5 Morning Habits You Need To BREAK Right Now If You're Retired

Your morning routine is making you sicker, sadder, and slower in retirement. The first 30 minutes of your morning have more power in it than most people realize, and these five habits are ruining it for you. The three S's, sicker, sadder, and slower, definitely not the way to start your day. If you're over 50, these habits could be stealing your time, your energy, your enthusiasm, and your motivation. And listen, this stage of life that we call the discovery phase is not supposed to be dull and foggy. It's supposed to be full of energy, excitement. Gotta think of another E. E. Energy, excitement, and enrichment. Yes, there you go. I remember so well when we first got married, we were both working, and what my morning routine looked like. I'd get up early, because I always did, 4.30, 4.45, 5 o'clock. I'd go down to the kitchen, make a cup of coffee, grab my phone and my iPad, probably my laptop, turn the TV on, and listen and watch the TV from 5 to 5.30 as I did work. And then from 5.30 to 6, I'd watch the same 30-minute newsreel again, doing more work that I felt was productive. I felt like if I'm working, I'm really crushing the day. I'd get a head start over everyone else. You'd get up at 6, we'd have coffee together, then we'd watch the same 30-minute news, and then go off to work. Well, two things. Two things there. First of all, in the beginning of your story, everyone was probably like, where's Jody during all this? Sleeping. Jody does not get up at 3.30, 4.30, or 5. I do get up at 5.30 now. But the other thing I would say is comparing that routine when you're in the thick of all that you're doing, raising a family, working, managing teams, executing projects, whatever you're doing, it's hard to compare that with your retirement morning routine. And I guess the thing I would say about that is, your retirement morning routine and the habits you put in, you're consciously choosing. I feel like back then, we were not consciously choosing to watch 90 minutes of the news. Well, you 90 minutes, me 30 minutes. But it's just what we fell into. It's what we fell into. And we never, I shouldn't say never, we started to go to the gym. We joined the gym club. We had, it was a really nice club, but we never went. Because we always said, you know what? We've had coffee. I have a meeting. I have things to do. So we never really created good habits in the morning. And we stuck with these bad habits for way too long. Well, it's true. And you know, where most people get stuck is what we call retirement drift, right? So people get stuck because things that you bring from your career, from your earning years, from your growing years of your family and all that, you move them forward into retirement, literally without consciously thinking about it. And some of those habits are maybe good habits. You know, cooking dinner at night. We always sat with the kids around the table. That's a good habit, maybe. But bad habits were kind of that sluggish morning start. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Second thing, people confuse comfort with restoration. You know, you've worked your whole life. 38 years from now. And I know a lot of other people say, can't wait till I retire so I can just relax and be comfortable and watch TV, catch up on shows. That's not restorative relaxation. That turns your brain into a vegetable. It's, does that sound right? Yeah, I'm not sure. It doesn't sound nice. It does not sound right. No, but, and I'm not judging. If you want to watch TV shows, that's great. But you can't watch TV all day long. Remember our good friend, John, he retired. He got hooked on daytime TV and realized, game shows. Yeah, till noon. And then he went out and had lunch or something. Now he's working part-time for a contractor, doing what he does best and what he loves to do. So you can't confuse the whole idea of comfort as restorative calm. Well, I also think a lot of us get into retirement. And honestly, Mark and I did it too. This is not a judgy comment at all. But we did this too. We got into retirement, all of a sudden thinking, the mornings don't really matter, right? The mornings are our time to sit back and stretch and linger on a cup of coffee, maybe do a crossword puzzle, maybe read the paper, maybe catch up on phone calls, maybe watch some TV. But you're right. The morning disappears and now you've lost half a day. Right. And if there's one thing that we could impress upon you is in this phase of life that we call the discovery phase. In this phase of life, time is your most precious asset. And if you can really sit back and say, well, I wasted half a day, that's wasting a lot. Well, let's reframe it. So I talked earlier about the importance of the morning in my opening comment and how that can fuel your day. And it can. And you've got to think of your morning, the first part of the day, as the time you can really set your energy, your purpose, the things you want to get done. It's almost like thinking about, I just thought of this about a car. You fill it with fuel, you clean the windshield, you put air in the tires, and then you can go on the trip. But before you go on a trip, you're always going to do that to your car. Think of your body and your soul as the same thing. Spend time in the morning, getting yourself set for the day, mentally and physically, it will make a huge difference in your life. So think about that as a different way to start your day. And I know we get a lot of pushback on routine in retirement. You know, we see it in the comments, we read it, we respond. We try to give you our perspective. And we're not saying that every morning needs to be perfect. You know, every morning just needs to be set with intention and they can be different. I know my mornings are different. Yours are pretty much the same every day, Monday through Friday. They are. Your Saturday and Sunday is a little different. I have days where, you know, at the gym, I have days that I'm playing golf. I have days that I've got ladies Bible study, you know, so my mornings are different, but they're filled with intention. Like I don't just wake up and fall into the day. Well, the big thing you want to think about too, is you don't want to let your life, your discovery phase, your retirement, whatever you want to call it, get on autopilot and a bad autopilot. Yeah. I mean, autopilot's okay once in a while. Airplane's all going on autopilot once in a while. Gosh, my car driving on the highway, they now have little pieces of autopilot, but you've got to make a left turn or right turn. You got to slow down, speed up. You have to bring some different activities into your life. Otherwise, if you're stuck on autopilot with bad habits, you're going to run into trouble. Well, and I will tell you this full disclosure. I think if you are a solo retiree and the only perspective I have on this, Mark was just gone for a week, playing golf with our boys up at Pinehurst, which was fantastic, but I was here by myself. And the first couple of mornings, I slid back into my old morning routine. I thought, I'll go to the gym later. I'll walk the dog. I'll linger over a cup of tea. I'll meet the neighbor for breakfast. You know, slowly I slid backwards and by Wednesday of the week, I had to course correct because I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What am I doing? So if you're watching this and you're a solo retiree, I know it's hard and I only did it for a week. So I give you a lot of credit if you wake up in the morning and you have your routine and your habits ready to go. It sounds like you missed me. I missed you. You did? You did. Are you glad I'm back? I'm glad you're back. Yeah, I'm glad I'm back. All right, so let's talk about these habits. The first one is, here's a habit you have to stop. Do not pick up your phone first thing in the morning. Super hard. Super hard to stop. Super hard. Okay, I get it. Super hard. But you know what? If your phone's next to your bed, right? Grab it, go out, make yourself a cup of coffee. What? No coffee first. What do you do first? You have to have a drink of water before your coffee. 12 ounces of water. But go to the kitchen. Don't look at your phone yet. Do a couple of other things first. Right. Before you check your phone. Because what happens is, your brain all of a sudden now is triggered either negatively or positively. More than likely, if you're looking at the news, it's going to be negatively because negatively? Negative. It's going to have a negative effect on your mind because there's not a lot of positive news to print it anymore. It's negative to catch your attention. And if you do that for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes in bed or start scrolling social media, you're doomed. Your day is over. Whether you know it or not, you're going to find yourself in a negative mindset before you have your 12 ounces of water and coffee. And I have a quick question for you guys. Drop a note below if you've ever started scrolling on your phone and then you looked up and you realized an hour has gone by. I don't have TikTok. It's just me. I just don't have it. So my kids send me TikTok things that I can't see, which is fine. But Instagram or Reels or Facebook and Reels and you just start like kind of treading through and you look up and it's like, oh my God, it's been an hour. That's a big waste for me. So the next thing is skipping any hydration. You've got to stop skipping hydration and movement in the morning. Mark started talking about, listen, don't look at your phone. Get up and get a cup of coffee. I say don't look at your phone. Yes, try hard. It's hard. But get up and get yourself 8 ounces of water. Start with 8, go to 10, then to 12. But ultimately, your body has been dehydrating all night long. Unless you get up and drink guzzling water all night long, which as we age, I know that's hard to do because then you have to get up and pee. But you can't skip that hydration moment in the morning. And then maybe have your coffee. And then the other thing you can't skip is moving your body. I don't know about you guys, but when I get up in the morning, it doesn't matter how good our mattress is. It doesn't matter how many pillows I try. It doesn't matter. I get up and I'm like, crack, crack, crack, crack. You know, my back's creaky. I touch my toes. I lean down gently to pick up my shoes, you know. So you have to move your body. Joint stiffness worsens as we age. And that's a fact. I agree. And, you know, another thing on the water, it should be room temperature, not to get too granular. But I always prepare my water the night before so that when I get up, it's there waiting for me. And it forces me to have it first, right next to the coffee machine. And this idea of movement, you know, as I'm getting older and we're spending more and more time in the gym, I'm sore in the morning and I'm creaky. And when I put my feet down and stand up, I go, but if you lay in bed for an hour, scrolling, whatever, you're not moving your body. You're not having your hydration. And it really creates a problem. So moving around the house a little bit, walk around a little bit, loosen up, feel your joints. And then you can sit and have your coffee. Or even good stretches, you know, as soon as you spin and your feet hit the ground and you stand up, do one of those like really good stretches where you're just really getting in between your rib cage and kind of moving around, you know, as long as you're able to support your joint health with stretching, movement, hydration, I think it's a good idea. All right, this third habit, and it's going to be hard for a lot of people, is stop turning the TV on first thing in the morning. I know so many people that come out of their bedroom and the first thing they do before the water and the coffee and movement and stretching is turn on the TV. And that triggers all kinds of problems inside your mind and your body. It puts your body, you know, when you start listening to the headlines and you're stressed out, whether it's political or wars or whatever's happening around the world, it sets your body off in a wrong direction mentally. And you've got to give yourself some time before you load yourself up with any of that kind of negative news. You know, there's a lot of science that says that doing that first thing in the morning dulls your creativity. And it also dulls your inspiration for reflection. And if there's anything we need to be doing in this phase of life, it's certainly reflecting, adapting and changing and moving forward. And you know, the other thing it does is encourages a sedentary lifestyle. So you turn the news on at, I don't know, eight o'clock and eight till nine is news. And then the morning TV shows. And then at 10 o'clock though, before you know it, you're there for three hours. That is just not a good plan. That's a fast three hours. What? That would be a fast three hours. It is a fast three hours and it's certainly unhealthy. All right, what's number four? You know, and again, we get pushback on this, but you know, stop starting your day without a plan. You know, look at your calendar. What have you anchored in there? Are you running to the food bank today? Are you heading over to the Y? Are you going to the gym? Do you need to walk the dog? Do you have a lunch date? Are you playing some golf? Are you, what is it that you're doing for the day? When you wake up, think about your day and start with a plan. I'm going to start with a few stretches. I'm going to drink my water. I'm going to head to the gym. I'm going to come back and have coffee with my spouse, partner, neighbor, or friend. You know, what is it that you're going to do? Because without a plan, you know, you kind of go through the day. And I did this last week when you were gone. I, you know, I had a couple of days where I thought, you know what, I'm going to try it without a plan. And I literally bumbled around a little aimlessly. And then I thought, you know what? This is not working for me. I don't think I can ever go away again and leave you alone. You were a bumbling idiot when I was gone. What? An idiot? Well, I don't know. Where'd that come from? That was my inside joke. You know what? Our grandson, Luca, would say, that's not nice, Pop. That's not nice. Well, we talk about retirement. And, you know, if you know anything about boating and you have to go from point A to point B, you have to plan the directions you're going to go. There's buoys, green ones, red ones. You have to plan a course. Same thing applies to your day. If you don't do that, you're just kind of floating around. And again, it's okay to do that on purpose sometimes. Right. But not for days, weeks, months, and years. That's what happened to my dad. And that just is so bad. The fifth habit you have to stop is saying, I'll just do that later. Because you're never going to get there. You know, in our morning routine, we journal a couple things. We write down three gratitude. Three things we're grateful for. Three things we're excited about for the day. But our five things that we have to do today. We're in the transition mode. We're moving from Florida, where we are here in the winter, up to New Jersey for the summer. And there's a lot that we need to do, packing up the house and all of that. We can't keep putting it off because it'll never happen. And then we can't go. So whether it's something big like that or just something small like grocery shopping or. I can't think of what else. But you can't just keep putting things off, thinking it'll get done by itself because it doesn't. Can I ask you a question? Yes. Do you put things off? Only for a certain period of time. Until I know I'm much. I'm much better at doing things last minute. Yeah. I'm not really good at doing something today that I know doesn't really need to be done for three weeks from now. You're a little different. Yeah. So we've learned to live with each other. It sounds like maybe we haven't. Do we need an adjustment? No, it's just I don't want our subscribers or viewers to think like we have all this nailed because we still stumble, especially on a few of these things. So, for example, the post, the U.S. Postal Service told us our mailbox was faulty six months ago. And I'm proud to say, as of yesterday, six months later, we got a new mailbox. Yeah. I mean, I've had it since October, but I finally put it in because we didn't really need it because the old one was there. So here's a good example. That's a good example. I didn't get ready to leave. And the people put it up yesterday. The people hate our mailbox. Right. The mail is right over there. All but gives me the finger every day. First of all, it's a male woman and she would never do that. But yeah, it's just not a good habit to say. Right. I'll do that tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it now. It's not. Yeah. Hope you enjoyed this video. This next one for habits to stop right now, if you're retired, it's our most popular video. So watch this one next. That is one of the most unhealthiest things that you can do your life. It's just a huge distraction. It really replaces any reflection or self-motivating thoughts or even any original thoughts that you can come up with. You're replacing them with this fed media. You just sit and mindless.