I came across the idea of the “magical morning practice” during a rock bottom phase in my life. During this time I had zero structure: no job, no school, no commitments.
(note: I don’t think rock bottom + zero commitments are synonymous all the time, as void periods can be very fruitful as long as one doesn’t internalize the stigma.)
Anyway. I’ve heard of the power of the morning routine my whole life, but I think the problem was that it was always sold as a dry productivity hack. Packaging it in a magical wrap, as a way to deliberately prioritize joy, made something click within me. And so I practiced the concept.
The premise was simple: the minute you wake up, start the day off on the right foot. Maintain that foot as long as possible. Do that by prioritizing feeling good, moment-by-moment, in thoughts and actions.
Doesn’t really matter what you do. Could be untraditional like watching RuPaul. Could be traditional like yoga and meditation (I did the recommend simple background-noise meditation of 20 mins a day.) What matters is how it makes you feel after doing that.
And that also means you have to be discerning over what NOT to do, like opening facebook or checking emails first thing in the morning, and being picky about what your thoughts are.*
After practicing this for a while, I could start to actually see the choice points and the split in the timeline: if I chose this thought, eventually it would lead to this hole of doom, if I chose this thought, I could remain reasonably happy.
Eventually, not long after doing this practice, I was able to have joyful moods for 2-3 weeks straight at the time.
It was massive, knowing that I could do this—instead of seeing my mood subject to being pushed and pulled by the random external things of the day, to know that I had the reigns.
My basic formula, when I began, was wake up with inspiring video + yoga + meditation + gratitude. I got very good at this. I got very good at being happy.
It was when I got very good at being happy that the nuances came up.
Now, if you’re contemplating starting an intentional routine, I would focus on setting up that habit first and not these nuances–but the next section are what nuances to expect once the habit is cemented.
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Nuances once you have a routine down
I found that the one day I would skip the routine, my day would turn to absolute shit. This did reinforce me doing the routine, but the conclusion I came to—that I just needed to do the routine all the time—was not necessarily accurate. The first problem with this conclusion was that this created a rigidity, a do-this-or-else-you’ll-feel-bad. And the other problem was, even though I was joyful, it didn’t mean there weren’t heavier emotions within me that needed processing. When I wasn’t actively practicing joy, these emotions would come up as if they finally had their chance to come up for air.
I was existentially confused at this point. What was the truth: joy or pain? Was choosing joy denying pain? As with most things, I found solace in the quantum answer: things were extremely fucked up and stunningly beautiful at the same time.
There’s also another thing with becoming happy consistently. There can be a fear that it will get taken away. Brené Brown calls this “foreboding joy”, and she says joy is the most vulnerable emotion to feel for this reason. I did feel this for a bit, but the way I resolved it was just not having attachment to whatever mood I was having and accepting all moods as having merit on their own.
I look at like this: joyful routine type things help with day-to-day stabilization. But in terms of the long-term accumulated things that sit under the surface, I needed to actively make space for them, and be attuned to when they came up. (Note: most guided meditation/meditations that are about focusing on external things lend itself to day-to-day high vibes. Meditations like vipassana / internal sensation noticing lend itself to processing long-term accumulations.)
I found that when I did the routine and I didn’t feel happy afterwards, or when I was extremely not in the mood to do the routine, that was information that I had some processing to do. But without the habit of the routine creating a baseline mood, it would have been hard to distinguish the deep stuff coming up from daily random shit.
I also like the idea of a bad-mood routine. Let’s be real, who the fuck is going to do a gratitude list when they feel like shit? I don’t do it consistently, but I really like journalling as my bad-mood routine to help me get at the root of my feels.
I got an inquiry prior to doing the workshop, about how to maintain a good mood while dealing with negative people. Personally this is challenging, but there’s a couple of answers:
A helpful philosophy to keep under one’s belt is: no matter how much of a shithead someone is and how much they throw you off the good-mood course, you can take the reigns back again and regroup. If this is difficult, it’s likely they brought up something deep within you that needs processing.
When I was a fresh noob of doing this magical routine work, I really wanted to good-mood my way out of dealing with toxic workplaces and toxic interpersonal relations. There is some merit to building up the emotional field to be less vulnerable to people’s shit and I’ve experienced that personally—but really my lesson here was learning how to confront these situations and unlearn my physiological freeze response.
On the other hand. The effects of the joyful routine are cumulative. I find that suddenly I can look at something that’s been bothering me with the highest perspective. For example, I live with my parents who are humans who argue. Whenever this happens I feel annoyed. But there was a sudden point when instead of feeling annoyed, I just felt immense compassion. I could see the arguing was an aspect of their human experience. I don’t feel this 24/7 but the time I did felt amazing and I credit it to dedicated practice of the routine & other self-work.
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Other things about the routine.
You are probably conceptualizing it as something you do in the morning and then you fuck off for the rest of the day. I mean, yes, that works quite well in itself. But I find that incorporating elements of the practice throughout the day is even more powerful.
Stressful drive? Instead of carrying that stress around throughout the rest of the day, take 5 minutes to meditate and regroup. Feeling the high of the routine waning after being worn out through the day? Make a list of 5 gratitude items for a little pick-me-up. I often don’t have time in the morning to do the routine, so I’ll do it while I’m out and about. I’ve literally sat in cafés and meditated to the background café noise. This tuning and adjusting throughout the day requires continual cognizance of 1) how we’re feeling and 2) how we want to respond to that feeling.
*In terms of picking your thoughts in the morning. If you find this difficult and/or are thinking of the same topic often i.e a breakup, work situation, etc. this probably means you need to process the topic that keeps coming up. Just thought discipline on its own isn’t going to help.
My routine currently is mirror work (basically meeting my own gaze and saying “I love you, I accept you, I forgive you, You are enough, You are worthy,” etc.), yoga, meditation, and gratitude.
If you were starting a practice and had no idea where to start, I would suggest mirror work + meditation + gratitude as it doesnt take a lot of time. Although, meditation might not work well to start if you have a decent amount of trauma. In that case I’d replace it with gentle yoga until enough stuff is processed to try meditation.
re: meditating. When I first started, I never felt like meditating, but the good feels I got from it reinforced the habit. Meditation in particular was powerful for me because of these feels, as it provided instant proof that all my feelings of fulfillment were within me and within reach. If the head is too noisy, exercising or journalling before meditation can help get excess thoughts out.
List of element ideas to incorporate into a routine:
— Mirror work
— Yoga
— Meditation
— Gratitude
— General exercise
— Singing
— Dancing
— Sex / self-pleasure (use with discretion if you don’t have a healthy relationship to this currently)
— Music
— Funny shows
— Inspirational Videos
— Self-massage (John’s tip of tennis ball on a wall, or abhangya oil massage)
— Journalling
— Vision Boarding
— Breathwork
— Qi Gong
— Mindful tea