Episode 133: My 15 Minute Morning Routine to Lower Cortisol

Cortisol control is the name of the game when it comes to menopause. And, most of us don’t have a lifestyle that allows for silent retreats and hours of meditation. Here’s my quick and easy 15 min morning routine to lower cortisol and prime myself for the day ahead. 

Download my free Cortisol Checklist here: https://www.mindstrongfitness.com/cortisol-checklist

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Transcript

Becoming MindStrong: 133: My 15 Minute Morning Routine to Lower Cortisol

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Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast. One of the things that I cannot stand about the health and fitness industry is this concept of major life overhauls of zero to 100 of all in, all out thinking of perfectionism. And I'm bringing that up at the start of this episode, because in this episode, I want to teach you my little quick and dirty, 15 minute morning routine that I use to help lower cortisol levels and impairing the intro to this episode and what I'm going to talk about together. Because if you've hung out here before, you know that menopause is a time of life where we have to be thinking about cortisol control. It's a stage of life where as our estrogen drops, our cortisol spikes. So we say our cortisol resilience goes down in our 20s and 30s, we could get away with under eating, over exercising, overworking, putting everyone else before us, not sleeping enough, all the things that most of us have done all our lives, we were fine. We could get away with it in menopause, as our biology changes. As that estrogen drops, as that cortisol naturally spikes, as our cortisol resilience goes down. If we want to be successful at weight loss, if we want to take care of our overall health, we have to be thinking of ways to lower cortisol. Now. We all know a lot of the ways that we can lower cortisol. I've done past episodes on it, if we just think common sense, right? Deep breathing, meditation, putting our feet in the grass, all these things, it is true, they lower cortisol. And I believe in human psychology. I believe that humans are pleasure seeking creatures, because that's what human nature and human psychology state. So yes, in an ideal world, we would get up, we would meditate for a half hour. We would put our feet in the grass, we would sing Kumbaya to our neighbor, and we would give hugs all around and life doesn't actually work that way, right? Most of us get up. We're already stressed that we're running late. We hit snooze too many times. We grab a cup of coffee, we get in front of our computer or jump in our car and boom, Our day has started. So I'm prefacing this episode, because what I'm going to share with you my 15 minute routine. It is not the be all, end all. It is not the magic pill. It is not to say you have to copy this verbatim. But the concept behind it is that I have days that are very packed, like all of us, right? I work very long hours. I have puppies to take care of. I don't have kids to take care of. Somehow, the puppies take up a lot of a lot of time and effort. I go to the gym most days. My partner and I try to make dinner together at night, like, like all of us, we have jam packed days. So what I am not going to do is that full morning routine of kumbaya on feet in the grass. So I'm sharing this routine today, again, not for it to be the be all, end all. Do this and your life will change, but to show you that it's about baby steps. It's about momentum. It's about the low hanging fruit. What can I do to calm my nervous system, to start getting my cortisol lowered, to get that snowball rolling down a hill so I'm not just waking up and crashing into my day. So in today's episode, I'm going to share with you my quick and dirty 15 minute morning routine to lower cortisol. Check it out. So before I walk you through this routine, let me tell you a little bit of a backstory. I used to be meticulous with my mornings because I if there's one thing that owning a business has taught me, it's that the way I start my day sets the tone for that day. It doesn't mean I'm not a big believer in you have a bad five minutes, the rest of the day is ruined. No, like, if you have bad five minutes, we can breathe, we can hit reset, you know? We can we can restart and get back on track for the day. And I learned very early on in starting mind strong if I get out of bed and I'm rushed because I hit snooze and I grab coffee, and I get in front of my computer, and that's how my day is starting. I am not going to feel great the rest of the day. My cortisol is spiked. I'm feeling anxious. My brain is going my nervous system is out of whack. It is not going to be a very productive day. I'm not going to show up my best for my team. So for a while there, I was very meticulous with my mornings. I would wake up, I would meditate, I would journal. I'm not a big journaling person. That's one habit that I know would benefit me, and I have a hard time sticking with it, because I just blatantly don't enjoy it. I would do all the things that I knew were to my benefit. Then, like a lot of us with habits, if we don't stick with them, right, my brain didn't fully rewire. So slowly it becomes a slippery slope. There is one day of like, okay, let me just answer these, these emails really quickly, and then I'll do my morning routine. Two hours go by, and now we're just into our work day. So you have a couple of those days, and next thing you know, you forgot all about your morning routine. I'm guilty of it too. I did it for a very long time, and what started to happen is that I shine the light of awareness. I was like, You know what? I don't feel good. I am not showing up my best when I'm starting work from this frazzled, hectic, head to head to the ground, dive right in type of way. I'm not showing up best for my family. I'm not feeling good in my body. I'm. Not showing up from a center place for my team as much as I would like to, so I put some conscious effort into it, and I was like, All right, look, life is a lot more packed than it used to be, because the first time around, when I was great with my morning routine, my days weren't as busy. Mind strong wasn't as big. I just I had a lot more time on my hands. So I share this because, again, I'm all about realistic expectations, right? I knew I don't have 45 minutes in the morning to just ease into this day the way that I would if this was a Disney movie where little birds land on my shoulders and chirp in my ear and drift me off to a full buffet at breakfast, or whatever that visual is. So I sat down and thought, okay, realistically, how much time could I give myself in the morning where I know that I'm prioritizing me, I'm centering myself, but it's not turning into a chore. It's not like, okay, now I need to block 45 minutes before a whole work day and then workouts and then dinner, and I was like, 15 minutes I could do realistically. I can give myself 15 minutes for me to get in the zone I want to and then start my day, and it's not going to feel like I carved out this whole other chore for myself. So then I sat down and thought, okay, what are the things that help me prep for my day. I know for me, it's meditation. I am such a huge believer in meditation. I've done past episodes where I talk about it. It is one of the best things as human beings we can do, be doing for ourselves. And I know that I am a different human being when I'm meditating consistently. And it doesn't have to be an hour, it can literally be five minutes, 10 minutes. So I know meditation is on my I don't want to say muscles, but if I'm thinking of like, what makes me feel good, then I would put it in a muscleless So okay, meditation would be great for me. What else? Well, I know I need my morning coffee, and what I don't enjoy is just grabbing coffee and drinking it in front of my computer. I like to sit. I like to sit in silence. I like to visualize. I like to think about, how do I want to feel today, right? Here's the here are the tasks I have to do. How do I want to show up? And how do I want to feel? So it's like, okay, I want time to meditate, and I want time to just be still and think and drink my coffee. What else? Well, sometimes it's hard when I go straight for meditation, like straight into work, right? Because I was very in my heart. I was very calm. Now I open an inbox, and bam, here, away we go. So I'd like to find a way to kind of bridge that gap, to kind of prime myself to get into work mode. Okay, so we've got meditation, we've got silent, coffee, visualization, feel into the daytime, and we've got some time to kind of bridge the gap between that and work anything else. No, those are, those are what I would call the Big Three for me. So I very simply put them together. In the morning, I spent 10 minutes meditating. If you've listened to past episodes, you heard me talk about, I've been meditating 10 minutes a day for years now. My intention was always to raise it. I was like, I'll start with 10 minutes. Eventually I'll work my way up to an hour. I've never gone past 10. I mean, I have gone past 10 minutes. I've never consistently gone past 10 minutes because it starts to feel like a chore. It starts to feel like I have to I don't want it to feel like that. I love my 10 minutes a day. I do it every single day. So 10 minutes, it is I'm gonna do 10 minutes meditation. Beautiful. What next? Well, when I'm done meditating. Be very easy. Instead of making my coffee and bringing it to my desk, I have, we have these little chairs by these big windows in our house that I love. The chairs are comfy. That window gets lots of sunlight. I'm just going to sit there, and I'm going to have the puppies by my feet. Sometimes they both try to jump on the chair with me. It's ridiculous and adorable. And I'm just going to sit in silence. No phone. My phone stays in the other room through all of this. That's been key, right? The second we open our phones, our brain starts going so I don't touch my phone, I don't open it, I don't I'm just going to check this one thing, Nope, it's in the other room. I'm going to sit in this chair. I'm going to drink my coffee. I'm going to think about, what do I have to do? Coming up, more importantly, how do I want to feel going into that real quickly. We've been talking a lot about cortisol in today's episode. So I want to give you a free guide that you can use to go along with this episode. If you go to www, dot Mind, Strong fitness.com/cortisol-checklist,

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again, it's cortisol hyphen checklist. Or just use the link in the show notes below, it'll give you a free copy to my cortisol checklist, where we go through, what are some cortisol reducing activities that I can add in, what are some cortisol raising activities then I could take out. Let's get back to the show. So I've done my 10 minutes meditation. I've sat in my chair while I drank my coffee. Then I have to take the dogs for the walk in the morning. That that's part of my responsibility. My partner goes to the gym in the morning. I go to the gym in the evening. Most days, my job in the morning is to take the dogs out, and I want to bridge that gap before I get into work. So what I started doing is I pop my headphones on while I'm walking the pups, and I. Put on a podcast. I have some favorite business podcast episodes where it gets me primed, it gets me in a business mindset. I get motivation, I get inspiration, I get ideas. So by the time I've come back from the puppy walk that I have to do anyway, now my brain is in not just work mode thrown in with the wolves, but it's in inspired work mode. So by the time we're back from our puppy walk. Now I'm sitting at my desk. Now I'm working, and I've been primed where I'm in my heart, I'm centered. I visualize my day. I've gotten inspiration around work, and now I'm starting my day that whole thing. I'm calling in my 15 minute routine. If I'm meditating for 10 of it, it might be a little bit longer than that, because obviously a puppy walk, but realistically, the time I'm spending there, it is not large in the course of my day. What I love about this routine is that it's not a chore. I'm not forcing myself to do. I got to wake up an hour earlier in order to get this prep. No, it's about what's realistic and what do I personally need. So as I said in the intro, I'm sharing my personal morning routine with you, not with the intention of being like. I hate when business coaches and all these people are like, if you want to be successful, this is what you have to do. There's no truth to that, right? The amount of business coaches out there that are like, you have to wake up at 4am that is complete. Bs, you didn't have to wake up at 4am to be successful. What if you're a night owl? What if you like working at night like I do? Anyway, I'm not sharing this with you to say, copy this morning routine to be successful. I'm sharing it with you as an example so that we can take the framework of how I constructed this morning routine and we can make it work for you. Here's what I mean by that. What I would encourage you to think about are, what are the three to five things that help you feel prepped to ease into the day? And the reality is, you might not know. You may have been spending your entire life, so far, your entire adult life, waking up and zooming into work, but if you can take some time, wave your magic dumbbell, play a game, doesn't mean you're locking this in, doesn't mean you're committing to doing it right. Nobody's setting a goal or an intention. Here, if I could wave my magic dumbbell, what are three to five things that would help you feel centered and calm going into your day? That's question one. Question two, realistically, how much time could you give yourself in the morning without it becoming a chore. If you have kids at home and you have to get them ready, you're not going to have as much time. So maybe it's a seven minute routine, right? I'm going to guess most of us could, could find five to 15 minutes in the morning, if this was a priority, nobody's asking you for an hour for you and your personal life. What is a realistic timeframe? Okay? So we've got, what are your three to five activities that would help put you, Prime you for the day? Is a good word for that, priming you. Number two, realistically, how much time could you carve out for yourself? And then number three, we're going to put those things together. What does that look like, coming up with a game plan, right? Realistically, X number of minutes on this, then I'm going to go into this. Doesn't have to be an exact number. Then I'm going to go into this. Then I'm going to start my day. Once you've got that mapped out, here is the key. I talk endlessly about neuroscience, endlessly about habits. If you haven't listened to those episodes, go back and listen to them. You are not going to magically make this your new routine, right? I had to consciously. When I started this, I was going to say again, but this was a new routine. But when I started this again, we'll say it. I was committed. I need to wire my brain for this. The first time around, I didn't know as much about neuroscience. I didn't think that way. Now I'm older, I'm wiser. I've been teaching this stuff for years. I'm like, Okay, I want this new routine to be who I am and what I do. I know that to do that, I need to wire my brain, meaning I need to form a neural connection by taking a new action. I need to repeat, repeat, repeat that action till enough myelin coats it, until it becomes a full fledged habit to where I wake up every morning, and this is just who I am and what I do. I don't have to think about it. It's on autopilot. So literally, for weeks at a time, I would wake up and I would remind myself I'd get up. Okay, first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go meditate. After I meditate, I'm going to do that. I would walk myself through the steps and in the beginning and be like, Oh, does this feel kind of chore like, like I'm this was supposed to be my relaxation, but now I'm walking myself through a checklist. And in those moments, I'd remind myself, we are consciously wiring your brain. You know that after these next 1520 minutes, you're going to feel incredible. So right now, if we kind of have to go through a mental checklist, that's okay, because number one, you're going to feel great on the other side. Number two, eventually, there is no checklist this. It's like brushing your teeth. You're going to get up, you're going to do it, you're it's just autopilot because you've wired your brain and now that's the point that I'm at. This is just who I am and what I do. I wake up, I do my meditation, I sit in my chair, drink my coffee, I listen to my podcast while I walk my puppies. Then I'm ready. For work, my days feel better. I feel calmer. There's still days that that need to go into the inbox, and here we go away. We go. But I am showing up from a better, more centered place, because I put that time for me first. So I'm going to encourage you, this is not a have to. This is not a must. This is not a should. And if you are someone who finds yourself diving into your day, if it feels like you're starting your day with cortisol spiked, sky high, it is not about a major life overhaul. We're going to sit down. We're going to think, okay, what are three to five things that would prime me for the day that are going to lower my cortisol, get me in a centered space where I'm in control. I'm not reacting to the day. I'm being proactive by putting myself in the space I want to be in. From there, what's a realistic timeline that I can commit to? And that's not set in stone. Maybe we try it, it feels too long. Maybe we try to feels too short. And number three, what does that action plan look like? From there, repeat, repeat, repeat, until our brain is myelated, myelinated, until this becomes who you are, what you do, and you are setting yourself up for success each and every day.

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