#124 - My Anti-Burnout Morning Routine (& the 5 Types of Self-Care)
Summary
Today on the podcast, we’re talking about my anti-burnout morning routine. I’ll also introduce you to the 5 types of self-care and how you can incorporate them into your morning to prevent burnout.
For show notes, head to coachellyn.com/podcast and, of course, if you have any questions or want to connect, head on over to @coachellyn on Instagram.
ACTION STEPS:
5 Types of Self-Care. Physical, Mental, Social, Emotional, Spiritual
Try to stay off social media for at least the first hour
Login into my “Calm” app and meditate for 10 mins
Read a chapter in my book
Optional steps:
Set boundaries with the people in your life to protect your morning time
Go on a walk to get some fresh air, Vitamin D, and physical self-care
Journal to work out any stressors or difficult emotions.
RESOURCES IN THIS EPISODE:
My BRAND NEW BOOK CLUB - here
Meditation podcasts:
Transcript for this episode (Coming Soon!)
(00:08):
I'm getting this episode out a little bit late because it's actually my birthday week and I was out of town last weekend, having some glorious, glorious, staycation time with my boyfriend. And it was wonderful. And I'm getting around to recording this a little bit slow this morning, but that is AOK because it's coming at you and it's coming at you with some very, very powerful information. Sorry. I just slid my coffee cup across the table there. Um, and really today I want to firstly, acknowledge the fact that I don't know about you, but I cannot freaking believe it's may I can not freak and believe it's my birthday month. And I have had so many things sneak up on me lately, things that I would just like, oh, I've got plenty of time to get that done. And now it's due, I don't know if you can relate to that at all.
(01:42):
I've got two speaking gigs coming up. I've got a big project that's due for a new collaboration I'm doing. All the things are coming up and I'm just like, wowza! Like, what? Where did this all come from? And I think when we get into seasons like this, where things just really are sneaking up on us, it is so important that we have times in our day that are protected times in our day, that are kind of our anti-burnout time. The times that we really reserve to protect ourselves from overwhelm and those times are so freaking crucial to preventing our burnout. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. One of my favorite things that I do, that's kind of an anti burnout ritual. We're going to talk about my daily anti burnout morning routine. And I do this pretty religiously. I mean, like even when we were at our little staycation at the lodge we were at, I'm still doing something like this, if not perfectly, at least remnants of this, because what it does is it helps me prevent burnout. It helps me create space in my day. It helps me unplug. All of those things are incorporated into this time. In my day. I've never on this podcast, talked about the five types of self-care, but it's something that I talk about frequently in my speaking
(03:00):
Engagements and with clients. And what I love about this morning routine is it incorporates in almost all of those five types of self-care. The five types are physical, social, mental, emotional, and spiritual, and they all have a different component and important different component. And you really managing your self-care, which is such a crucial part of managing your burnout. So this is my daily anti burnout morning routine with kind of some of the bonus ad-ons that I don't do every day, but I work in as often as possible.
(03:37):
The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I try my damnedest, not to check social media. I get up in the morning. I do grab my phone, but I have a rule for myself that I can't check social media within the first hour of waking up. Sometimes it's harder than others and I'm not perfect with it by any stretch, but that is always my intention. And my goal is to knock it on social media. Now, ideally I wouldn't get on my phone at all, but that leads us to the next step, which is important for my emotional self-care and for my spiritual self-care. I meditate.
(04:12):
I meditate using an app on my phone. I personally love the calm app though. I recommend Headspace, um, calm. There are a number of other great ones out there, but I meditate first thing in the morning. And I love meditation because of the fact that it is one of the only times of day that I give myself true permission to not think not do just be still. And it's really over the years I've been doing it since fall 2017. Over the years, it's really helped me develop my intuition. That's probably my biggest thing that I love about meditation. I did some podcasts, which I'll go ahead and link in the show notes about all of the really practical benefits to meditation and mindfulness practices.
(04:53):
So I'll link those in the show notes, coachellyn.com/podcast. I'll go ahead and link those in the show notes, but I love getting that meditation. And you know, it's debatable as to whether or not you should do it. First thing in the morning, I personally just do it first thing in the morning because that's the time of day where I know I'll get it in. There are other times of day that maybe I would want to meditate, but oftentimes when I try to move meditation away from my morning routine, it just doesn't get done. So I wake up in the morning. That's the first thing I do. Obviously I wake up in the morning. I try not to check social media for the first hour. And then I grabbed my phone. I grabbed my app and I meditate. It's only a 10 minute meditation sometimes if I'm really feeling like I want to challenge myself, I feel like I've got an abundance of time.
(05:39):
I'll meditate for a little bit longer, but that 10 minute meditation is a non-negotiable first thing in the morning for me. The next thing I do is I grab my Kindle and it is my birthday week. So I got a new Kindle and I'm very excited about it. My old one was starting to glitch cause it was like four years old. Um, but I grabbed my Kindle and I read, and I usually aim to read a chapter, but it kind of depends on my day. And my morning, how long I read for my goal is usually to do 15 to 30 minutes of reading and just aim to read a chapter in whatever book I'm reading. If you're somebody that's like, oh, this is a habit I would love to get into a once again. I encourage doing it in the morning because again, for me, if I push this to another time of day, it just doesn't get done.
(06:23):
However, if I incorporate it into this, I called this whole routine. My mindful morning. If I incorporate it into my mindful morning, then it gets done and it gets done consistently. And it allows me to burn through and get through a ton of books every year in a way that I otherwise wouldn't. If you need further accountability to make sure you read head to coachellyn.com Again, E L L Y N, head to coachellyn.com/bookclub And join us. This is a great place. It's a really, really inexpensive, and it's a great place to sit down. If you know, you want to make time to read something that's not working emails, so you can definitely join us there. This is something you want to incorporate, but that's the next step of my morning routine. I sit down without social media, hopefully for the first hour I plug into my meditation app and meditate for 10 minutes.
(07:12):
And then I read now that is the non-negotiable part of my morning routine, my daily anti burnout morning routine.
(07:21):
And I want to add in here some kind of bonus things that I also incorporate as well as some bonus things that I've done to really make this anti burnout. Now, disclaimer, I am an introvert. So I have a certain level of social time that really kind of exceeds my introversion threshold. If you will. That starts to feel exhausting. I personally just like a lot of intentional time in solitude. It really rejuvenates me. It really, really fills me up. And so one of the things that I've done with this morning routine is I've communicated to my boyfriend if, and when he does stay over at my house, that that's my time and that I really need him to not, you know, be around during that time and to not be chatting with me, it's really my time to be by myself.
(08:04):
And he has been so tremendously respectful of that and tends to just stay in the other room while I'm doing my morning routine. So maybe that's something that you need to do as well to communicate to your significant other or to your family. Hey, this is my time. You know, whether you give yourself 30 minutes an hour, just communicating that this is my time to the people in your life can be tremendously powerful and they will probably know the difference between just your mood of when you get that time versus when you don't. Now, if you can't do that, you have like a newborn at home, or you have a number of kids that you have to wrangle in the morning. I know that this is an unpopular opinion, but I do believe this time is so, so crucial and powerful to preventing burnout that I would encourage.
(08:48):
Just trying to get up a little bit earlier. It does not have to be an hour. It could be 15 to 30 minutes at the start your day. And that's it. So communicate that boundary. That's kind of a little bonus that I want to throw in here.
(09:02):
And then the last couple things I want to tell you that I'll do that really, really helped with my burnout, particularly when I am feeling physically burned out or when I'm feeling emotionally burned out, there are a couple other little added things that I do. One of which I've been doing a lot more of lately, especially as the weather started to become so much more beautiful. So one of the things that I do and I do it less consistently than I used to the journal that is kind of a optional part of my anti burnout morning routine, my morning, mindfulness routine, if you will.
(09:33):
And I journal more of kind of a stream of consciousness journaling. If I have something I need to work out, I will sit down, I'll put pen to paper and I will do it. And it's incredibly beneficial kind of coupled with the meditation because able to really, really navigate and work through some difficult emotions. I find journaling to be incredibly, incredibly powerful when you're dealing with challenging more often than not negative emotions. And it is incredibly, incredibly helpful for that. So whether it is, I tend to do it more like morning pages, which is something that is from Julia, Cameron's the artist's way. And it's basically three pages of journaling every morning. I used to be incredibly, incredibly disciplined about doing that. But as of late, I found that it's been less necessary to journal every single day. So it's more like an optional thing.
(10:23):
I try to aim for journaling once a week, but sometimes not even that happens. That's kind of one of the habits that I actually want to try to get back into, but that's kind of something you can incorporate into your morning routine as a sort of way to help with your emotional burnout as well as maybe even your spiritual burnout and on some level, um not spiritual burnout. Why do I keep saying burnout? I just realized that, I mean, spiritual self-care, not not all of that. The self care things that I talk about about at the beginning. Sorry about that.
(10:52):
Um, so to recap, we've got our meditation, which helps with our spiritual self-care. We've got our reading, which reading is a part of mental self-care. So that's really, really helpful. Mental self-care is basically things that you do to stimulate your mind. Um, so I read for my mental self care, and then you might journal in the morning to give you some emotional and or spiritual self-care.
(11:15):
And then lastly, the last thing that I sometimes incorporate in, and this is one that I've actually been doing a lot more of is I might go for a morning walk and I love this for so many reasons. I've been an at-home workout person for a long time. I swear by it. I love it. It's one of the most consistent ways that I can make sure I get my workout in, but at times I hit a vitamin D I want to get outside and enjoy the beautiful spring weather we're having. So I personally have, I'm very blessed and I have this beautiful, beautiful walking location that I can go to. That's five minutes down the hill from my apartment. So sometimes after I finished the, you know, main part of my morning, I will drive down there and I will go walk along the water. And that is really a way that I can incorporate my physical self care.
(12:01):
In fact, as I'm recording this, I spent this morning doing exactly that and meditated, I read for a period of time. And then I made my coffee to go brought it down to the water and went for an almost two mile walk down at the waterfront. And I really do feel like it is just set my state and put me in such a great mood and given me such a vitality and vibrancy going into my day, so short and sweet this morning, it's probably one of the shorter episodes I've ever done. I had a very, very clear picture of what I wanted to deliver to you guys today. This is my daily anti burnout morning routine. It really incorporates those five types of self-care, which is so, so impactful.
(12:41):
And I highly encourage you to do something similar. It may not look exactly like this, but play around with those five types of self-care think about that, the ways in which you might incorporate them into your morning and then just kind of build your perfect morning routine. Again, it doesn't have to take a ton of time, but just go about building it, to give you that time in the morning, to help you better manage and maybe even prevent your burnout. So with that, that is all I've got for you today.