Hello and welcome to my blog Top Morning Routine 🙂 I am Stephan, the founder. Together with my editorial team, my goal is to deliver to our readers helpful content about morning routines and good morning habits that will improve their lives. By applying what they find in our blog posts, our readers will be able to improve their mental health, physical health, and nutrition, and leverage biohacking to make the positive effects exponential.
A bit about myself – I am Swiss, grew up all over the place, because my parents’ jobs made us relocate often. I studied and graduated in Mechanical Engineering in Germany and worked a corporate job for a famous German car manufacturer. Being young and ambitious, I moved up the ranks quickly, and after a couple of years, I was in a management position. The grind to the top worked well back then. By the time I was advancing through management, signs of issues with my health started to appear, but I chose to neglect that. What I did not know at the time was that I was headed towards burnout. I was stubborn, put my career first, and neglected my body and mind. Back then I did not understand that the constant grind was degenerative to my health – both physical and mental – so I kept going until the wreckage I left behind caught up with me. I ended up depressed and burned out.
Performing well at my job, came at a higher cost with every passing day until it became tough to cope. Multiple factors gathered simultaneously like sleep deprivation and bad quality sleep, always eating unhealthy, and being in a rush. I had endless heaps of work due to the inability to say no to taking on more responsibility. Being a smoker at the time just added fuel to the fire. Last but not least, I allocated almost no time to physical activity and exercise.
My body was on a downward spiral from bad nutrition, bad sleep, and lack of exercise, not to mention paying no attention to my mental and emotional health. Every month or two I would get a cold, even in the summer, my immune system was not working properly anymore. My mind was always at work, I gave it very little time to relax. Even when watching a movie I would think about work, check emails, and answer ‘urgent’ texts. My social life suffered from this, my relationship with my girlfriend was heading towards a wall, and I rarely got to meet any friends, because I was busy all the time. Exercise and pleasure were the last things on my list of priorities, basically non-existent in my life at the time.
As these things advanced, I became more irritable, tired, and depressed. I had an air of cynicism forming around me. The will to get up in the morning was fading away along with any feelings of happiness and sadness. Life’s colors started to fade. Everything felt ‘constant’ and I started being numb to things happening around me, completely disconnected from myself and the world around me. I reached a point where I wanted to be alone most of the time, which is not characteristic of the social and outgoing me I usually am. At that point feelings of self-doubt started to appear and a decline in my self-confidence was setting in.
So, everything came together and imploded… – My mental and physical health reached a ‘bottom’, and my self-esteem and self-confidence were at an all-time low. My job performance started declining rapidly due to a lack of concentration, growing anxiety, and lack of quality sleep. Although I was able to do enough to keep my job, I was stagnating. Everyday felt like I was forcing myself to stay on track. Being in a relationship in that mental and physical state was no fun for any of us, but somehow my girlfriend and I stuck together. My girlfriend was more supportive than anyone I know could’ve been and I am very grateful for that. Although she was supportive, both of us knew that her being supportive forever was not going to be ‘the solution’. Something needed to change and with that realization, the ‘seeds of change’ were planted.
At this point, I believe some of you reading this will probably think, ‘There are people with bigger problems in the world’ and I agree with you, one-hundred-percent. I am fully aware starvation is still a problem in many parts of the world, oppressive regimes, natural disasters, disease, etc. The bottom line is almost everyone you ask will tell you they have some kind of problem at that moment. What I describe here is just what I had to cope with. It’s the story of how it affected my life and how it led to the change that thankfully became the solution to the problems I was experiencing. This solution is based on creating a good morning routine. This is exactly what we here at Top Morning Routine want to pass on to you.
For most of my life, I’ve been constantly concentrating and trying – in some rare cases even successfully – to change and influence external things. More precisely, things out of my control and outside of my reasoned choice. I would get upset when things wouldn’t turn out the way I imagined. A friend who I was in contact with occasionally, recommended me a book, The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. While reading The Daily Stoic, I finally understood that I needed to take a step back and reflect. It became clear, I needed to direct my attention inward and start taking care of my mind. Some blood tests and the fact I wasn’t able to run more than 1.5km without being out of breath – for the imperial unit ‘crowd’, yes it’s even worse, it’s not even a full mile – clearly showed I needed to get in shape and take better care of my body.
To summarize – I directed my attention inward and slowed down the chase of external things like recognition in the workplace, money, and so on. Instead, I started challenging myself by setting goals related to my mind and my body. By understanding that everything starts in the mind, and if whatever starts in the mind is supposed to be good, then the home of the mind – the body – needs to be in good shape too.
From that point on I started to impose some limits on how long I worked, that freed up some time. In the extra time, I would sit down and read about how to take better care of myself. I would take notes based on what I read and I would take long walks in nature. On these walks, I would listen to whatever the internet had to offer on the subjects of physical health, mental health, nutrition and biohacking. I had this ‘hunger’ for new knowledge and there were so many things to try out. I just needed the patience and a plan to try them all out. All in all, my priorities shifted from work, money, and success to first being happy with myself. Getting in shape physically and mentally meant I laid a strong foundation, a foundation that could help me reach my goals at work and be successful.
This stuck with me – Neil Parischa said in his book The Happiness Equation ‘Be happy first’. Unfortunately, society teaches us about success and happiness in the wrong order. Neil points out in his book that society teaches us that ‘Great Work’ brings us ‘Big Success’ which brings us happiness. It might seem counter-intuitive, but this order is flawed. As Neil describes in his book, one first needs to ‘Be Happy’ to be able to do ‘Great Work’ which in turn can bring ‘Big Success’. I’ve reflected a lot on that. I must admit, it’s one of the most valuable and applicable pieces of advice for the times we live in.
Before finding a way to get back up from the situation I put myself in I needed to gather the knowledge necessary. What followed was a longer period of ‘brainstorming’ and reading up on things I thought would be useful. I started listening to podcasts, reading books, reading blogs, and so on. The main subjects were physical health, fitness, mental health, meditation, nutrition, and biohacking. I wanted to find out more and learn about how the way I was eating, sleeping, and generally going about my day was affecting my body and mind. I wanted to go deep, to find the root causes for the ways I felt
In the meantime, I started to drop alcohol consumption significantly. I wouldn’t have a casual beer or glass of wine anymore, I would try to stay away from alcohol as much as possible. On special occasions, I would still have a drink or two though. I used to be a light smoker, but when this process of trying to get myself in shape physically and mentally started I imposed some limits that more often than not I also followed. I wasn’t having more than two cigarettes per day. At some point the positive effects I saw in my physical and cognitive performance made me shift my priorities in such a way that I dropped smoking altogether. What I want to convey in this message is I finally felt progress, and it felt good, things started looking up. This made it much easier for me to say to myself ‘I’ll drop these vices, because I have conviction that if I do I will feel even better’. I guess I started getting addicted to feeling better and I eliminated some things that were slowing me down…
The most important lesson I got while I was cultivating my knowledge with things that would make me feel better, is that jumping from one habit to another quickly, usually was not teaching me much. Yes, I understood the principles of the thing I was trying out, but I was going through it too quickly to understand the whole process and the outcome. After this realization, I learned patience :). As a result, I sat down and wrote a plan. I made myself follow that plan for the next two to four weeks. When the two to four weeks were up, I would reevaluate the plan. I would have things I read about habits and techniques saved up in a directory. The next step would be tweaking my plan to include a new habit or technique I haven’t tried. I would then run the plan again and reassess after a couple of weeks. That’s how I found my way to the solution that worked best. That solution is, defining and practicing my ideal morning routine.
At this point, I was trying out all kinds of things at different times of the day which was in some cases beneficial. I needed more constants so I could quantify the progress. Unaware of it I managed to develop a procedure through which I could test the new knowledge I gathered about healthy habits for the body and mind. In this way, I managed to track progress better. In hindsight, the steps I took were:
Feedback Loop – These steps could be viewed as a feedback loop that helped me filter out what works well for me and what doesn’t. Firstly, I had a system to funnel my newly acquired knowledge and techniques into. Secondly, this way of doing things not only allowed me to try out the things in my notes but also gave me data I could use to improve the system. Lastly, it helped me pick better habits and techniques for improving my life. Now all I needed to do was use it and that is exactly what I did.
After trying out loads of things from my notes I came to a very valuable conclusion. I realized that whatever I do during a certain day, the way I do it, and how much I enjoy or resent doing it is very much connected to how my day started. I would do something – a meditation protocol or a breathing exercise for example – in the morning that has a particularly positive effect on my mood. More often than not, that positive effect would linger throughout the rest of the day.
The ‘Ahaa’ Moment – At first I was completely unaware that doing something good for my body and mind in the morning would set the way the rest of my day would look like. Now this is not some magic trick or some ‘I cracked the code’ guru BS. Having a good morning routine won’t stop you from having a ‘moment’ because you spilled your coffee on your shirt or laptop, but it will make it a bit easier to get over. The main effect is being able to face the rest of the day head-on with more confidence, patience, and maybe even more joy. A good morning routine will make the lenses of the glasses you see life through a bit more colorful.
Wins… – Making your bed in the morning counts as a ‘Win’, it is something you’ve accomplished due to discipline and self-respect. The same counts for the cold shower, the ten minutes of meditation, or the awful-tasting ginseng extract you drink to boost your immune system. Starting work when you know you’ve already hit some home runs that morning makes whatever challenges you will face seem just a bit less difficult. You already achieved something that day, and you are already in a productivity flow. That flow you just achieved is the direction you set for yourself that day. That direction toward productivity, less stress, more confidence, and hopefully more joy to be alive. A good morning routine does just that, it’s a bundle of ‘Wins’.
I feel like I found a solution for myself that works, and it’s been working for the past years. Coming out of that depressive phase, I quit my old job and enrolled in courses about fitness, nutrition, and meditation. I found a new job that gives me enough time and flexibility to try out new things. Having more free time helps me get educated further on improving my mental and physical health. I believe I am lucky, I came out of some dark times stronger, calmer, more patient, and happier than before. In conclusion, I am genuinely glad about how everything turned out. I am happy I found a solution that I can apply whenever the going gets rough. I have conviction it will work to pull me through. This solution will work for you too, I am confident of that.
This is how it all began – For some time I’ve helped many friends and family make a plan, try it out, tweak it, and implement it as a morning routine. Although some did not stay on track, the ones that did give me extremely positive feedback. They even ask me to put together morning routine templates for their friends and families. The more often this happened the more the idea of starting a blog and sending everyone there became more realistic. I thought if I could help these people around me, why not share this knowledge with ‘everyone’? That is how Top Morning Routine (topmorningroutine.com) was born.