I am a recovering perfectionist, productivity chaser, and people pleaser, coaching women to disrupt old thought patterns, let go of behaviors that keep them stuck, and make their joy an everyday priority.
How Do You Spend Your Mornings? Does It Anchor You in Your Day?
Guten Morgen Reader,
Our heater stopped working some time on Wednesday. We can’t be sure what time precisely because my hormonal state makes it so that I am almost always cold. Unless I am extremely warm. So for me, it was normal to sit in bed with sweatpants, t-shirt, sweatshirt, and a scarf under the thickest down comforter. When I announced: “I think I need a hot water bottle, too,” D got out of bed to turn the heater up.
Nothing. No clicky sound, no humming.
Still nothing the next morning.
By the time the mechanic had found a temporary fix at 2 pm, my day was on a very crooked trajectory. I was still in my pajamas (underneath some fleece layers), I hadn’t journaled, skipped another morning ritual. I know myself well enough to understand I would not recover. I did what was necessary – even showed up on the mat. But there was no space for creativity, for writing, for expansion. When my morning is off, my day is off.
If you have ever found yourself brushing your teeth at night, thinking: “Didn’t I just do that in the morning, like a minute ago,” you know what I am talking about.
I never consider any day a LOST day. Days are simply too precious to disappear completely. But I can get lost in a dark woods kind of day if I don’t take time to anchor myself in it.
My morning rituals serve as an anchoring announcement:
🦩 Here I am.
🦩 This is what I intend to do/experience/enjoy today.
🦩 This is the attitude and energy I am bringing.
🦩 This is today’s theme.
When I feel adrift during the day, which might look like standing in the hallway for a good minute, trying to decide whether to get dressed for a walk, take a nap, or sit down to write, I can come back to my anchor (my journal) and check.
If the theme is ‘connection,’ I can reach out to someone. If the energy is ‘restless,’ I can lay down for a minute.
My rituals aren’t unusual, but they are unique in that they work for me, for now. I have tried copying “100 Morning Rituals of The Most Successful People,” and it sucked. Their success isn’t mine; their mornings aren’t mine; their useful anchors are my restricting shackles.
I can’t tell you what announcing yourself to the day should look like for you. But I can tell you that claiming that space in your day, anchoring yourself in time, will make you more immune to other people’s (or your appliance’s) fuckery.
Me, I hope to have around 11,000 days left to enjoy on this earth, and I don’t want to spend them mindlessly hustling.
― Darnell Lamont Walker
From my anchored heart to yours,
p.s. Okay, because I know you are curious and to inspire you, but NOT FOR YOU TO JUST COPY, here is what I do in the mornings: lemon water, coffee, food for me and my dog, kindness for my husband, card-drawing, journaling, planning, self-coaching, yoga, playing, and as much of the news as my nervous system can take
p.p.s. If you are thinking "That's fine for you, lady, but I ain't got time for shit like that. I have more important things to do," I will answer: "Something made you read all the way to the p.p.s. And that something is worth listening to." Let’s give it a voice in 1:1 coaching. Here is how to work with me.
Welcome to my Joy Letters
I am a recovering perfectionist, productivity chaser, and people pleaser, coaching women to disrupt old thought patterns, let go of behaviors that keep them stuck, and make their joy an everyday priority.
Guten Tag, Reader, One of us walks like a cartoon thief—knee high, toe first, then heel. Of course, he might also practice a Qi Gong movement. Called The Heron, perhaps? Another walks with a sway while swinging a flappy spruce branch. “I watched my nephew do this last week,” she will share later, “and he looked so connected with his body that I wanted to try.” Me? I walk as slowly as my brain will allow. Stopping to pull a fresh leaf to my cheek, smell each wild onion in a patch, and caress...
Guten Tag, Reader, “Die hat doch einen Vogel,” they say in Germany, “She has a bird,” when someone talks or acts a little off. As if that’s a bad thing. The bird. Or the off-ness. Not in my book. The one that I am writing in my head. Where the birds live. And where they peep. Peep. Peep. Peep. April also has a bird. "April, April, does what it will," the Germans say. Sometimes, the Germans are specific about the kind of bird—a chickadee (‘ne Meise). And those have been chickad-ing and dee-ing...
My mom accompanied me to Helena on one of my biggest adventures: becoming a US citizen in 2015. Guten Tag, Reader, I knew the words were going to come out of my mother’s mouth eventually. Not in every conversation, but certainly in every conversation about any of my adventures: Going to the island of Corse on a motorcycle with my boyfriend when I was 17 Studying abroad for a year Traveling to any place outside of Western Europe Eating sushi Hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim Rafting the...