The 5AM Morning Routine That Changed Everything (How I Finally Made It Stick)

The difference between successful people and everyone else is not talent or luck, it's how they start their day. After years of failed attempts, I finally figured out how to crack the 5 a.m. morning routine. And if you're thinking, oh my gosh, this is so not me, I am not a morning person, I have been where you are. I would still never say I'm a morning person, I've simply cracked the code on how to make the morning work for me. To the point that I figured out how to make 5 a.m. fun. I know, it sounds hard to believe. I'm gonna show you my five-step framework to make the 5 a.m. routine stick. The biggest mistake people make is thinking that they need willpower. Willpower is a beautiful thing. Once you've figured it out, it certainly works in your favor. But really smart people are not hoping they're gonna feel up to it tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. They have systems in place. Choosing systems over willpower will change your life. You need to do the things that make it inevitable for you to succeed. So if you know all of the steps that you took are going to make it almost impossible for you to not proceed with the plan, you're in a good place. But if the conditions of the next morning are welcoming you to hit snooze and stay cozy in bed, that's exactly what's going to happen. Think about how you can systematize your success and you are going to be well on your way to figuring out most things, not just waking up early in the morning. There's also a massive problem with celebrity morning routine obsessions. It's funny because I got so excited when we started talking about morning routines on this channel years ago. Then I got a little sad because I realized that it was because everyone was trying to figure it out because they saw the aesthetics on YouTube and Instagram of what made mornings look beautiful. The reality of mornings is that they are ugly and they are dark and they are no makeup and they are just let me get my life together. And that's okay. Striving for some impossibility of what it looks like for you to wake up is going to make it even more frustrating for you to try to stick with it. So do not fall for the allure of the perfect morning routines out there. Just find the one that works best for you. One of the biggest missteps is the evening blind spot. You have only so many sleep cycles that you can get in depending on when you go to sleep and when you want to wake up. So if you have not factored in the proper amount of sleep that your body needs and treated your body accordingly for how it needs to get ready to go to sleep at the end of the night, your morning is not going to go very well. You could stay up and watch Netflix all night and then maybe potentially fall asleep in bed at midnight but your 5 a.m. wake up call is not going to work out. If instead you look at the 5 a.m. wake up as the deadline and you reverse engineer that success, now we're talking. All signs indicate to your morning routine starts the night before. And finally, please make sure you're not an all or nothing mindset on this. If you are fortunate enough to wake up again tomorrow, you get to try again. So if you fall off the morning routine wagon today, it's all right, give it another go. Learn from your mistakes and choose progress over perfection. P.S. I've been talking about morning routines on this channel for so long and it's only gonna get better from here. So if you have not already subscribed, we have a goal of hitting 500,000 subscribers. Would love to have you be one of them. If we're going to eventually get to that 5 a.m. wake up call successfully, we're gonna start by preparing with a seven day reset technique. For seven days, you're going to agree to wake up 15 minutes earlier every day. So if you've been rolling out of bed at 6.30 when you need to be out the door at seven, okay, you somehow made that work. Tomorrow, the beginning of your seven day reset, you'll wake up at 6.15. The next day, six o'clock. The next day, 5.45. Maybe that next day you're not quite ready for the additional 15 minutes and it's getting harder and harder. Try 5.45 two days in a row. Until you reach that seven days, see how much progress that you've made. But with intention, schedule your wake up time in relation to when you intend to go to sleep. And just like you hold yourself accountable on that deadline to wake up, hold yourself accountable on what time you go to bed. If you need more help with the my evenings are not exactly where they need to be to make my mornings better, here is an evening success ritual. This is my 30 minute wind down routine. First and foremost, no screens after 8.30. Even if you're gonna use blue light blockers, whatever it is you're trying to read on a phone or watch on television is going to wire your brain with stressful activity. So just cut them out after a certain time. 30 minutes without your device awake, you can do it. Next, I set out my workout clothes and my journal and the book I'm reading so that my morning routine is very clearly in front of me. First of all, getting dressed to go and work out. But the first thing I actually do is journal and read. So those are going to be actively sitting on my yoga pants and my socks and everything is ready to go in one pile. No digging around for different outfits. How does this match? Am I gonna even go today? I don't know, I don't know. Make it simple. Put it together like a perfect little package of what you need to do. Next, I'll give myself about five minutes of tidy time. It can only be five minutes. I even set the toddler timer for this because otherwise it could just completely go awry. It will drive me crazy if I come down the next morning and there's still dishes in the sink or the counter is a mess. So I will let myself tidy up the living room and things like that so that it doesn't scream my name when I should be heading out the door to go to the gym. And then of course is the win list. What are the things I'm gonna do tomorrow that will make it a big win? What is something that is hard to do? What is something that it's been difficult to make time for? One to three things that if I complete them tomorrow, the day will be a massive win. And then I'll do a little bit of light stretching, some stuff I learned at physical therapy with my elastic band, or some meditation to finally shut my brain down and go to sleep. One thing you need to know if you don't already about me is my phone does not sleep in the same room as me. I'm actually quite particular about what does sleep in the same room as me. My phone is not one of them. My phone is in the bathroom. It's tucked into its own little bed. It's charging. I don't need to be near it. I don't need to roll over if for some reason I get a back pain or a baby cries in the middle of the night and instinctively grab my phone. It is absolutely not on my nightstand. I have a designated alarm clock that's next to me on my nightstand that wakes me up very gently. Those gradual smart lights waking up the room just slowly but surely at 5 a.m., that is the type of treatment that I need to start my day. Definitely not a blaring alarm clock. The Coffee Maker is programmed. It is ready. It is running. I am chugging water so I can have my first cup of coffee. Like, I cannot wait for it. So it is automatically being made thanks to the timer on my Coffee Maker. And if you're really worried you're not gonna hit the gym, another thing you could do instead of setting your workout clothes out is sleep in them. Who cares? You're gonna sweat in them anyway. Hopefully you don't sweat a lot at night so you don't feel really gross, but you'll probably change your clothes if you do. If you really don't think you're gonna get dressed to go to the gym, then just make it easy. Remove the friction. And that leads me to the no decision zone. Anything you can do that you know you need your hand held on just a little bit, do whatever it takes to keep yourself from being able to make a decision. Make it an inevitable. So whatever you're going to eat for breakfast, make it already prepped, ready to go. Whatever you're gonna wear to the gym, prepped, ready to go. Whatever you're gonna read, prepped, ready to go. It's not about whether you might think about it, it's where is it, thank you, start. Before you can even think, start. Whatever you can do to limit decisions first thing in the morning is gonna make it so much easier. We start the day on our terms so that we can make powerful decisions about more important things the rest of the day. If you're struggling on what to start the day with for breakfast, how are you gonna do with some of that bigger stuff later on? Now I'm gonna share my five step morning framework to just give yourself the best possible chance of starting the day on your terms. Starting with the five second wake up method. I used to snooze like crazy. I was chronically snoozing. Like how exciting, I get to press this button and get nine more minutes. It's like winning the lottery of time to sleep. In order to prevent that from happening, it's so important to tell your body what's about to happen and instead of instinctively going to do that, giving it another task. I borrowed this from the five second rule from Mel Robbins. All I do is simply get my body out of bed, put my feet on the floor and count down from five. Five, four, three, two, one. I go a little slow, cause I'm slow in the morning and during that time I go, what was I supposed to do first? Asking myself that question is not hit the snooze. It's usually, oh right, put my gym clothes on. Oh yeah, I'm reading that book right now. So then when I stand up, I'm not going to snooze the alarm, I'm going to turn it off so that I can hit task number one. It's that reset moment of saying, I know what I'm doing, get your bearings, you just woke up, it's okay, give yourself grace and proceed. I have to drink room temperature water, especially with lemon, you guys know I'm a huge fan. So if I don't have the lemon right away, I'll just go straight for the water. I need it, it's there, it's waiting for me so that I don't even think about it. If I wait to drink water, I will go straight for coffee and not get my hydration in, not cool. Immediately getting that room temperature water, this way I'm not complaining about it being too cold if it's fresh out of the refrigerator, I'm more likely to finish it if it's room temp. And if my body needs it, if I'm feeling like I slept a little funny, I definitely do my physical therapy exercises that just help me with my back because it just wakes up my body in a different way and it makes me feel a lot better about the stuff that would usually keep me slower and feeling like I'm in a rut. Next is the clarity block and this is all about my morning pages. I've been in and out with morning pages for a number of years, like I would stick with it for a really long time and then I would let it go for a little while. I think having kids made me pause for a bit because it just felt like too much pressure. But lately I've had so much in my mind that I have to clear, that I have to do my morning pages and it feels so good. So I get this clarity of sitting down and writing three longhand pages in a journal that give me the opportunity to take the next step in my creativity because the first step is getting out all the stuff that doesn't matter. The grudges, the nightmares, the worries, the things you wake up like holding on to and thinking about that are so annoying, this is what morning pages is amazing for. And a lot of times you're trying to work out a problem in your head. If you just write about it, you might find you're halfway to solving it just by articulating it, getting it out of your head and onto paper. The amount of clarity I get just by taking what's already existing in my brain and getting it out is a game changer. Next is my win list accelerator. So I mentioned I make a win list, one to three things that would make the day amazing. Like wow, I did a lot today because look what I did. If there is anything on that list that I can do first thing in the morning or very soon after my workout so that it is one of the hardest parts of my day complete before let's say lunchtime, I work toward that as soon as I can. So the earlier in the morning that I can look at my win list, the better off that I'm going to be because I'm gonna find those things that I know I need to do and stay focused on them. In an ideal situation, I've already protected my energy, I've scheduled my life accordingly, I've calendar blocked and the things on my win list that are huge that I have to do are probably scheduled on my calendar and certainly scheduled at the earliest part of the day so they get done successfully when I am in peak state. But sometimes they're just like these little things that I've got going on that I keep forgetting about and I really wanna do and so looking at that list to remind myself of what's important is big. Anything I can do at the earliest opportunity is very important. We don't wanna be in charge of writing chapters of our next book at 10 o'clock at night because we didn't fit it in today. How can you accelerate your win list earlier? And finally, the vision reminder. After I've seen my win list and I feel like I've got a handle on the day and I already know I'm prepping my body to engage in it, I review my goals and vision. I do this twice a day, to start the day and to end the day. It's so important to be totally locked in with your goals, not just write them down in your planner and then put them on your desk or in a drawer. I look at my goals and the things that I want to make happen, big, small, long-term and short-term every single day. So this is a vital part of my morning routine that gets me activated to take that next step. By the way, I wrote a book about morning routines. You might wanna check it out. It's called Good Morning, Good Life. And if you head over to my Instagram and message me morning chapter, you'll get a free chapter of the book to see if you like it. Now we need to talk about making it stick for the long haul. Here's the starting point fallacy. Everyone thinks that if they engage in this new routine perfectly, that it is going to go amazingly. But what ends up happening is that you wake up at 5 a.m. tomorrow when you usually wake up at 6.45 and it's hard. And then the next step is a little unclear because you're new to it and it's hard. And you get to the end of your routine and you're like, hey, I don't really know why I did that. And so I'm not sure I will do it tomorrow. This is where everything goes wrong. You wanting to be your best self is amazing and we want that for you. But you wanting it to go perfectly is exactly why it will never go well. This is not about having a perfect morning routine. This is about having an amazing life because you decided to start making decisions and following through. So your morning routine is just a detail. It's just a system. It's just a way to get to the things that are important like your goals or your work or your family. How do you start the day to set yourself up for success in the ways that actually matter to you? So don't worry about it being perfect. Just make the progress. Make the small shifts. Make the little changes. Notice what you don't like and say, I hated that tip Amy gave me. And I'm gonna do this instead. I love it. Do you. But if you cannot get through two days of your routine and feel like it is filling you up, then you've got the wrong one. You need to stop trying to be perfect and making it look nice for the gram and get down to basics of what makes the difference for you. When I say start the day on your terms, that is the active word. Next is the victory protocol. Sometimes we just need a little bit more incentive. Maybe the morning routine is so important to you that it is something you need to conquer. That it is the goal. That's fine. If you have a goal, you need to have a reward. How are you going to reward yourself for achieving something? Maybe it's 30 days of your morning routine. Even if it's not perfect, it does happen. You check off your three boxes. Movement, mindfulness, mastery, we're good. If I do that for 30 days, how will you celebrate your victory? Better question, how do you recognize your failure? For every goal that I set, I not only have a victory protocol, what I'll do when I achieve this goal and how I'll reward myself, I also have a penalty protocol. What I will do to make myself pay for the fact that I didn't take this seriously or I came close, but it didn't happen. We'll often run away from the penalties faster than we'll run toward the victories. Next is the recovery day strategy. This is a morning routine, okay? This is not going to be the end of the world if you're getting really good at it, but then you wanna sleep in sometimes. Give yourself that recovery day. Find the time that it's actually going to be your reward, maybe, that you can make the most and really enjoy it. Then the sleeping in can actually feel good for once instead of being the chronic guilt trip you give yourself every single day. And if you really wanna make it stick, start thriving on habit stacking. One of my favorite things about going to the gym now, other than the fact that the act itself has become more rewarding and exciting for me. It never used to be that way. So back then and now, I still habit stack. What do I get to do when I'm at the gym that allows me to make more of the time? I don't often get to absorb content. I know that sounds crazy, like I'm in the content world, but I don't absorb a lot. I don't watch a ton of TV. I don't scroll a lot of TikTok. I don't listen to a bunch of podcasts. So I get to habit stack going to the gym by that being the time I get to do any of that stuff. While I'm doing my workout, I might have Real Housewives on my phone. Or while I'm doing my workout, I might be listening to a podcast episode that I missed of somebody that I admire. Those moments of getting to do two things at once don't happen very often, and I love them. So how can you stack habits together that make something more enjoyable for you and also maybe just get more done? And finally, there's an accountability system. You need to have skin in the game. For a lot of us, skin in the game means getting other people involved. I have a fitness coach. I have a business coach. I have my partner in life and love, and that's my husband, and he helps hold me accountable on pretty much everything I like to talk about, because he's like, well, you said you were gonna do that. Are you gonna do that? And I'm like, ah! You need these people, and you need to appreciate the role that they have in your life by letting them do what they're best at, telling you to do the thing, calling you on your shit. Ooh, I said a bad word. It's rare. It happens. One of my favorite accountability tips that I ever heard ever was from Gretchen Rubin, and she talked about how someone that was in her community wanted to wake up earlier, and so in order to do this, she scheduled one of the most mortifying, embarrassing stories about herself on social media, to go out at a certain time, if she didn't wake up in time, to turn it off. Genius. What accountability do you need? Do you just wanna post to your Instagram stories every day because people know you're on a journey? Make it happen. If we're gonna talk about results with waking up earlier and making it stick, then we have to measure. So give yourself the tangible things that it takes to see. Is it a yes? Is it a no? Is it a she did it? Or is it a she didn't show up? As I told you, the three morning moments, movement, mindfulness, and mastery are the three main buckets for me. So those are usually the buckets that I'm looking at when I'm trying to figure out, did we succeed? So for mindfulness, it might be that I'm reading a book. Did I get through the book? Did I finish the book? Am I always reading at least once a day? For movement, have I made progress in my weightlifting journey? Am I lifting more weights? If I'm not lifting heavier weight, then I haven't really been going to practice to lift heavier weight. And for mastery, have I moved my side hustle forward? Have I moved my book forward? Have I done the reps that it takes to become the person that I want to be in my work? Or whatever it is you're trying to master. Have you started to become fluent in a language? Have you started to learn more of how to play the piano? Find the tangible metrics that can give you direct feedback, even be nerdy and put it in a spreadsheet if you want, that say whether or not you're doing the work. We all want the before and after. We want the what it used to be like and what it's like now. I encourage you to enjoy the journey and just do the thing. Measure the small steps, enjoy what you get to do, live in the moment, be present, and recognize that you're doing this for yourself. And that's a really big deal. That's a little bit about my 5 a.m. morning routine and how I've made it stick. If you wanna learn how to live on 24 hours a day like a high performer, click the link below and I'll see you there.