Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 19 and today I want to talk to you about the importance of a morning routine and how it helps us to be better parents. In fact, I'm going to be even more specific than that and talk to all you mums out there. Now, it's not that this won't be as relevant to dads. I have just found in my experience mums gain the most from this, as will become evident as we go through the process. So, let me start by giving you some background. I think as parents we often find ourselves in patterns and cycles of behaviour which have become habitual. Maybe we tolerate bed time dramas and shenanigans because we're just too exhausted to make the change. Or we find ourselves not being really clear with the boundaries with our children because we know that it's going to be a major battle if we do so otherwise. Maybe we tolerate early morning wake up from our children who snuggle into bed with us who then make us lose sleep because it's just so much easier than sending them back to their bedrooms. So, with these sort of situations they just tend to be habitual because we are so busy working in our families we never find the time to work on our families. It's an analogy which is often used with entrepreneurs about working in the business and not on the business. And the same pitfalls ring true for parenting. When we spend most of our time working in our families it's like being in the trenches, excuse the pun. We're battling each situation as it comes and trying to survive. When we are working on our families we are looking at what works and what doesn't much more from a strategic perspective. We're the general objectively standing back and taking a balanced view or even the CEO. Not sure why I went with the army analogy but you get the idea here. What happens is we are much better able to see what's working and what's not working when we take that step back. So, I've got the idea of a good morning routine allows us to step back from being in and working in our families to begin that process of working on our families. Now, I have come to this sort of idea about morning routines myself on my own journey probably about a good six years ago. And I discovered a book written by an author called Hal Elrod called The Miracle Morning. And it's very much from a perspective of business owners or people who want to live an optimal life. Very much from that sort of pattern of self-development. And it has these principles called savers. They're these specific practices that you do in the morning that help. And what I've done with this is really looked at adapting and modifying what is in essence a self-development principle for us as parents and specifically for mums. And the reason why it's specifically for mums is because I've spent pretty much a lifetime in the area that I have worked at trying to convince mums that their self-care is critical and important and actually should be placed at the top of their to-do list rather than the afterthought that gets put sometimes at the bottom of the to-do list, but more often than not, not even at all. And this notion that actually when we take care of ourselves first thing in the morning, we're better able to take care of everybody else and better serve everybody else from that space. So the whole idea behind the morning routine, which I'm going to talk you through, which is my shine practice, it is this notion of self-care, but also a process of creating the best opportunity for us to be able to be working on our families and helping our families become their best selves, the version of their best selves. That we possibly can make it and it is by taking a step back. So let me take a step back again a little bit more in that and talking that really a good morning routine begins the night before. Now I'm not going to talk too much about sleep because that's going to be one of the upcoming episodes that we're going to do, but a good morning routine has to start with a good night time routine. And if we're taking control of our day, which begins by taking control of our morning, we have to start by prioritising our sleep, understanding that we need on average between seven and eight hours sleep each night. And yet I know that as parents, we are very guilty of not getting that and really very much running on empty, which is not helpful. So if you are going to embrace and I'm hoping that you all have a good night, I'm hoping that you all have a good night, I'm hoping that you all have listened to this, we'll begin to take aspects of the shine practice and make that an embedded part of your morning routine. You need to start the night before by making a commitment to yourself to get to sleep by a certain time. Now, we all wake up at varying different times. Those who followed me for a long time will know that I am naturally a very early riser and rise sort of five, five thirty a.m. It's the best part of my day. It's the time that I earmark just for me. And it's very precious time that I feel is such a privilege and I use it really wisely. And I know that for me, when I don't have that time in the morning, I'm not really the most pleasant person to be around, especially if I've not had that time to myself each day. So I know that in order to get the right amount of sleep, what time I then need to go to sleep the night before. So I'm not suggesting whatsoever that any of you choose to wake up at such a ridiculous hour if that isn't a time that suits and serves you. But you need to recognise what time do you need to go to bed in order to ensure that you get the sleep that you need. So that's the first thing you need to do is you need to make that commitment to yourself and you need to follow this through. What I see time and time again, and it comes through certainly in the membership when we talk about checking in on what time people are going to sleep, is we have all these wonderful great intentions. You know, I'm going to be up in bed and I'm going to read and I'm going to be up in bed by 10 o'clock. And what happens is we find ourselves pottering around and, oh, we've just remembered this one thing we need to do. And, oh, I just need to do that other thing. And before we know it, it's 11 o'clock or even midnight or beyond for some. So if you've recognised, having heard this, that you are not getting enough sleep and you are prepared to make that commitment to yourself to get enough sleep, then you need to and by action, it can't just simply be, I'm going to make an effort to get to bed early. You need to do something to make sure that that happens. So if you want and you're making a commitment to yourself to go to bed by 10 or at least be up in your in bed at 10 so that you can read, then what you need to do is you need to set an alarm on a device or an alarm on a clock that if you know it's going to take you half an hour before you actually get up stairs, then you set the alarm for 930 and that alarm becomes a, this is, you must start your bedtime, your evening routine and start getting yourself up to bed. If you're a procrastinator that leaves things to the last minute and you know, you need an hour, then you set it for earlier. And if you know, you're somebody that slightly habitually switches off alarms, then what you need is probably multiple reminders, but you have to make that commitment. If we're going to start changing the pattern and these habitual cycles that we get into ourselves in terms of our parenting that we want to shift and we want to change, it has to start with a commitment the night before. So I take it that my preaching about bedtime is now well and truly sunk in with you. So you've made that commitment to go to sleep at a decent time. And then we have this morning routine. Now, I know that within the morning routine, there are, it's a shine practice. There are five different practices. These practices should take no longer than 30 minutes. You can make them last longer. It's up to you, but 30 minutes is sufficient. Now I know that you will deprioritize this because it will seem like a frivolity. It will seem like something, I understand Mary Han, the principles sound really good, but I just don't have the time. So what I would say to you is this, and I say it with love, you need to make sure that you find the time for this. So if you cannot find the time in your morning, I suggest you wake up 30 minutes earlier. Yep. You heard me correctly. And the reason why I say that is that I know, I know this because I ran this shine challenge all the way through the pandemic and it had a phenomenal positive impact on the mothers that were part of that group each and every day. It positively impacted the way that they interact. with their children, the way they interacted with their families, how they felt about themselves. the commitments that they then made to making changes, positive changes for themselves in their lives. I know this works. So you just simply need to make the commitment to me and to yourself to try it. If you cannot carve out that time, because I know our children get up, we have to get them ready for school, us for work, we have a mountain of to-dos on our list. So if you cannot carve it out in your existing morning routine, then I suggest you wake up 30 minutes earlier and try this for one week. Just give it one week and let me know how you get on genuinely. I'd love to know how you get on. So if you wake up at seven, wake up at 6.30, set an alarm for 30 minutes earlier and you will find these practices will be genuinely life-changing. So let's talk about them. You've made the commitment. You've gone to bed earlier. You've gone to bed to make sure that you get enough sleep. You've gone to sleep. You've set an alarm to wake up 30 minutes earlier and now you are starting your shine practice. Now each letter in shine stands for a different practice. So we have S is for silence, H is for hydration, I is for intention, N is for note-taking, E is for exercise. Don't worry about remembering those. In the podcast library we have got a template and I'll talk you through that at the end of the podcast. So let's start with each one and these have been specifically constructed because they work together as a five to give you the most impact first thing in the morning to take care of you in order that you can then take care of everything and everyone else. So let's start with S for silence. Now I can almost hear the groan that is coming through from you as you hear the groan. And I know how difficult this is for so many of us because we're so busy we've got so many things to do. The thought of sitting in silence and meditating and just being is just well quite frankly Mary-Anne I have six million other things I could be better occupied doing. But actually what we find when we parent so often and as we go through our day is that we're stuck in autopilot. We do things because that's just the way that we do things. It's what we do to survive. It's how we do things. When we deliberately provide ourselves with some specific time and an opportunity to simply be we're much more likely to observe what is showing up for us and what we're noticing about what might need to change. So for those of you who are feeling very resistant with this idea of silence and meditation I would simply say this if it's something that you have tried before or who or have never tried and the idea of it seems too much then start by simply making a drink a hot cup of tea a hot herbal drink hot water a glass of water whatever is your particular poison and simply sit quietly staring out of a window or staring at the scene in the room depending on obviously the time that you've woken up and whether it's daylight or not. But just simply be for one minute and start with one minute. The whole idea behind the practice is that whilst the five practices are the same how you perform those practices what they mean to you and how you implement them is all individual. Start with a minute's worth of silence and build up. It may take you weeks before you build up any more than that but that's a really easy way because by being silent we can just check in on what's showing up in our body what is the chatter that's showing up and be kind to yourself don't be critical of what's showing up in your body. Don't be critical if your mind starts wandering on all of your to-do lists just that's just where you are right now and that's okay. So that's one way to do it is to simply be in a room or look out of a window. If you would like to take it a bit further then there are so many different apps that you can access in terms of mindfulness whether it's the Calm app or Headspace and there are plenty of others. I personally use an app called Insight. It's a free app although there is also a paid version and it's a guided meditation. I personally prefer them because I like to be guided through a process and it helps me stay focused in that inner silence and that works for me. It might not necessarily work for you but the idea is with this practice is that we we're playful with it we try we see we observe we take notes we try something different if we need to we tweak and we refine. Shine the first practice is silence start small build up. The next practice is H for hydration. Now as women we should be drinking around two litres of water a day. Quite often our foggy brain our tiredness our need to keep opening up cupboard doors well maybe it's just mine to see what snacks there are are often because we simply have not drank enough water. So it is really important that we make a conscious effort to hydrate because it also impacts our alertness and often creates a certain sense of fatigue. So the idea is that we should be drinking about two litres a day. We don't want to be drinking it in huge guzzling amounts. We want to be sipping and drinking it throughout the day. Now for anyone who is sitting there saying oh my goodness me Mary Han that's an awful lot of water I will be peeing all day. Well you probably will at first because your body will be drinking a lot of water. So it's important that we make a conscious effort won't be used to it. But the three things that your brain needs more than anything are food water and sleep. So it is important that we do this. Now whenever you're starting anything new and you're trying to create a habit out of it you're trying to make it part of your routine and part of your everyday life is that it can be difficult to remember. It's not something that you've done habitually before. So many of us don't drink enough water. So the easiest way to start and habits is to try and what we kind of sort of technically call this idea about bootstrapping. You try and add it to something that you do already that is habitual that you don't think about. So if you're somebody who likes to drink tea or coffee or generally makes hot drinks then one way to bootstrap your drinking water might be to make a commitment that before you have your cup of tea or your coffee or whatever your hot drink is is that you will drink a glass of water beforehand. So that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is by using a water bottle or a jug that you know is a specific measure and then sort of almost saying to yourself that you need to have drank that within certain hours of the day. So if we're talking about two litres you might decide that you're going to have 500 millilitres at four times during the day. So you might sort of span it out and say well I'm going to drink my first one before 11 and then my second one between that and two and then my next third one between that and four and then my last one between five and bedtime. That sort of thing. So it's working out what works for you. What suits you and your lifestyle to make that more of a priority. So once we're aware of that we're much more likely to do something about it and again this is going to be something you'll have to play around with. Tweak, refine. If you've made the commitment to your morning routine and a shift in your routine then you're going to have practice. Those who've been observing this with me, gosh I think we've probably been doing it since the first lockdown so it's been nearly two years, is that actually it's just being playful with it and working out how does it work for me. I'm going to try this and see what happens. Okay that worked, that didn't work. How can I tweak and refine it? What might I do next time? So we've covered S for Sits alongside your N which is note-taking. So let me talk about both of these together because they serve a purpose together. I've talked about this idea that we tend to find ourselves in autopilot. We tend to do things because that's what that's what we do. That's what habits ultimately are. They're things that we do without having to think about them because we've done them so often. Note-taking is all about taking the time first thing in the morning to reflect on the previous day. So if it's Tuesday you would be reflecting on your Monday and it's whether you do it as a long prose journal or whether you do it as bullet points in a notebook or whether you tap away on a notes section on an electronic device. It's simply an opportunity to consider the previous day. What showed up on that day? How were you? How did you interact with your children? How did you feel? How what was work life? How tired were you? It's not these are just some simple prompts about what worked, what didn't work, what came up for you. What was your internal chatter? How was your sleep? So it's an opportunity to simply reflect on the previous day and to note down anything that showed up for you. You don't need to make this super structured. It's just an opportunity to spend five, ten minutes writing freely about the previous day. And the reason why this is so important and I personally would prefer that you are physically writing rather than typing on an electronic device is there is something quite cathartic something quite relaxing something quite releasing about putting pen to paper and quite often when you first start this practice it might seem a bit strange and you might find yourself almost sort of trying to rewrite what had happened the previous day in order and in sequence so I woke up at this time and I did this but really it's not about that it's simply about what showed up for you and so it will take a little bit of time and a little bit of practice but the key part here is it allows you to reflect to brain dump to consider and the reason why that note-taking works in tandem with intention is that when we are in a practice of reflecting on our previous day of writing on our previous day of writing on our previous day of writing what has shown up what have we noticed in it for ourselves so this going back to this analogy of working on our families rather than in we've taken that step back that strategic look what did my day look like what are the things that showed up what we then do is we set an intention for that day now intentions are not to-do list intentions are like an overarching theme or a chapter heading what we might do in our note-taking is we might notice that we were particularly short with a child we might notice that we're getting triggered by a particular child's behavior or that we might notice that we need to have a conversation a difficult conversation either with our partner with a work colleague or with a friend these are the things that tend to show up so the intention is simply what's our theme for the day so if we've noticed some particular friction with a child we may have an intention to spend some time with our child and we might notice that we need to spend some time with that child it may be that we have an intention to have a conversation it might be that we have an intention of taking care of ourselves because we've noticed that actually we're pretty short with everybody and that we're probably feeling a bit tired maybe a bit resentful maybe a bit overwhelmed maybe a little bit taken advantage of so the idea is that they work together so that our note-taking allows us to reflect our intention becomes a hat now that i have reflected and i have reflected on the fact that i have reflected on the fact that i have reflected on the notice these things what might i have as an overarching theme for the day that my to-do's may well then naturally fall out of so for example if we've noticed in our reflection reflective practice that we're actually feeling pretty tired we've noticed that we've been short short-tempered with people or that we've noticed that we're taking on too much we're doing too much then our to-do's may naturally fall out of that is that there may be some to-do's that we actually tick off or that we completely remove from our list or that we might delegate so it's about those two working in tandem so s is for silence h is for hydration i is for intention which naturally comes out of our note-taking and the fart nor exercise in shine is e is for exercise and this exercise can take the form of any form of exercise that suits you and it's about listening to your body and what it might need so exercise exercise might be some stretching it might be a cycle ride it might be a walk it might be a run it might be a high intensity training that you do online but it's basically it's responding to what your body might need and the reason why exercise is so important is that exercise often allows us to have some headspace having done exercise we feel more energized more invigorated more alert and so it's really important that we we look at prioritizing that exercise at the beginning of the day rather than at the end of the day because let's face it when you're running a busy household all sorts of things take priority so these things like exercise and reflection and note-taking can always be put off till later i'll do it i'll do it later i'll do it later and then we find that the day has gone and we're too tired and it doesn't happen and so we then make a commitment to ourselves that we're going to start the next day and then we're going to start the next day and then we're going to start the next day and the same thing happens and that's the reason why i suggest that you carve out an extra 30 minutes by waking up earlier in the morning to make sure that you are able to do this particular to do this practice now obviously you can do you know the whole idea behind the shine practice is that it should take 30 minutes and no more but you get to choose my practice which is why i wake up at five usually takes you know a little bit of kind of coming through and then you get to choose first thing in the morning but i would finish my practice at probably about 8 30 now you probably think i'm nuts three hours mary hann what the hell are you doing but i have a practice that incorporates some reading so i'll read the chapter of a book and my exercise is always a dog walk certainly first thing in the morning and that will be over an hour so i'm not suggesting that you take on these huge chunks but start with something small and if the whole process of shine seems overwhelming like five things oh my goodness i can't possibly do that start small build up start with what feels like something that you know what might be the best first step for you might it be a practice of silence might it be the practice of hydration or the note-taking or the intention or the exercise but start don't keep putting it off because i know that incorporating a good morning routine means that you come to the day having taken care of you having served yourself having given yourself that time to be so it means that when you approach situations you approach it from a perspective that is one way you have taken care of your own needs and you are better able to then look much more objectively at things you're not stuck in the middle of the forest unable to see the wood for the trees but you've got that much more clarity and you avoid getting stuck in autopilot doing things because actually right now i just need this quick win it's what i need to just get by because you've always given yourself that opportunity to take that step back and actually approach it from that different perspective don't just take my word for it take the word of those who have been using the shine practice some of which who've been doing it diligently with all the five others have taken aspects of it and have had times where they've been really disciplined with all five and other times where they've been really disciplined with all five and other times been less disciplined and dropped some and reintroduced others it's simply recognizing that the first 30 minutes of your day should be set aside to take care of you because that's the only way we can truly serve our family and ourselves to the best of our ability so that's my pitch to you now what i would add that we also added to the to shine was a sunday family meeting where we just checked in with the family and that's something that you can add on but it has to start with you and starting with that morning routine so my give for this week is a taster shine template so that you can experience the benefits for yourself so if you head over to my free resource library drmaryhand.com forward slash library you'll find the link to download the sheet all you need to do is pop your email address in and then you get instant access not only to this week's resource which is the shine template but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes if you've listened to this and you thought do you know what mary hand i'm all in i'm gonna do this i'm committed to making this change if you what might want to then purchase my shine 90 day planner which has all of the templates in that but actually is specifically for you to do all your note taking then if you hop over to the website you can buy it directly there so it's www.drmaryhand.com forward slash planner as ever if you've enjoyed this episode i would absolutely love it if you could follow and please please leave a review so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time you
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