of the 71 to 89% or not? And, you know, there's this real practical element of like, well, I need to, like, you know, look at my alarm. I need to make sure that, for example, you know, I'm trying to think of, like, Well, why do I do this? This is something that I've really gotten in on. Is, like, what is it that I'm trying to do? Here's a question that I've been exploring for myself. Sage is like, what is the thing that I'm trying to soothe and do by looking at my phone? And part of it is, there's this practical, well, I gotta get Zola to school, and I need to look at the time that's solvable, like, I can get an alarm clock. And, you know, kind of inspired by this, we've been talking about this over the last couple of weeks. I'm like, Yes, I need to get an alarm clock so then I don't have to worry about that for my my waking up.
Sage Simpson 22:14
Can I put a pin or highlight what you just said? It's so it's not the what of what we're doing that is anything bad. It's not wrong. But underneath is the why of what we're doing right. That's the key your your self awareness to say, Why am I doing this? That changes everything, because it changes the relationship. Even if you choose to look at the phone, if you are aware of the why, that is the sacred pause, that pause between impulse and activity, that's another thing that our morning rituals give us, is that pause between impulse and action. So bravo.
Ethan Sawyer 22:58
Yeah. I mean, you're that pause is giving me a little bit of self care and sort of a reminder that there's something beneath that. There's some mechanism that's running the show that's worth being curious
Sage Simpson 23:09
about. Yeah, it's the desire for us to self soothe, and we do it in the ways that we know how right? So for many people, and myself included reaching for the phone. There are so many ways to jack up your dopamine really quickly. It's the same thing with food. It's the same thing with TV. It's all the ways that we numb and distract ourselves. They're not things that are problems with us. It's that our bodies want to come back into the parasympathetic state, and the best way that we know how to do it often is this immediate gratification of social media or whatever. The thing is, it's just that. It's not sustainable, it's not really nourishing. It's like junk food. It isn't really all that we need. Yeah,
Ethan Sawyer 23:53
it's reminding me of another book that I'm I've been reading recently. This book stolen focus. Do you know this one,
Sage Simpson 24:00
I do. I just started reading it.
Ethan Sawyer 24:04
Yeah, it's making me think about this is just to listeners. This is another awesome one about that is about sort of breaks down, what are these different forces in our lives that are competing for our attention? I think the author goes through 10 or 11. It's pretty neat. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But let's get, let's get to the practical stage. So if folks are listening to this and they're wondering, okay, how do we actually do this? How do I start a morning routine? Because, as I imagine folks listening to you, they're like, oh my gosh, I haven't been running since every morning since I was 13. Like, I don't know that I can do this. So I'm really asking two things. One is, like, is I'm kind of asking an implied question, like, is this doable? And to give us some practical stuff, how do people actually go about creating a morning routine? It's
Sage Simpson 24:45
absolutely doable. You already have a morning ritual, because everybody wakes up in the morning and whatever you're doing that is your morning ritual. So it's being aware of what you're doing and then shifting. I'm shifting it. It's not like you have to wake up at 430 in the morning and do all of these things. I came up with the metaphor that has been helpful for me to let you remember and you can fill in all of these different parts. It's called the tree of wellness, or the tree of well being, and each part of the tree represents a part of you. And I would say, right now, for the people who are listening, take out a pen and paper and jot down some notes of things that maybe you could do for your own morning ritual. The best, well, I won't say the best, something that you can try first thing in the morning is even before you get out of bed ground in gratitude and simply try taking three deep breaths, and each breath connect to something that you are grateful for in that moment, even if you have time for nothing else, and it's going to be hectic with getting kids out the door and all The things of the morning, grounding in gratitude will attune your awareness to the things that you're grateful for in your life, and building a morning ritual choose the things that feel most inspiring as I'm listing these. And please don't think that you have to do them all at once. I don't have time for all of these every single day, and so if I get two or three of them, then that's awesome. That's a great that's a great morning. The first one is to drink water before you drink anything else. It's very easy to reach for caffeine very first thing in the morning, making sure that we're hydrated, we'll do wonders for the body. And then the second is if you do have a morning drink that you love, tea or coffee or something else, ritualize that drink by being present with it. Actually taste the coffee, smell the coffee, give gratitude for all of the things that went in to bring that coffee to your hands. The third is to move your body in all directions you can shake, stretch, strengthen sweat, go out for a jog, do some yoga, play pickleball, something that is enjoyable, even just putting on a song and dancing to a five minute song, moving your body in some way. In the morning, just like animals do, they wake up. And if you watch your cat or your dog, they automatically stretch and wake up their bodies. Another thing that you can incorporate is breath work, and breath work is becoming a lot more available. There are a lot of different ways that you can learn it. There's lots of different apps that you can follow, but just simply taking three or five or 10 deep abdominal breaths soothes down the nervous system into that parasympathetic state. Try taking a few breaths in the morning, and then, if you are getting stressed out throughout the day, return to those deep abdominal breaths. Another thing you can try is singing. So incorporate this with your dance. If you want to put on a song and dance first thing in the morning. Could also sing, sing with your kids, sing with your partner, sing with yourself, sing in the shower. But singing is really wonderful to awaken joy and movement and playfulness. Another thing to incorporate is nature, and a lot of people already take their dogs for a walk, or have even just the walk from your house to your car, if you're commuting, you can take that little tiny bit and try looking at the sky, the trees, taking a breath and recognizing even walking barefoot across your lawn before you put your shoes On, little, tiny ways that you can try to incorporate your connection to nature in the morning grounds you into the larger web of life. And I know that this is something that's in people's awareness, and I hear a lot of I should meditate more, but meditation in the morning is so potent, so powerful. And it's it's hard, it's really hard to sit and to create a meditation practice. And I have found, I have started to crave it. I can tell when I haven't meditated, and five minutes makes a difference. In the morning, if we're aware of our emotional and ourselves, then we can attune to our needs with more awareness throughout the day. And so meditating, and it doesn't have to be long, just has to be five minutes, and it doesn't even have to be a quote, unquote, good meditation. So. Making it a ritual, making it a habit, it has a cumulative effect. The next is journaling, Dream journaling, gratitude journaling, process journaling, setting out your journal and a pen the night before and so that you can journal first thing in the morning. You might have heard of morning pages, but just allowing yourself to write whatever wants to come up, or incorporating your writing and your journaling to what are my priorities for today and what are the things that I want to return to? Value wise, throughout my day, incorporating writing slows us down, because writing things out longhand, it slows our processing down because we can't write as quickly as we can think. So it slows our mental state. So try journaling in the morning, reading something pre internet, a book, something that is inspiring, something that is grounding. Some of my favorites are Mary Oliver and Hafiz, anything that taps you into a sense of wonder and awe and love and creativity and perspective and humanity. It's become something that's really cozy, because I used to wake up and just have a cup of coffee and go running. So it was very energetic morning, but it wasn't necessarily soothing and calming to the more soulful parts of my being and reading in the morning, something that is in a book, something that was written before the hecticness and the chaos and the overwhelm that we feel in today's society has a really grounding effect, at least it has for me, and I tapped this into it before, but try to remind yourself of the values that you want to embody throughout the day and what your priorities are, so that you are less likely to get pulled by the umpteenth things that want to pull your attention and awareness away, and maybe they don't get done. But it's setting the intention and tuning to what you do want to prioritize, it makes it less more more likely to happen. And the final thing that I'm gonna say, something that is joyful, something that is laughter, this is something I'm trying to do more in my life. My grandma is such a great example. She's read the comics pretty much every single day, and she would cut the comics out of the newspaper and send them to me when I was in college, even if it's silly, but reading Calvin and Hobbes, or the far side, or whatever your favorite comic is, or doodling something that's going to inspire laughter and joy and connect with the people that you love. So sharing laughter with the people that you love, sharing laughter the people that are in your home, or connecting on a different level, if it's not someone in your home reaching out through texting a delight to a friend or taking a picture of something that reminds you of a friend, connect to the people that you love and gives us a sense of belonging. So those are the practical the practical tips.
Ethan Sawyer 33:18
I love this. I want to just share a couple impacts and a couple of things that that I've tried doing, that I've started doing, one is like, just in terms of sharing impact, there's like, a pace that you're speaking with that reminds me of a pace within me that's possible when I slow down and don't throw all the things at my system. And you know, this morning, for example, was a pretty good one. I've, like, started to do just really light exercises, because I'm not somebody who loves exercise. I like playing pickleball. I like playing basketball. You know, give me a thing and, like, another human that I'm with, and it's, it's much more doable for me. And I want to get into in just a minute. I want to get into some of the, how do we make this stick? Because that's a challenge that I found is like, I can do these things, you know, for a day or a week, but then it kind of goes away. So I want to talk about what are some of those things that could potentially help us to overcome the obstacles, the mental obstacles. Another thing though, that I've started to do is just like the simple like, with aromas or scents, some people do like scented candles, those are a little bit much for me, but like, just lighting like Palo Santo, and just burning that a little bit, and having this smell in my, my working space, my office, for me, has been a really awesome way of just reminding me of, like, Ah, this place of peace, this place of groundedness, is something that can can persist and doesn't have to be just what I'm doing my morning ritual, but it's like, oh, I can actually, sort of, you know, be in this space, as it were, for for the whole day. Yeah, I'd love to speak to that part of folks who are listening, going, Ah, yes, great. I can do this for a day or week, but there are all these. It's hard to make it stick. How do folks make something like. Make this a more consistent part of their lives.
Sage Simpson 35:03
Well, the first thing is to make it enjoyable. And it seems so simple, but it's something that we often forget. At least I do that. I have all of these, like I should do this, I should do this, and I don't give myself the things that are really pleasurable make your morning ritual something you want to do. So if it is something that you struggle with, like you you talked about not wanting to necessarily exercise, you don't need to do a HIIT workout or go to the gym. If that's not fun for you, dance, play pickleball, just stretching your body for five minutes will make a difference. And if it's something that is going to be enjoyable, it will get you it has the potential anyway, to get you up in the morning, maybe 45 minutes or a half hour earlier, and you're less likely to do whatever it is the night before that keeps you up so that you're tired and that you want to hit snooze, and so the first thing is to make it enjoyable. And then the second thing that has really helped me, because the mornings are full, and there's a lot of they can be a lot of hecticness and demands on us, is to prepare the night before, and not to leave it up to chance, because we fall to the level of our systems. We don't rise to the level of our goals. I can have a lot of good ideas of what I want to do in the morning, but if I'm waking up and I don't have the clothes that I want to work out and I'm rummaging around, then I'm looking for my journal or whatever it is you want to prepare the night before, and I think of it as being really kind to my future self. So set up the night before, clear your space, and as you're setting your workout clothes or getting your journal ready or preparing the coffee for the morning, then you're sort of thinking about and visualizing what the next morning is going to be, and it almost becomes its own ritual or routine. The night before the third is to try having more boundaries. I won't say discipline because, I mean, discipline is a really wonderful thing, but we don't. We don't want to beat ourselves up around our relationship with our phone. We just want to be more mindful about it and having boundaries on your phone. For me, my phone goes off at 830 at night, and I don't look at it until after I do my morning ritual, and just having the clarity of that takes away the option, so putting your phone away and getting an alarm clock so that you're not dependent on your phone to wake up, or having a another way of timing your meditation is a helpful way. And even if it's just not looking at the phone for the first half hour, then that is wonderful. So the next is to put your phone away, because once you're in the phone, it sort of takes you down this like domino of everything else that we touched on in morning a the fourth way to stick to it is to incorporate the people that are in your household. Because a lot of reasons why we don't end up doing these things is that we have a lot of other people's needs, maybe that we're meeting, or there's just a lot of other human beings that feel like interruptions. And just like my dad did with me, incorporate the people in your family into your morning ritual. Everybody benefits from having a more intentional morning. Maybe it's encouraging your kids to have their own morning rituals in their rooms before they come out for breakfast or taking a family walk. My husband and I like to speak our intentions for the day out loud to one another. So incorporate the people in your family. Incorporate the people in your household. They're not obstacles to your morning ritual and also mutual support. So try supporting the people in your life to have theirs and so that they are also supporting you and yours, taking turns to exercise or working out the schedule and getting creative with how you do it. The next is to not make the perfect idea of a beautiful, wonderful, three long hour ritual. Don't make the perfect the enemy of good. It doesn't need to be something that's elaborate. Start with five minutes of meditation, five minutes of stretching and drinking water, those 15 minutes will shift the way that you are treating yourself, and those small changes can have a really big impact. And connected to this is that you don't have to do all of these things that I've mentioned in the more. Morning, you can do a couple in the morning and then sprinkle them throughout the rest of your day when you are taking a lunch break. Also incorporate some breath work. Or once you're done with work for the day, get outside and try taking off your shoes and just being barefoot and looking at the sky. So incorporate these little things throughout the day, and you create these rituals that give you a sense of grounding and connectedness and coming back to the truth
of who you are, which is why you want to have a morning ritual in the first place. And then the final one that has been really helpful. And Ethan, you've been so amazing for me over the course of my life is to have somebody to check in with and have accountability. A lot of why I haven't taken care of certain things in the past is that I feel guilty for self care. A lot of us do, like I'm selfish in some way, and when we know that not only that it's good for us, but that other people are also taking care of themselves, then the should be working. Should be doing something else dissipates because we're tribal creatures. We're creatures who crave belonging and accountability. Can give us that sense of belonging, connection, other things that come up for you of reasons why you have struggled with a morning ritual. Are these helpful? These are really helpful. You know, I think especially the thing about accountability was really useful for me. When I look back at the times when I've been most I want to say, like intentional about my day. It was times when I was in connection with my friend Sarah. We set up an accountability partnership on a spreadsheet. It was like a simple Google Doc that started with like, Okay, I'm gonna do one or two things. And for me, grew to, like, actually, quite a few things, and getting up early and meditating regularly. And I really have missed that. So I this, this whole conversation is inspiring me to come back to that. And I'll probably do an updated three or six months with folks and be like, here's what you know, the impacts were of this conversation with you. But for me, having that person that I could just check in with once a week, and having that thing daily, that I could just be like, All right, here's the thing that I've done. And then for us, it was like, check boxes. It was like, Did I do the thing or not do the thing? Or if that felt like not quite right, it was like, to what extent, for example, one thing that I wanted to be even more intentional about was doing one thing a day for my partner and for my daughter. So there's a box on my spreadsheet that says v1 thing, and it's like, what's one thing that I did for my wife to let her know that I love her, and then I'm thinking about her. And what's one thing that I do for Zola? And so an example of that today, if I were to do my spreadsheet today, would be, you know, my wife is taking the day away to just sort of have time for herself. You know that Veronica does this sometimes. And today's Friday, which is Daddy Zola day. And so I'm going to pick up Zola, and we are going to pitch a tent in the backyard, actually, probably in the front yard this time, once the peacocks here clear out, and that'll be today. And so, yeah, what I'm reminded of as you're sharing all this is like that quote pieces every step. And I do think about this whole thing as like, this is a day by day thing, and so it's not sort of like, I think I get overwhelmed when I imagine, like, trying to be the perfect version of myself that I imagine I can be in a year or 10 years, or whatever it is. And it's like, oh, wait, there's like, what can I do today? And I'm kind of, I need to take my own advice. I tell students, what can you control? You know, and I can't control what I will do tomorrow or next week or next year, but, like, what can I do today? Really, I think I'm trying to remember that for myself. Yeah,
and the point is not to get to the end of the music, you know, the beautiful journey of our lives, of becoming, whether it's the person that we imagine that we can be, how delightful that we get to witness, and how you and I have gotten to witness each other change and grow and become, yeah,
Ethan Sawyer 44:14
sage. What would you like to leave folks with?
Sage Simpson 44:17
I recently, and this is going to come out when it comes out, and people will be listening to this at different times. But right now, it's around Father's Day. And I spent Father's Day with my dad. He's going to be turning 70, and he still has the blanket that we would wrap ourselves up with on our morning sits. It's this red and black blanket, and the two of us have a deep shared love of nature and the wilderness and a connection with one another and the natural world. He reminds me all the time of how much I'm loved and I've always trusted and known. That I was loved and cared for, and it wasn't because we had a lot of money, or that my parents had an abundance of time that other people didn't have monetarily. There were years I just learned this when I was with my dad recently with three kids that he was making, my mom and dad collectively were making under $1,500 a year, and we were not well off. We were below the poverty line, but we were wealthy in our way of love and connection and the creativity and joy. And I'm reminded of that as this we were camping this last week, and his shoulders really, really sore, and he was up throughout the night and he didn't know if maybe he needed to go to the ER. And I can just sense how sweet and precious and fleeting this life is. He's not going to be around for that much longer, and I'm so grateful for the mornings that I had with him, you know. And so the mornings can be the space of tapping into and sharing with just like you're going to do with Zola, the people in our lives, and so that we don't have big regrets that we missed out on the connection and the love that's available. It's here for everybody.
Ethan Sawyer 46:20
Thanks for the reminder, and thanks for spending this time with me.
Sage Simpson 46:24
Yeah, thank you, my absolute delight and pleasure.
Ethan Sawyer 46:32
Thanks friends for joining our conversation. You'll find all the links to the resources and some of the things we discussed in the show notes, and if you have feedback, or you know you just want to share about your morning ritual, underneath the show notes, you'll find a section for Comments, and we'd love to hear from you. Thanks much. Love and stay curious. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Show transcript
Sage Simpson 0:00 Music. Ethan Sawyer 0:08 Hi, friends. Ethan Sawyer, the College Essay Guy here, and it's my goal on this podcast to bring more ease, purpose and joy to your life through the college admission process. And if you're ever wondering, How did Ethan land on those words, ease, purpose and joy? Well, to be honest, it came from a little conversation I had with today's podcast guest sage. Howard sage is a meditation and yoga teacher and a wellness coach who I've known for more than 15 years. And I can say, from knowing her that long, that she fully embodies, or I'll say, and I think she'd prefer that I say that she fully strives to embody E's purpose and joy in her own life. In case you missed part one of this episode, I chatted with Angel Perez, who's the CEO of the National Association of college admission counselors, on his personal journey with burnout and how that led to him prioritizing self care. One of the things he talked about was a morning routine. And because you know me, if you've listened to this podcast before, I heart the practical. So I reached out to Sage and asked if she'd be willing to come on and talk about concretely, specifically, how can you whether you're a student, parent, counselor, or just awesome human being listening to this create your own morning routine. Here's a fact that blew my mind. According to a study published on reviews.org and this was in like a month ago, 89% of Americans say they check their phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up. And I found that pretty astounding. But also I looked at that and I was like, Oh, it me, but I sort of reflected. And I was like, you know, there has to be a better way to start my day anyway. On this episode, we talk about, among other things, why mornings are so dang important, we get into a little of the science behind our nervous system. Sage talks about, you know, sympathetic and parasympathetic states and how those get triggered. A few ways that morning rituals can improve, not just our health, but our creativity and even our relationships, then we get super practical, with a bunch of ways to not only create a morning routine for yourself, but also raise the likelihood that we can maybe even make that morning routine stick. Hope you enjoy the episode. Hi sage. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Ethan, well, I feel so much joy just talking to you. I think that's why I'm when I'm laughing. So I want to say a little context for our listeners. One of the things that inspired me, well, two things inspired me to bring you on stage. One was you shared in our counselor community recently about morning rituals and about why they're so important in your life. And I thought to myself, This is too good to Like Share on just a webinar slash workshop thing. I want it to be a podcast that will live evergreen in the universe, because it was so practical and so heart based. And I think that that's one of those. Are two of the things that I strive for in my work. Is like, how do we provide, how do I as College Essay Guy, provide resources that are practical, but that are also coming from a heart centered space, as it were? And then the other thing is just the impact that you've had on my life for the years. We've known each other for the past, whatever it is, 1517, years. And I think you know this, but I'm not sure to what extent you know this, like your direct and indirect impacts have changed the way that I think about food, the way that I think about, like my use of plastic, the way that I think about like where I want to live in the future, like where I want to retire to. And so you've just had huge impacts on my life, and I want more people to know you and to know about you, and so I'm just present to gratitude this morning. Sage Simpson 3:49 Oh, my heart is so soft, like it softens Hearing you say that, because I know deep in my bones that the most radical change that we can have on the planet is really tuning into what really matters to us and living in alignment with that, but we often don't know unless people reflect it back to us. And so thank you. So Ethan Sawyer 4:12 I want to talk about morning rituals. What is your earliest memory of a morning ritual being important to you? Sage Simpson 4:21 The earliest memory I have is a ritual that my dad and I called sitting. And I was born and raised here in Montana, where I am right now, and from the time that I was about five or six till the time I was 10, my dad would wake me up before the sun even came up, and we would get on clothing that would camouflage in with the environment and walk up the hill close to our house and nestle in. And you were talking about how the forest smells in the morning, we'd Nestle up into the Juniper. Am the cedar, and he would always bring this big thermos of hot chocolate, and in silence, we would drink hot chocolate and just watch the world wake up. By that, I mean, we got to see elk and deer, Great Blue Heron and geese. And I remember this one particular time there was a huge black bear that came within 10 feet of where my dad and I were sitting, and then a baby cub. I didn't know to be scared. I just trusted my dad, and he held me in his arms, and I could feel his heart beat against my back and the preciousness of those mornings, and it wasn't like he had a bunch of extra time, and it wasn't like he didn't have a lot to do because he worked in construction and had a very full household of my younger siblings and I, but those precious early mornings and then watching the sun come up and feeling gratitude for the sun and gratitude for the day and the simplicity and the groundedness, those early mornings with my dad set the stage. And it's not like, Oh, I've had a beautiful morning ritual for my entire life, from the time I was six years old, but those early mornings grounded me in safety and love and belonging and being a part of something larger. Ethan Sawyer 6:27 Yeah, I'd love to double click on that about the sort of, I would say, like a word that we talk about often is balance, sort of like coming into balance and share more about, sort of like maybe your relationship to morning rituals. You've talked about it with me, sometimes about, like the story of two mornings, but I'd love to just hear about your relationship to mornings as it were, yeah. Sage Simpson 6:50 Well, over the course of my life, it shifted my mom, when I was a teenager, she would take me to step aerobics first thing in the morning before school, which was awesome, because my mom did kind of what the step aerobic teacher told her, but mainly she did what she wanted. And so that sort of set the stage of I get to dance my own dance. So she was very informative in that. And then when we traveled, my mom and I would run every morning, and still running in the morning gives me a sense of groundedness and connectedness. But I found that, well, especially my time in Los Angeles, I was sucked into sort of what I would call a morning, a a type A sort of morning that you are, that I at was when I lived there, sucked into the phone really early in the morning, sucked into email, sucked into work, sucked into reading the news or listening to the news, or constantly listening to podcasts or something else, immediately reaching to the outside world for some sort of soothing or this idea that I needed to be productive very first thing in the morning and starting off in a very sympathetic state, a very activated stress state, and what that led to was a constant need to prove myself and to people please, and constantly looking to the outside world. And it led to adrenal fatigue, and I mean, quite frankly, almost a nervous breakdown when I was living in Los Angeles, and then I know that it was a very complicated time, and so it's not to downplay but COVID really slowed things down in a way that shut down society and allowed me To tune into more of a morning bee, which is simplifying, really simplifying and choosing, instead of reaching for the phone, first thing, choosing meditation, choosing to journal, choosing yoga and choosing to tune into the inner Guru, the wise self, the part of me, and that is in all of us that really knows that we have everything we need, and that there's a space of peace and tranquility, even amidst the chaos of a big city like LA or even amongst the big chaos of the world that we're living in, we have the power to shift, and those small shifts in the morning became a very different life. Why Ethan Sawyer 9:30 do mornings matter so darn much? Sage Simpson 9:33 Mornings matter so darn much because they set the tone of the day simply. And there's a natural process. If we look to nature, there's a natural cycle that every single day, we go through this natural cycle of rebirth as the sun comes up and we are greeted by the sun, there's this internal sun that's rising, and this internal life. It's almost like a rebirth at the beginning of the day. And when we set our intention to how we want the day to unfold, and set our hearts and our beings into a space that we want the day to unfold in a certain way, we can first of all tune into the truth of who we really are, our true nature, which I believe every single human being is peaceful and loving and compassionate. It's quiet in the morning, relative just on a what is going on on the planet. It's a relative quiet time so we can tune into the truth of who we are. I don't know if you've read the book, atomic habits. Have you read that book? James clear totally. Yeah. So he starts off the book with a really great metaphor, talking about how when you have a plane and it starts off on the West Coast, you're going to the East Coast, and just by changing where the nose of the plane is a couple millimeters, you'll either end up in New York or you'll end up in Florida. And that's how I think about mornings. It's we don't have to do very much to change the course of our day. By just attuning to what do I really value and prioritizing what we really value, it makes it more likely that we'll remember when the opportunity comes in our lives? Oh yeah, I was going to show up with compassion. I was going to show up with kindness. I was going to show up with courage instead of old reactive patterns. So really, the course of our mornings changes the courses of our days, and then it changes the course of our lives. I mean, you talked about how I've impacted you, in the way that you think about what you eat, in the way that you think about plastic, and how you want to where you want to live. When I remember, I want to cut down on plastic today first thing in the morning, then it it's like I put on a different spectacles. I put on different way of seeing the world, and then I see the world as an opportunity to strengthen all the ways that I want to strengthen. And I realize life is happening for me. It's not happening against me. It's all of these opportunities we have to learn and to grow. Talk to me Ethan Sawyer 12:14 a little bit about the science behind this, about why morning routines are a good idea, maybe. Sage Simpson 12:21 Yeah. So you probably have heard, I don't know if you've heard of the parasympathetic and the sympathetic state of the nervous system. Yeah, there's a lot more research that's coming out about mindfulness and about meditation and yoga and journaling and singing, and it all comes back to our nervous system, and we are powerful in that we can change the state of our nervous system, and this is oversimplifying, but our autonomic nervous system, which regulates the part that is not within our conscious control, so the way that we're digesting, The way that we are breathing, our reproductive systems, all of that. It used to be thought that we didn't have any control over that, but we do. And there's two states we're either in, the sympathetic state or the parasympathetic state. The sympathetic state is the stressed state, and stress isn't bad. It's very, very awesome to have, if you are a gazelle in the planes and there's a tiger, you want to have that sympathetic response and run away from the tiger as quickly as you possibly can. And then after the sympathetic state comes online, and you have a trigger that activates it, you get away from the stress, and in nature, the balance is to come back into homeostasis and the parasympathetic, and that is rest and digest. And I really love the phrase stay and play. It's our state of curiosity and connection and connectivity. When we first thing in the morning we look at our phone or we have the news that we consume first thing in the morning the news is like somebody coming into your bedroom and telling you about all of the problems in the world is really activating to the sympathetic state. It's like, oh my gosh, there's so many things that are happening and they're not in our control, so it makes us stressed out. But unlike the gazelle, we can't run away, can't do anything. So the practices that I advocate, that I do for myself, is to get us into the parasympathetic state. First thing in the morning, even with like exercise or breathing, you pop into the sympathetic state, you pop into the fight, flight, freeze, and then you come back down to the parasympathetic state. And that variability gives our body the awareness, oh, we're in control. We don't need to look to the outside world in order to soothe us. We have in our capacity. Be the capacity to self soothe, which changes everything that means, regardless of what happens, I can choose to come back to a place of calm. Does that make sense? Totally Yeah. Ethan Sawyer 15:11 So before we get into the practical of like creating a morning ritual, I'd love to hear just a little bit more of what are some of the ways that morning rituals can help you. Know us, let's say folks listening, and maybe even I'll ask you for yourself, like, what are some of the ways that you feel like morning rituals have helped you? Sage Simpson 15:31 The first one is health. The first one is health because I've had such a consistent movement and exercise routine and ritual since I was 13, and it doesn't need to be a lot in order to be really powerful and impactful. I think that my ability to run, to climb mountains, to be functional and use my body in fun and playful ways is is because I've had this consistent practice in the morning, I don't get sick a lot, and I enjoy being in a body. I think a lot of people have aches and pains, and I'm blessed because I have a, you know, pretty healthy genetics, but it's also because I've been diligent and I've prioritized movement and physical exercise, and what that does is that you're more aware of your body throughout the day. So even if I'm on the computer for long periods of time, I'm aware of my physical body and what it needs. I don't tend to get over dehydrated or forget to stretch or things like that, because I tune into my body first thing. So the first thing is physical health. And I really don't think that you have much if you don't have your physical well being, and it's inevitable that that is going to decline. But to the best of our capacity, doing something in the morning for our bodies is key. Is awesome. So I would say health is the first one. The second one is awareness, and awareness of my emotional state and my mental state, and so that I can be more in tune with my needs and for the audience, so that you can be more in tune with your needs and realizing that your emotions are valid and that you can take care of yourself so personal awareness, personal awareness of what's happening in your body, in your state, and that leads to happiness, which I think is the third biggest thing, is that overall, my sense of joy and equanimity has gone up because I don't start off my day by reading the news or taking in things that could stress me out, and when I do look at my phone first thing in the morning, or when I do jump into work, I recognize I don't get as much done and I'm not as happy. I'm not as easily filled with joy, so health, awareness, happiness. The fourth is creativity. And I've recently realized this creativity is exponential. If you start the day with something that gets your creative juices flowing or invites the muse to come through you creativity flowers everywhere in your life, and so you're less likely to just look to the outside world in a way of consuming and more creative in the way that you're thinking about problems and like physical Health, if you do something small, creative in the morning, it has cumulative effects. So journaling, I have written so much over the course of the last let's see four years of consistent journaling, and it's small amounts that lead to a large amount. The fifth is perspective and new solutions. The morning time allows us to reflect on our lives and think about them differently and getting into nature, it also is inspiring to think about things in different ways than screens or just being in boxes, because nature has so many answers in the way that it organically flows and it taps us into the cycles of life and death. And so there's less fear and anxiety about change, because everything is changing all of the time, and when we can be more at peace with the groundlessness and the always changing nature of reality, the more at peace that we can be within ourselves and our relationships. And I think that the final one that I'll say is relationships, when I when we. Care for ourselves first thing in the morning, it allows us to give to the world in a way that is grounded in integrity and kindness and truth and vulnerability, and the way that we are with others spreads simple but profound, Ethan Sawyer 20:24 as you share that I'm just I'm thinking about morning a and morning B in my own life, and how there are those times where I sort of like what I'm hearing, even in the pace of what you're sharing is there's this kind of like slowness. There's this like quality of attention that when I slow down in the morning, when I have a good morning, when it's like, and I'm, you know, doing things like drinking water and like, like you said, not reaching for the phone. There was this. There was this a fact. What was the Do you remember the percentage that was shared around, how often we reach for our phones early in the morning? Or like, do you know? Do you remember what that Sage Simpson 20:59 was? Well, it depends on what you look at, but it ranges between 71 and 89% of adults reach for their phone within the first 10 minutes of waking up. It's often before we even pee or look at our partners or tune into our own breath. Yeah, Ethan Sawyer 21:20 that's so wild. When you share that with me, whenever it was a while back, I've been thinking about that ever since. And so now, each morning when I wake up, I'm kind of like, ah, do I want to be part of the 71 to 89% or not? And, you know, there's this real practical element of like, well, I need to, like, you know, look at my alarm. I need to make sure that, for example, you know, I'm trying to think of, like, Well, why do I do this? This is something that I've really gotten in on. Is, like, what is it that I'm trying to do? Here's a question that I've been exploring for myself. Sage is like, what is the thing that I'm trying to soothe and do by looking at my phone? And part of it is, there's this practical, well, I gotta get Zola to school, and I need to look at the time that's solvable, like, I can get an alarm clock. And, you know, kind of inspired by this, we've been talking about this over the last couple of weeks. I'm like, Yes, I need to get an alarm clock so then I don't have to worry about that for my my waking up. Sage Simpson 22:14 Can I put a pin or highlight what you just said? It's so it's not the what of what we're doing that is anything bad. It's not wrong. But underneath is the why of what we're doing right. That's the key your your self awareness to say, Why am I doing this? That changes everything, because it changes the relationship. Even if you choose to look at the phone, if you are aware of the why, that is the sacred pause, that pause between impulse and activity, that's another thing that our morning rituals give us, is that pause between impulse and action. So bravo. Ethan Sawyer 22:58 Yeah. I mean, you're that pause is giving me a little bit of self care and sort of a reminder that there's something beneath that. There's some mechanism that's running the show that's worth being curious Sage Simpson 23:09 about. Yeah, it's the desire for us to self soothe, and we do it in the ways that we know how right? So for many people, and myself included reaching for the phone. There are so many ways to jack up your dopamine really quickly. It's the same thing with food. It's the same thing with TV. It's all the ways that we numb and distract ourselves. They're not things that are problems with us. It's that our bodies want to come back into the parasympathetic state, and the best way that we know how to do it often is this immediate gratification of social media or whatever. The thing is, it's just that. It's not sustainable, it's not really nourishing. It's like junk food. It isn't really all that we need. Yeah, Ethan Sawyer 23:53 it's reminding me of another book that I'm I've been reading recently. This book stolen focus. Do you know this one, Sage Simpson 24:00 I do. I just started reading it. Ethan Sawyer 24:04 Yeah, it's making me think about this is just to listeners. This is another awesome one about that is about sort of breaks down, what are these different forces in our lives that are competing for our attention? I think the author goes through 10 or 11. It's pretty neat. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But let's get, let's get to the practical stage. So if folks are listening to this and they're wondering, okay, how do we actually do this? How do I start a morning routine? Because, as I imagine folks listening to you, they're like, oh my gosh, I haven't been running since every morning since I was 13. Like, I don't know that I can do this. So I'm really asking two things. One is, like, is I'm kind of asking an implied question, like, is this doable? And to give us some practical stuff, how do people actually go about creating a morning routine? It's Sage Simpson 24:45 absolutely doable. You already have a morning ritual, because everybody wakes up in the morning and whatever you're doing that is your morning ritual. So it's being aware of what you're doing and then shifting. I'm shifting it. It's not like you have to wake up at 430 in the morning and do all of these things. I came up with the metaphor that has been helpful for me to let you remember and you can fill in all of these different parts. It's called the tree of wellness, or the tree of well being, and each part of the tree represents a part of you. And I would say, right now, for the people who are listening, take out a pen and paper and jot down some notes of things that maybe you could do for your own morning ritual. The best, well, I won't say the best, something that you can try first thing in the morning is even before you get out of bed ground in gratitude and simply try taking three deep breaths, and each breath connect to something that you are grateful for in that moment, even if you have time for nothing else, and it's going to be hectic with getting kids out the door and all The things of the morning, grounding in gratitude will attune your awareness to the things that you're grateful for in your life, and building a morning ritual choose the things that feel most inspiring as I'm listing these. And please don't think that you have to do them all at once. I don't have time for all of these every single day, and so if I get two or three of them, then that's awesome. That's a great that's a great morning. The first one is to drink water before you drink anything else. It's very easy to reach for caffeine very first thing in the morning, making sure that we're hydrated, we'll do wonders for the body. And then the second is if you do have a morning drink that you love, tea or coffee or something else, ritualize that drink by being present with it. Actually taste the coffee, smell the coffee, give gratitude for all of the things that went in to bring that coffee to your hands. The third is to move your body in all directions you can shake, stretch, strengthen sweat, go out for a jog, do some yoga, play pickleball, something that is enjoyable, even just putting on a song and dancing to a five minute song, moving your body in some way. In the morning, just like animals do, they wake up. And if you watch your cat or your dog, they automatically stretch and wake up their bodies. Another thing that you can incorporate is breath work, and breath work is becoming a lot more available. There are a lot of different ways that you can learn it. There's lots of different apps that you can follow, but just simply taking three or five or 10 deep abdominal breaths soothes down the nervous system into that parasympathetic state. Try taking a few breaths in the morning, and then, if you are getting stressed out throughout the day, return to those deep abdominal breaths. Another thing you can try is singing. So incorporate this with your dance. If you want to put on a song and dance first thing in the morning. Could also sing, sing with your kids, sing with your partner, sing with yourself, sing in the shower. But singing is really wonderful to awaken joy and movement and playfulness. Another thing to incorporate is nature, and a lot of people already take their dogs for a walk, or have even just the walk from your house to your car, if you're commuting, you can take that little tiny bit and try looking at the sky, the trees, taking a breath and recognizing even walking barefoot across your lawn before you put your shoes On, little, tiny ways that you can try to incorporate your connection to nature in the morning grounds you into the larger web of life. And I know that this is something that's in people's awareness, and I hear a lot of I should meditate more, but meditation in the morning is so potent, so powerful. And it's it's hard, it's really hard to sit and to create a meditation practice. And I have found, I have started to crave it. I can tell when I haven't meditated, and five minutes makes a difference. In the morning, if we're aware of our emotional and ourselves, then we can attune to our needs with more awareness throughout the day. And so meditating, and it doesn't have to be long, just has to be five minutes, and it doesn't even have to be a quote, unquote, good meditation. So. Making it a ritual, making it a habit, it has a cumulative effect. The next is journaling, Dream journaling, gratitude journaling, process journaling, setting out your journal and a pen the night before and so that you can journal first thing in the morning. You might have heard of morning pages, but just allowing yourself to write whatever wants to come up, or incorporating your writing and your journaling to what are my priorities for today and what are the things that I want to return to? Value wise, throughout my day, incorporating writing slows us down, because writing things out longhand, it slows our processing down because we can't write as quickly as we can think. So it slows our mental state. So try journaling in the morning, reading something pre internet, a book, something that is inspiring, something that is grounding. Some of my favorites are Mary Oliver and Hafiz, anything that taps you into a sense of wonder and awe and love and creativity and perspective and humanity. It's become something that's really cozy, because I used to wake up and just have a cup of coffee and go running. So it was very energetic morning, but it wasn't necessarily soothing and calming to the more soulful parts of my being and reading in the morning, something that is in a book, something that was written before the hecticness and the chaos and the overwhelm that we feel in today's society has a really grounding effect, at least it has for me, and I tapped this into it before, but try to remind yourself of the values that you want to embody throughout the day and what your priorities are, so that you are less likely to get pulled by the umpteenth things that want to pull your attention and awareness away, and maybe they don't get done. But it's setting the intention and tuning to what you do want to prioritize, it makes it less more more likely to happen. And the final thing that I'm gonna say, something that is joyful, something that is laughter, this is something I'm trying to do more in my life. My grandma is such a great example. She's read the comics pretty much every single day, and she would cut the comics out of the newspaper and send them to me when I was in college, even if it's silly, but reading Calvin and Hobbes, or the far side, or whatever your favorite comic is, or doodling something that's going to inspire laughter and joy and connect with the people that you love. So sharing laughter with the people that you love, sharing laughter the people that are in your home, or connecting on a different level, if it's not someone in your home reaching out through texting a delight to a friend or taking a picture of something that reminds you of a friend, connect to the people that you love and gives us a sense of belonging. So those are the practical the practical tips. Ethan Sawyer 33:18 I love this. I want to just share a couple impacts and a couple of things that that I've tried doing, that I've started doing, one is like, just in terms of sharing impact, there's like, a pace that you're speaking with that reminds me of a pace within me that's possible when I slow down and don't throw all the things at my system. And you know, this morning, for example, was a pretty good one. I've, like, started to do just really light exercises, because I'm not somebody who loves exercise. I like playing pickleball. I like playing basketball. You know, give me a thing and, like, another human that I'm with, and it's, it's much more doable for me. And I want to get into in just a minute. I want to get into some of the, how do we make this stick? Because that's a challenge that I found is like, I can do these things, you know, for a day or a week, but then it kind of goes away. So I want to talk about what are some of those things that could potentially help us to overcome the obstacles, the mental obstacles. Another thing though, that I've started to do is just like the simple like, with aromas or scents, some people do like scented candles, those are a little bit much for me, but like, just lighting like Palo Santo, and just burning that a little bit, and having this smell in my, my working space, my office, for me, has been a really awesome way of just reminding me of, like, Ah, this place of peace, this place of groundedness, is something that can can persist and doesn't have to be just what I'm doing my morning ritual, but it's like, oh, I can actually, sort of, you know, be in this space, as it were, for for the whole day. Yeah, I'd love to speak to that part of folks who are listening, going, Ah, yes, great. I can do this for a day or week, but there are all these. It's hard to make it stick. How do folks make something like. Make this a more consistent part of their lives. Sage Simpson 35:03 Well, the first thing is to make it enjoyable. And it seems so simple, but it's something that we often forget. At least I do that. I have all of these, like I should do this, I should do this, and I don't give myself the things that are really pleasurable make your morning ritual something you want to do. So if it is something that you struggle with, like you you talked about not wanting to necessarily exercise, you don't need to do a HIIT workout or go to the gym. If that's not fun for you, dance, play pickleball, just stretching your body for five minutes will make a difference. And if it's something that is going to be enjoyable, it will get you it has the potential anyway, to get you up in the morning, maybe 45 minutes or a half hour earlier, and you're less likely to do whatever it is the night before that keeps you up so that you're tired and that you want to hit snooze, and so the first thing is to make it enjoyable. And then the second thing that has really helped me, because the mornings are full, and there's a lot of they can be a lot of hecticness and demands on us, is to prepare the night before, and not to leave it up to chance, because we fall to the level of our systems. We don't rise to the level of our goals. I can have a lot of good ideas of what I want to do in the morning, but if I'm waking up and I don't have the clothes that I want to work out and I'm rummaging around, then I'm looking for my journal or whatever it is you want to prepare the night before, and I think of it as being really kind to my future self. So set up the night before, clear your space, and as you're setting your workout clothes or getting your journal ready or preparing the coffee for the morning, then you're sort of thinking about and visualizing what the next morning is going to be, and it almost becomes its own ritual or routine. The night before the third is to try having more boundaries. I won't say discipline because, I mean, discipline is a really wonderful thing, but we don't. We don't want to beat ourselves up around our relationship with our phone. We just want to be more mindful about it and having boundaries on your phone. For me, my phone goes off at 830 at night, and I don't look at it until after I do my morning ritual, and just having the clarity of that takes away the option, so putting your phone away and getting an alarm clock so that you're not dependent on your phone to wake up, or having a another way of timing your meditation is a helpful way. And even if it's just not looking at the phone for the first half hour, then that is wonderful. So the next is to put your phone away, because once you're in the phone, it sort of takes you down this like domino of everything else that we touched on in morning a the fourth way to stick to it is to incorporate the people that are in your household. Because a lot of reasons why we don't end up doing these things is that we have a lot of other people's needs, maybe that we're meeting, or there's just a lot of other human beings that feel like interruptions. And just like my dad did with me, incorporate the people in your family into your morning ritual. Everybody benefits from having a more intentional morning. Maybe it's encouraging your kids to have their own morning rituals in their rooms before they come out for breakfast or taking a family walk. My husband and I like to speak our intentions for the day out loud to one another. So incorporate the people in your family. Incorporate the people in your household. They're not obstacles to your morning ritual and also mutual support. So try supporting the people in your life to have theirs and so that they are also supporting you and yours, taking turns to exercise or working out the schedule and getting creative with how you do it. The next is to not make the perfect idea of a beautiful, wonderful, three long hour ritual. Don't make the perfect the enemy of good. It doesn't need to be something that's elaborate. Start with five minutes of meditation, five minutes of stretching and drinking water, those 15 minutes will shift the way that you are treating yourself, and those small changes can have a really big impact. And connected to this is that you don't have to do all of these things that I've mentioned in the more. Morning, you can do a couple in the morning and then sprinkle them throughout the rest of your day when you are taking a lunch break. Also incorporate some breath work. Or once you're done with work for the day, get outside and try taking off your shoes and just being barefoot and looking at the sky. So incorporate these little things throughout the day, and you create these rituals that give you a sense of grounding and connectedness and coming back to the truth of who you are, which is why you want to have a morning ritual in the first place. And then the final one that has been really helpful. And Ethan, you've been so amazing for me over the course of my life is to have somebody to check in with and have accountability. A lot of why I haven't taken care of certain things in the past is that I feel guilty for self care. A lot of us do, like I'm selfish in some way, and when we know that not only that it's good for us, but that other people are also taking care of themselves, then the should be working. Should be doing something else dissipates because we're tribal creatures. We're creatures who crave belonging and accountability. Can give us that sense of belonging, connection, other things that come up for you of reasons why you have struggled with a morning ritual. Are these helpful? These are really helpful. You know, I think especially the thing about accountability was really useful for me. When I look back at the times when I've been most I want to say, like intentional about my day. It was times when I was in connection with my friend Sarah. We set up an accountability partnership on a spreadsheet. It was like a simple Google Doc that started with like, Okay, I'm gonna do one or two things. And for me, grew to, like, actually, quite a few things, and getting up early and meditating regularly. And I really have missed that. So I this, this whole conversation is inspiring me to come back to that. And I'll probably do an updated three or six months with folks and be like, here's what you know, the impacts were of this conversation with you. But for me, having that person that I could just check in with once a week, and having that thing daily, that I could just be like, All right, here's the thing that I've done. And then for us, it was like, check boxes. It was like, Did I do the thing or not do the thing? Or if that felt like not quite right, it was like, to what extent, for example, one thing that I wanted to be even more intentional about was doing one thing a day for my partner and for my daughter. So there's a box on my spreadsheet that says v1 thing, and it's like, what's one thing that I did for my wife to let her know that I love her, and then I'm thinking about her. And what's one thing that I do for Zola? And so an example of that today, if I were to do my spreadsheet today, would be, you know, my wife is taking the day away to just sort of have time for herself. You know that Veronica does this sometimes. And today's Friday, which is Daddy Zola day. And so I'm going to pick up Zola, and we are going to pitch a tent in the backyard, actually, probably in the front yard this time, once the peacocks here clear out, and that'll be today. And so, yeah, what I'm reminded of as you're sharing all this is like that quote pieces every step. And I do think about this whole thing as like, this is a day by day thing, and so it's not sort of like, I think I get overwhelmed when I imagine, like, trying to be the perfect version of myself that I imagine I can be in a year or 10 years, or whatever it is. And it's like, oh, wait, there's like, what can I do today? And I'm kind of, I need to take my own advice. I tell students, what can you control? You know, and I can't control what I will do tomorrow or next week or next year, but, like, what can I do today? Really, I think I'm trying to remember that for myself. Yeah, and the point is not to get to the end of the music, you know, the beautiful journey of our lives, of becoming, whether it's the person that we imagine that we can be, how delightful that we get to witness, and how you and I have gotten to witness each other change and grow and become, yeah, Ethan Sawyer 44:14 sage. What would you like to leave folks with? Sage Simpson 44:17 I recently, and this is going to come out when it comes out, and people will be listening to this at different times. But right now, it's around Father's Day. And I spent Father's Day with my dad. He's going to be turning 70, and he still has the blanket that we would wrap ourselves up with on our morning sits. It's this red and black blanket, and the two of us have a deep shared love of nature and the wilderness and a connection with one another and the natural world. He reminds me all the time of how much I'm loved and I've always trusted and known. That I was loved and cared for, and it wasn't because we had a lot of money, or that my parents had an abundance of time that other people didn't have monetarily. There were years I just learned this when I was with my dad recently with three kids that he was making, my mom and dad collectively were making under $1,500 a year, and we were not well off. We were below the poverty line, but we were wealthy in our way of love and connection and the creativity and joy. And I'm reminded of that as this we were camping this last week, and his shoulders really, really sore, and he was up throughout the night and he didn't know if maybe he needed to go to the ER. And I can just sense how sweet and precious and fleeting this life is. He's not going to be around for that much longer, and I'm so grateful for the mornings that I had with him, you know. And so the mornings can be the space of tapping into and sharing with just like you're going to do with Zola, the people in our lives, and so that we don't have big regrets that we missed out on the connection and the love that's available. It's here for everybody. Ethan Sawyer 46:20 Thanks for the reminder, and thanks for spending this time with me. Sage Simpson 46:24 Yeah, thank you, my absolute delight and pleasure. Ethan Sawyer 46:32 Thanks friends for joining our conversation. You'll find all the links to the resources and some of the things we discussed in the show notes, and if you have feedback, or you know you just want to share about your morning ritual, underneath the show notes, you'll find a section for Comments, and we'd love to hear from you. Thanks much. Love and stay curious. You. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
