Reclaim the Morning: A Morning Routine to Transform the Life of a High-Performer
Mornings set the tone for the rest of your day. Those early hours spent on morning rituals serve as the prelude to daily demands. Unfortunately, for many high-achievers, couples, and busy women, the morning routine can feel rushed, chaotic, or consumed by everyone else’s needs. That leaves little space for clarity, peace, or intention.
The good news is you don’t have to be a “morning person” to reclaim your mornings. With a few intentional shifts, you can design a morning rhythm that fuels your energy, centers your mind, and aligns your life with what matters most.
Who You’re Becoming
Before we talk about morning routines that can take you to the next level professionally or personally, let’s focus on why this matters for you. There are countless ways to optimize your life and every TikTok “expert” is ready to offer suggestions to help you life hack your way into a new version of you. I want to suggest that the best version of you—the one you’re becoming—is already there inside you.
After coaching women for over a decade, I’ve found that helping women grow has less to do with adding fertilizer to the soil and more to do with clearing away the weeds that are suffocating their progress. For high performing women, the weed is almost always noise.
Our world is so loud and full of distractions that it’s hard to sit in your own life story for longer than five seconds without a notification pinging in your pocket or some vision of the good life seeping into your mind in the middle of the day. And that lack of quiet prevents you from connecting to the life you want.
I want to encourage you to reclaim the morning because I believe this is a practice that subtracts from the chaos of modern life so you have the space and margin to reconnect to who you are and who you’re becoming. It’s a foundational practice that allows you to re-engage the life you want beneath all the hopes, dreams, fears, and anxieties that need to be faced in order to proactively architect your own life.
Why Your Morning Routine Shapes Your Whole Day
Research shows that the first hour of your day can influence your focus, productivity, and even emotional resilience for the next 12-16 hours. If your mornings are reactive (spent checking emails, rushing out the door, or tending to everyone else), you’re more likely to carry that same scattered energy forward. But when you start your day with clarity and calm, you set a foundation for purpose-driven living. Life gets lived on your terms rather than as a pure response to everything else.
This isn’t about adding pressure to your life or squeezing in a dozen habits to be part of the 5am club. It’s about reclaiming your mornings so they serve you, not the other way around.
How to Design Your Life Starting With Your Morning
In its most basic form, the Reclaim the Morning practice is a daily journaling habit. When you reclaim the morning, you start your day with your voice being the first you hear to guide and direct your life. By journaling first, before checking your phone, looking at social media, or chatting with your household, you’ll be able to stay centered and combat one of the greatest threats to living a life of purpose—noise.
Practically speaking, I suggest getting out of bed and within five minutes of waking, pick up a notebook to sit quietly and journal for 20 minutes. That’s it. Now, I can offer some suggestions on how to enhance this time, how to prepare, or how to make it a routine that will shift your life. But at its essence, to reclaim the morning means to sit and journal steam of consciousness for 20-30 minutes.
If you’re a person of faith you might wonder if your daily devotional should take place first. I personally view reclaiming the morning as part of my devotional experience. For me, reclaiming the morning is a time of confession and confrontation with my inner hopes, struggles, and concerns, so when I turn to prayer and scripture reading, I feel like my spirit is in an open posture, ready to receive what God might have for me.
Let me offer a few tips so you can get started quickly.
Practical Tips to Start this Journaling Morning Routine
Set the Scene. Locate a space in your home that is distraction-free and comfortable enough to put pen to page on a daily basis. Make sure you have adequate lighting and enough privacy so you don’t feel self-conscious. I use a favorite chair in my home office, and I keep a throw blanket nearby in case the morning is chilly. As a little luxury upgrade and to help the time feel like a ritual, I light one of my favorite candles and use a special pen.
Treat Yourself. Plan a reward for if you get your writing done. It can be big or small. Just choose something that can help activate that reward center in your brain to start firing so you’re encouraged to come back the next day. Over time the writing itself will feel like a gift. But it’s nice to add in a special treat, like a favorite morning latte, to celebrate kicking off this new habit.
Write the Truth. There is no “right way” to journal. You don’t even have to write clearly or spell properly to successfully reclaim the morning. Write about whatever comes to mind. The only requirement is you need to be honest with yourself. If you feel stuck, you could start by writing down what you have on your plate that day and how you feel about it. Or write about a fear you’re struggling to face or a hope you’d like to see realized that week. Over time you’ll learn your own style and the topics will change day to day.
Reclaim…the Night. A powerful morning starts with a great night. Create a small routine for your evenings to wind down so you can rest well and wake feeling more refreshed and focused. Follow good sleep hygiene methods like avoiding screens after 8pm.
Your Mornings, Your Life
Reclaiming your mornings is more than a productivity hack. It’s a declaration that your life matters. When you start your day grounded and clear, you create momentum for every area of your life.
This idea is at the heart of my book, Life Starts Now: How to Create the Life You’ve Been Waiting For. If you want to go deeper into building a life of consequence, not just significance, grab your copy today.
Ready for the Next Step?
If you’re ready to move beyond mornings and design rhythms for your whole life, I’d love to work with you. Through one-on-one coaching, we’ll align your daily practices with your purpose so you can live with clarity and joy. We will also take the discoveries you make in your journaling time about who you’d like to become and transform those learnings into real action.
