The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

How Morning Routines Improve Productivity | Ep. 122

• Fiona Kane • Season 1 • Episode 122

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How Morning Routines Improve Productivity is something many successful people understand well. In this episode, we explore why having a morning routine can transform your entire day, boost your focus, and increase your confidence.

Learn simple, realistic morning rituals you can start today to feel organised, calm, and motivated. Whether it’s quiet reflection, stretching, or planning your day with intention, these small habits can make a big difference to your mental health and productivity.

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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Credit for the music used in this podcast:

The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay



Fiona Kane:

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. This is a podcast where I like to have real conversations about things that matter, and today I want to talk to you about morning routines, morning rituals, and this is a conversation I was having. I have a house guest here today I won't name the person, but anyway I had a house guest staying and I said I need to record some podcasts today. Have you got some ideas for some topics?

Fiona Kane:

And this person brought up morning rituals and what a difference that has made in their life. And I see this a lot for people that when you have a really good morning ritual, it really helps with your mental health and your physical health. And when you think about it, this happens for a few reasons. So a morning ritual, morning routine first of all, there's something very intentional about it. So instead of, oh well, I'll do what I remember, if I remember when it happens, whatever. So instead of this vague kind of thing where you forget things and you don't prioritize things and you kind of suddenly run out of time, you know that kind of thing, you're very intentional. You're very intentional about what are the things that I need to do today that are going to be beneficial for me and because you're very intentional, you tend to do those things, or you at least do some of those things, or you at least do one thing that's really intentionally important and valid and that's going to contribute to your well-being in some way. And not only that, but I have talked about this before. But when we do things, so when we feel like we've achieved something, you're able to tick something from your list, you feel good about yourself and you see this. An example I'll give is you know the old saying that when you want to get something done, you give it to someone who's really busy, because someone who's really busy already has momentum, they're already moving, they're already doing something right. So that person will just slot it into their list of things to do and they'll probably get it done.

Fiona Kane:

Whereas if you I don't know if you've ever when you've been on holidays or in holiday mode or a situation maybe where you're recovering from your illness or something, but when you are you don't have anything to do right? When you don't have anything to do and there's one thing you've got to get done, that day, it could be the simplest of things I've just got to send one email or I've got to I don't know just one small thing. Have you noticed that you can't figure out where to fit it in the day and you end up not even getting around to doing it Like, oh no, I didn't get time to do the thing right and you had plenty of time, you had the whole day. But there's something about you get momentum from when starting. So when you start, when you do something, when you do something intentional and when you do something intentional, that makes you feel good about yourself. So it's that thing I've talked about before as well of when you know you have your back right.

Fiona Kane:

So you trust someone who shows up for you. It's the same for you yourself. So with other people in your life, you trust the person who shows up for you, the person who shows up for you, the person who's there for you. They're the one that you build trust with. Well, it's the same for us with ourselves. So if we never show up for ourselves, we actually don't have trust for ourselves and we don't expect to be showing up for ourselves. We don't expect ourselves to back ourselves. So you develop like a distrust for yourself. I'm never going to achieve that thing because I don't show up for me, right. So when you do show up for yourself, that actually makes you feel really good about yourself and much more confident, because now you're proving that you are a person who shows up for you and so one you've got that kind of feeling good about. You know, I've showed up for myself, I do show up for myself, I'm that person. I'm the person who shows up for myself, not the person who doesn't show up and look after myself. But then next thing, what I said is you know you get momentum from that right. So momentum starts to happen when you actually just get started and you do something. So and that's without even talking about the specific things in the ritual that you might be doing and the benefits they will have for you.

Fiona Kane:

So morning rituals might include a number of things. They might be sitting and having a cup of tea for 15, 20 minutes before the family wakes up and just having some quiet time to be in your own space, in your own head. It might be a time where you write a gratitude diary, you have some sort of gratitude practice, you might be doing a meditation or some sort of prayer or ritual, something along those lines. You might be doing exercise, so sort of. One of the popular morning rituals is anything that involves sweating and moving your body, which is a really good way to start the day, you know. So you might be sitting down, like I said, maybe just thinking about what your day is going to look like, thinking about what's ahead. You might be making a list or just like in your head, kind of just clearing things up and getting clear about what you want to do for that day. Maybe you're doing some yoga or some stretches or something. Take the dog for a walk, pat the dog with a cup of tea, whatever it looks like.

Fiona Kane:

But morning rituals are really really beneficial for our health and when you think about what some of those things are, you get something where you get clarity about the day, something where you have some space in your mind that is just for you and not about all of the noise from outside. So, and then you know when we talk about, you know, things like the ritual of making yourself a healthy breakfast or doing exercise, those sorts of things. Obviously all of those things will matter. You know you get protein to start the day. You know you'll have, you know, plenty of. You'll have consistent energy and manage your blood sugar level well, and you know you'll have you know plenty of, you'll have consistent energy and manage your blood sugar level well, and you know you'll go really well If you know when you're exercising, again, you get, you use energy when you exercise, but you get energy from exercise as well and again you feel good about yourself. All that circulation, all those health benefits that we get from doing exercise, you know.

Fiona Kane:

So all of those, you know the actual things you're doing, themselves are beneficial, besides the fact that you feel good about the fact that you have done them. But also you've done something, you've gotten started, you've already, you know you've already done. If you've already done three, four, five things before you even sort of start work or start heading to work or whatever your day looks like, there is, like I said, you've already got a real momentum there and you're feeling good and you're feeling good about yourself and that makes all of the difference. So there is something about being really intentional with the way we structure our mornings. That's really important, you know.

Fiona Kane:

The other aspect of this as well is, you know, I suppose on the other side of things with the morning rituals is some morning rituals that people have and I know that I can easily fall into this, so I'm not saying this to have a go at anyone but a very common morning ritual is the first thing you do is pick up your phone and you're checking social media, or you're looking at the news or something. But what you're doing straight away, when you're doing that and we've all been guilty of it, again, no judgment but what you're doing is, straight away, you're picking up this thing and you're letting that go to decide how your day, how your morning's going to start. So that is going to control how things start, because straight away, you've got something you've got to reply to, or you're seeing the news and you know often it's quite depressing, right or you're on social media doing some doom scrolling, looking at someone who you know, someone who makes you feel bad about yourself or someone, whatever it is, you know. But what we do is when we, when we jump on our phones straight away, we're letting that control how our day begins, and whatever happens to be on our phone at the time, we'll decide how our day starts, and it could be, you know, a message from someone as oh yeah, I've got to do a thing and so you start the day already feeling like, you know, feeling bad, that you haven't done something yet or that someone's after you or someone needs something, or there's an email I've got to reply to. Oh, that's right. So you kind of start the day straight away with. It dictates how your day begins. It dictates whether or not you start your day in a positive mood or a negative mood, or straight away feeling like stressed and feeling under the pump, right.

Fiona Kane:

So there's also morning rituals that are not beneficial. So morning rituals where you'll just jump straight on your phone or where you jump straight in front of the television, I would say to most people it's not a good idea to do that. If you're sort of person who you know likes watching 15 minutes of a morning show with a bit of news, and you do that with your breakfast every morning, that's your ritual and it works quite well for you and you know you feel good about it, great. But if you're the sort of person that lands in front of television, has trouble moving away from it or then says, oh, I don't know where the day went, I didn't get time to do anything, not a good idea. Don't go there, just don't even start there. If that's what it's like for you, right, and it could also be playing a really good podcast that you like as well. That might be part of how you start your morning, or reading a little bit of a book.

Fiona Kane:

Now, I'm not saying that everyone has to do all of these things, and, of course, there's a lot of influencers and podcasters and people in the health space out there who do all sorts of things where they're doing, you know, they do the cold plunge in the morning, or they're doing the, the cold plunge and then the sauna, and then they do the workout and this and that and the cold plunge, and it looks fabulous and that's great, and, again, there's nothing wrong with that. There's some people who do those kinds of things, who get amazing results from them, so that's fabulous. But what I would say to you, though, is don't get turned off by the fact that, like, if that's just not within your wheelhouse, that just doesn't, is not possible for you. It's just, you know, we've all got different situations and different jobs and different responsibilities, and maybe you don't have that much time and that much availability to do those kinds of things, but what it comes down to is, though well, what does a good morning ritual look like for you, and it might be different at different times. So there might be the ritual you do on the day that your kids go to school, the ritual you do on the day that they're at home, you know the ritual you do on this day, that work day, non-work day, whatever it is. So you might have slightly different rituals for different days, but you just have something that's for you. So it might even just be five minutes to have a cup of tea. You know, I would say probably be better if it's more than five minutes, but if you're able to wake up before your children do.

Fiona Kane:

I know a lot of mothers give me feedback that you know it's actually worth them setting the alarm a little bit earlier and just sneaking out and just quietly sitting and having their cuppa before the kids and everyone else is sort of on them for something and that just gives them that little bit of sanity. So you may be doing, you know, the workout and the green smoothie and the, the cold plunge and the sauna and the all the one, yoga and all the wonderful things are good on you and if you're able to do that and your life and your finances and your time allows for that, that's brilliant. If you're not able to do all of those things, but you are able just to sit and be mindful, you are able to write a gratitude journal, you are able to maybe just do a five-minute meditation. Whatever it is, so don't get overwhelmed by the fact that it has to look a certain way or be perfect, or it has to be the same as the one that you heard your favorite influencer do on Instagram, or whatever. It has to be the one that works for you, the one that's possible for you, the one that you can do.

Fiona Kane:

But what I do encourage, though, is that you do have morning rituals, because when you do have them, they really set you off to a good start every day. And there is something as well when your morning ritual includes any level of either meditation or gratitude or kind of just that presence. But you know being present and being aware, the health benefits, the mental health benefits from that. I can't tell you enough what they are, because, again, if you kind of just jump into your day and you kind of just end up in your day and you're kind of just there and you haven't even got your head straight. What happens again is the day dictates what, what your, how you feel. The day dictates it all because straight away you're just running here or there and everywhere, kind of just like answering everybody and catching up and trying to chase your tail, kind of thing.

Fiona Kane:

When you have a moment to do something, that's sort of really good for your headspace, that really can change the way you start your day. So if you start your day and you are able to, maybe you're somewhere where you can look outside and you can see flowers or trees, maybe you can pat your dog or your cat or whatever. Maybe you can, you know, even just go into, you know, your child's bedroom and look at your child while they're still asleep, while they're still an angel, and kind of just have an appreciation for how lucky you are to be their parent. Right, it could be just being having gratitude that you can see, that you can hear, that you're able to eat, you're able to walk, you're able to function, you're alive, right, so whatever it looks like, but all that you know able to have a hot shower and you've got hot water, aren't you lucky, you know?

Fiona Kane:

So just anything where you're able to be present, you're able to be present with your surroundings, so not kind of caught up in what happened in the past or what's happening, but just be really present with now, have a level of gratitude and awareness about the good things that you have available to you or the resources you have available to you. When we kind of have those levels of awareness, that really can kind of you start your day in a way where you're already feeling gratitude and you're already feeling lucky, like I am so lucky that you know I can walk and talk and I can move and or I said move, but whatever walk, move, you know I can, I I'm able to eat. It's not until if you've been in a situation where you can't eat, you know how valuable it is to be able to eat. And I was able to sleep, I had a bed last night and I was warm last night, all of those things. If you have got all of those things going for you already well, you're doing better than a whole lot of other people, right? So if we can start the day in that space where we can really see all the things we've got going for us, all the things that are going well, all the things that we're lucky about and all the things that are beautiful. So, like I said, the dog, the birds outside the trees, whatever it is, but just noticing the things that are true and beautiful and that are sort of any type of sort of blessing in your life. When we are able to integrate a practice where we notice those things, then whatever happens throughout the day, you know, I think you can cope better because you didn't go launch right into it. You actually were able to just have that moment of no, I'm okay. I'm okay, I've got resources, I've got what I need, I'm okay, I'll be all right.

Fiona Kane:

And even in regards to some of those morning rituals that like say, I think Joe Rogan, I like Joe Rogan, so no problem there, but I think he does like the cold plunge every morning in the workout and et cetera. And what he says, which I find is quite interesting, is he says that and this is actually, I think, particularly important for people who are really really comfortable so he's really really quite wealthy and a lot of people who've got to a place where they're really quite wealthy and powerful he says that you know it, actually you do the hardest thing in the day first. So it is forcing him to do something hard, because when you're not sort of in the street trying to like living on the street or when you're not sort of busting it trying to make a living and all those things, and you finally got to a place where you're really comfortable and you're kind of on top of your game, uh, it would be very easy to kind of relax into that and just kind of indulge. And instead of doing that he says no, no, I do something hard every day because it proves that I can still do something hard but also everything after that is easy because I've done the hard thing. So he actually part of his morning ritual is doing something that's hard, so that after that everything seems easy. So see sort of the mindset behind that. So it says different ways we can do a morning ritual that might work differently for different people. We need different things. So what he does that works for him may not be what works for a young mom or a post-menopausal woman or whoever right, there's different reasons why different rituals work for us.

Fiona Kane:

But the idea is to really have intentionality behind it and kind of understand what you're doing and what you're doing it for, and understand that you don't necessarily need hours right, because most people don't have hours for all their rituals in the morning. You might have minutes, you might have an hour, you might have 20 minutes, you might have six minutes, I don't know what it is. So work out what it is that's most beneficial for you and do that in that time. And it might be doing one thing, might be doing two different things, but don't sort of not do it because you don't have time, because you can create. Most people can create five minutes. Most people can find five minutes somewhere. They stop doing something else. You know, if you weren't doing the doom scrolling on your phone, how much time do you spend doom scrolling? If you can have time to doom scroll, well then you can have time to do. You know a two minute meditation, right? So that's the other thing too. It's like everyone's only got the same amount of hours in the day. So it's like, what do you do with yours? And it might be very minimal, absolutely, but there's still a lot you can do in a small amount of time. So, um, and when you do, I know I always enjoyed reading a lot of biographies and autobiographies and you know, as someone who's been in business for a long time.

Fiona Kane:

I've read a lot of business books, and when you read business books and autobiographies or anything where people have become successful in whatever they do, more often than not these people have a lot of very specific rituals, and they usually have morning rituals, and this is the exact reason why. So you do the thing that you need to do to keep you functional, to keep you well, to give you energy throughout the day. You do the thing that starts you with momentum. You do the thing that starts you in that right headspace. So you're going into the day really intentionally and you don't let something like a phone or your emails or your social media dictate how you feel to start the day. You're starting the day in a, you know, in a shock, or in a or in a, you know, feeling already stressed and feeling already behind or already like you've got to run around and do everything for everybody else.

Fiona Kane:

So there is very much something to be said for having a great morning ritual and you can devise what that looks like for you, depending on time, money, whatever your situation is, whatever your needs are. But you will find that when you regularly show up for yourself, whether that's for two minutes a day or whether this is a two-hour ritual every day, whatever that might look like for you, it makes a really big difference to what your day looks like, what your physical and mental health looks like. The fact that you start to really trust yourself because you know that you show up for yourself and you might find it makes a difference with your productivity and all the other things you do and your ability to be present with other people. Sometimes, to be present with other people and to be there for other people and to hold a space for other people. We need to do something that gives us space as well, and some people have an evening ritual, and that can be great too, or some people have one or the other, or they have both, and the other thing I would just say to you is to have a healthy morning ritual.

Fiona Kane:

One of the things I see a lot is I see and again, no judgment for human beings, but I see a lot of people that say, oh well, you know like I'm busy all day with the kids and with everybody else and I get to a certain time in the night and I want time for myself, which is fair enough, and so you know I sit down and start watching telly, but before I know it I'm, you know I'm on binge watching the latest, whatever it is, and I'm you know four or five episodes in it's two in the morning. I go to bed at two in the morning and then I wake up tired. You know, obviously that's not a good idea. So, yes, I understand why you might want to binge watch the thing and I love that sort of stuff just as much as the next person, and sometimes that really is a medicine for me just to go and disappear and binge watch something. Right, I understand that. But I would just encourage you to again be intentional around it. So you might say I can watch one episode tonight and I'll keep the other episode for tomorrow night. Or, you know, it might be one episode a week that you get to watch, or it might be you have a couple of hours on the weekend where you get to binge watch a little bit. Whatever it is.

Fiona Kane:

But you know, make life easier for yourself by you know putting sensible boundaries on those sorts of things for you, Because if it was your child sitting up till two in the morning binge watching something and you knew they had to get up at six o'clock in the morning to go to work. You'd go to school, whatever it is. Of course you would say to that person hey, that's not a good idea, but we will do this, we will do that for ourselves. So also sort of think about what your evenings look like, because what your evenings look like will make a big difference to your morning, won't they? Because if your evenings look like getting to bed really really late because you've just stayed up watching telly all night or playing games or whatever it is, obviously that's not a good thing. So it is really useful to have an evening ritual as well. And even if the evening ritual is just making sure that you know on weekdays you're always in bed by this time on weekends, whatever that time, and you always sort of have a quiet time before bed, whatever it is.

Fiona Kane:

But sometimes it's the reason that we're not having a successful morning ritual is because our evening ritual is no good or our evening is without ritual. The ritual is just on the lounge with the chocolate. Yes, I know that some of you recognize that, as do I. When I said that, you thought oh, that's me, and it's certainly me sometimes as well. So just pointing out that sometimes we are the ones that sabotage ourselves, and when we are really intentional with what we do with our time, we can feel a whole lot better for it and have a lot more physical and emotional health success for it as well.

Fiona Kane:

So, before I go, I would just please like to remind you to like, subscribe, share, comment and please rate and review this podcast and please do share it with your friends. It is really, you know, I really want to keep this podcast going and it is building slowly but very slowly. So please, please, please, if there's this one person now that you can just quickly hit the share button and share this with your friend or on your Facebook or whatever it is, or just go in and press the subscribe button, something like that, all of those things make a difference with how many people get to see and hear this podcast. So I really appreciate your support. I hope you have a great week. I'll talk to you next week about more about things that you know, real conversations about things that matter. Thank you, I'll talk to you next week. Bye.

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