#170 How to Wake Up and Overcome Sleep Depression/Inertia -- Better Mornings Equals a Better Life

Rachel Denning (00:10.958)
Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I hope you're having a great week. I know Greg and I are excited to have some sunshine and warmer weather after two cloudy and cold weeks here in Georgia. Today we are discussing something which at first glance seems overly simplistic. We're going to talk about how to wake up.

Waking up is something every one of us does every single day, and we will do it every single day of our life. There's an incredible power that comes when we can learn to do better the things that we do consistently. And one of those things is waking up. There are specific ways to be more intentional about waking up each morning. And when you learn how to control and direct your mornings, it provides a lot of power for controlling and directing your life.

Helping your mornings go better helps your life to go better. So listen to this episode now to learn the strategies we have been using for the past 20 years to design our mornings, which in turn has led us to designing our life. This episode is sponsored by our own must read book recommendation list, which also includes two free audio programs. One about morning routines and the other about bibliotherapy, which is a fancy word for using books for self -improvement.

Click the link in the show notes or go to ExtraordinaryFamilyLife .com to get this special free offer.

Rachel Denning (01:40.462)
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. We got an awesome question of a very relevant topic that we're gonna hit today because it's something all of us deal with and it's waking up. Even Greg Denning. Even I, even I, which is especially poignant because, you know, I'm energized and alive. I'm awake, energized, and alive, but I don't always wake up like that.

And so if you're alive, then you woke up today. And so we're going to talk about waking up, getting out of bed and how to do it. And my guess is that you can relate to the inertia or struggle or blah of waking up. Or in this question, it was called sleep depression or morning depression. Yeah. Which why do we use that word so much? That word is getting overused. I'll throw that out there. It can be.

relevant. In my mind, and I've talked about this with you, depression feels just like heavy. Weighing. Well, okay, you take the semantics and if something is depressed, so it could be accurate, but I think it's going to be misunderstood. It's being so overused and misconstrued that you're just like, great, now I have depression in the morning too. It's like, no, man. There is a depressed... A pressing. Yeah, so you have this oppressing feeling and experience.

But you and I call it sleep inertia or you know just come out of it. Even if you sleep well sometimes you wake up and you're like...

Rachel Denning (03:17.454)
of a nasty case of the druthers. I'd rather be doing something else. That's why I like inertia because it's just this lack of movement. That's what inertia means essentially. What is the definition of inertia? We're going to look this up. It's when you're stuck in a state of non -movement. That's my non -scientific. We are going to test Rachel's definition skills here.

It is a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged. Well, that's good. You wake up and you're just like, I'd rather remain unchanged from this position I'm in, in my bed, in the warm covers and a comfy pillow. OK, so here's another one. In physics, it's a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest. Exactly. Oh, that's good. You want to carry on in your existing state of rest. Yeah.

or uniform motion in a straight line, which is another great insight. You have your thing and for the most part, our brains, they want to go with what's familiar, what's known. And so change, that's why change is so uncomfortable for people, especially if you're trying to create a new habit, a new way of being. If you're trying to be more optimistic, more outgoing, more happy, the default setting, wherever that conditioning went, it's like, oh no, let's stay in that straight line.

And even have this, well, stay in your lane. You're like, well, I don't like the lane. And so getting out of that is important. So that's what's happening when you wake up. You're in this rut, so to say, that you've been in for several hours. And now you have to get out of that, and your brain doesn't like it. It's naturally resistant to changing that state. So here we are. We're talking about how to wake up. And you think that that would be easy, like a...

I'm like, why would we even need to talk about that? Why do I have to talk about waking up? And yet waking up matters and how you wake up matters. And most people, I would say most people are not intentional enough about how they wake up. And that makes a difference. It totally does. And I love this idea of whatever you do in life, if you're gonna keep doing it, get really good at it. And this almost sounds silly to say,

Rachel Denning (05:37.165)
get really good at waking up. Exactly. What are you talking about man? I wake up every day in my whole life and just wake up and just go. But there's actually a skill set to it. There are ways to wake up. What's interesting, it's in a way, it's been victimized. And you'll hear people say, man, I got on the wrong side of the bed. There's no wrong side of your bed, man. My bed doesn't have a right side or wrong side. But what they're doing is they're trying to...

They might do it in jest, but some people really do it like no, it's just what they're saying is like it's out of my control It's not my fault like something happened to me. I don't know what I don't know what it was, but I just woke up not feeling Motivated or excited or alive or energized or whatever and that happens a lot well, and You know back to joking about you and Greg Denning waking up. I mean in reality I'm your wife. I wake up next to you every single day actually

Let's clarify. Rachel's out cold when I wake up. So let's make sure that you're not waking up next to me because that doesn't happen. I wake up next to you if we can just clarify that. Of everyone in the world, I've seen you wake up more than most other people. Which has been a handful of times. Okay, just go with me now. Let me get to the point.

The point is... Actually, hold on, this is funny. The amount of people who've seen me physically wake up is tiny. Yes. Because I'm almost always the first one up. Right. And I guess, but what I do want to say, because I want to teach this point, is when I have seen you wake up, you're not... You don't jump out of bed like this, right?

You have sleep inertia. Well, I do when I get up earlier than you. I do. I'm like song and dance. I don't believe it. It's a circus show. I'm like, it's another day. It's like the rooster from Peter Rabbit. Like, what? I got another day of life. The sun came up again. The sun came up again. This is amazing. No, I don't want to play that. The point I'm trying to make is you don't wake up like that. You wake up with.

Rachel Denning (07:59.821)
a form of sleep inertia as well. And you've developed the skills and habits of getting yourself out of that. You could very easily be, if you wanted to or didn't work on your skills, be the guy who wakes up on the wrong side of the bed on occasion. Which I used to have a bed, you guys, that only had wrong sides. And I would wake up on that wrong side and guess what? That would determine the rest of my day.

And so I'd go through the day in inertia, so to speak, is what we'll call it. And that was my life experience. This was this was decades ago. And at some point, I started meeting people or I'd have good days and I think, oh, geez, that was a lucky day. Yeah, like that's like once in a month. I feel good. And I remember just clicking like, wait a minute. I want to feel like that all the time. So why don't I?

And what I realized is like, if I want to feel that way, then I need to create that feeling. Because again, this is this beautiful reality check of how much power you have. You get to determine how your day goes. Now, if you hand over that power to circumstances and people in your bed or whatever, the guy who cut you off in traffic or things didn't work out right or somebody was mean. If you hand that over, then yeah, you don't have the power anymore because you gave it away.

But if you take it back and say, no, no, no, how I feel today is up to me. And then then here's what's fascinating. I had to go through this journey. I would wake up and not feel very good, but I would be like, wait a minute, but I want to feel good. So why don't I change it? If I didn't wake up in the state I want to be in, I don't have to remain in that state. I think that's one of the most powerful messages we can share today. If you don't.

fall out of bed into this happy jovial meaningful state you want to be in, you can change that. You can transform that. You have that power. So you're right. I don't wake up in this energized, awake and alive state, but I get there quickly. With very specific routines, habits.

Rachel Denning (10:22.061)
things that you do. That I've drafted over years, realizing like, what is it that makes me feel good? So here was the thinking process, and I want you to go through the same thing. What do you want most of your days to be like? How do you want to feel? What do you want your life to be like? Because like we talked about in the last episode, your life is the sum total of your days. So what do you want your life to be like?

And I realized for me, I was a shy kid. I was, you know, mostly discouraged, walked around my head down, like, I hope life works out. It's kind of sad. You know, some days are more like Eeyore than anybody else. But I'm like, I don't want to live like that. I want to have fun. I want to laugh. I want to do hard things. I want to get intense. I want to have a full range of emotions. I want life to be awesome. I'm like, okay, what are the things that help me get there? I want to be inspired. I realized I love learning and learning lights me up. I want to be...

I want to be inspiring. And we talked about this in this training we did for parents. Our coaching. Our coaching for extraordinary family life coaching. We talked about how if you want to be inspiring, the prerequisite for that is to be inspired. And I'm like, boom, that works for me. That always works for me. Like it doesn't matter what state I'm in, what mood I'm in. If I read something inspiring, it changes things for me. Like if I'm discouraged, things aren't working out or big disappointment, but I sit down with...

James Allen or Theodore Roosevelt or Jim Rohn. Like boom, that was one of the things. Yeah, and that totally works for me too. In fact, I mean, I don't know that we've met anyone that doesn't really work for it, which is why we do our morning routines. We're so intentional about those because they work. When you read something inspiring in the morning, it changes your state and inspires you. And then, which is, you know, we also call that bibliotherapy.

which you did a program on both of those. You did the amazing morning method, the morning routines, and the biblical therapy. And it just talks about how when you strategize your morning and use those things to help you get in a happy state, I mean, that changes the rest of your day. Yep. It takes practice. It takes some awareness and some consciousness to wake up. Instead of just...

Rachel Denning (12:44.045)
falling into your day or as many many people in our coaching community and people we work with they often describe it as chasing their day they feel like they always wake up behind and they're chasing the day and they're feeling they're trying to catch up so they wake up right into their stuff especially if you have kids and they wake you up yeah there was years when they would wake me up and it's right into caring for them like as soon as I'm awake which was generally not very

gentle or pleasant. It's demands, demands, demands, demands, demands. And yeah, you feel that you're just chasing the day and you're behind. You haven't been able to do anything you need or want to do because you're just jumping right into all the demands. And some of you might start work very early in the morning. I have some coaching clients that they have to start work really early. Or maybe right now in this time of your life, you're carrying a massive load and it just demands a lot of time and attention.

So we get it. We understand. And there was one time where I was, when we were first married, I was milking cows at 3 30 a .m. in the winter in the mountains. That's an early start to a day, right? So you don't get to wake up peacefully and do your thing. But the point is, what, well, we'll get into that, right? We understand that there's different stages of life and family life.

but I also want to firmly and kindly insist that's no excuse. There's other ways around it and this is your responsibility to find the way that works for you to make that happen. So what is it you want to feel and experience most of the time? What helps you get there? How do you integrate that in the morning? So circling back then to what I was saying about awareness and consciousness, you have to wake up.

And it almost, for me now, it doesn't matter what state I wake up in. I might have had a nasty dream or not slept well or underdone potatoes or whatever, you know, from Scrooge or whatever it is. Like, okay, you're sore or tired or groggy, whatever, it doesn't matter. You wake up and it's almost irrelevant, the state you're in. And then you...

Rachel Denning (15:05.229)
Intentionally go into and it's easier if you set this up ahead of time and you practice it becomes a ritual Because then you don't get up and go should I do my morning routine? I don't feel like it that that's not up for questioning You decide when you're clear You decide what you do you wake up and you go into it whether you feel like doing it or not Now if you decide to change this is a side note if you just decide to change your morning routine, that's fine But you should decide that later

From a good state. From a good state. Yeah, you gotta be in a really great state. You're like, yeah, I'm gonna make an adjustment. Don't do it when you wake up and you're like, oh man. I'm gonna change my morning routine. I stayed up too late last night watching, so yeah, really, you know, today I don't need to read or exercise or do any of that. I'm just gonna go sit in the corner and sulk, because that's what I feel like doing, right? And it doesn't help. That's a good point. The morning routine is not about what you feel like doing.

It's about knowing what makes you feel good and committing to do that in the morning. Whether you feel like it or not. Whether you feel like it or not. And particularly when you don't. Exactly. So there are times I still get up, and you guys have been doing this for well over two decades, I still wake up in the inertia. I'm like, man, I don't feel like getting going. I feel, in the technical sense of the word, depressed, pushed down, weighed down, discouraged, unmotivated, uninspired.

Right. OK. So what. I don't like how do you feel today Greg. Get your butt going. Let's go. Right. And so you do these things that make you feel alive. Interestingly one of them the reason I'm wearing a jacket right now is because I take cold showers every day. That's one of them. And cold showers are awesome. If you ever feel like you just don't feel like doing things take a cold shower.

You will feel very differently after just a moment of that. I'm not joking. Take a cold shower. If you're lacking motivation and drive, take a cold shower. You will be motivated to get out of there. Holy cow, you will move and you'll feel a lot. If you're feeling just blah, a cold shower, especially in the winter, it's winter right now, the water came out of the pipes colder than ever. I thought last week was the record, today is the record.

Rachel Denning (17:31.117)
And I literally had to put a jacket on because I'm like, okay, my core body temperature dropped and I'm breezy. But there's some really cool science now coming out around cold showers. I read this like two weeks ago that they actually help with dopamine sequences. I don't know if sequence is the right word, but it helps with dopamine receptors being more active. Cold showers kind of help.

that and dopamine is what makes you feel good. So there's some direct science behind feeling good in life and taking cold showers. And I know most of you are thinking there's nothing that would feel good in my life about a cold shower, right? Especially in the morning. There's a lot to it. I do put cold water on my face in the morning. And I...

I am resistant to doing that, but I make myself do it because I know you take your cold shower. So I put cold water on my face. That's amazing. She dips her hands in cold water and be like, it's so cold. But wherever you're at, pick those things. So I don't like cold showers. This morning, oh man, I did not want to take a cold shower. I was already cold because I'd had a really great workout.

I'd come home and I'd cooled off, and so I already had the chills. But I didn't want to do it, but I do it, right? Another example I wanted to give is like, there's so many times when I wake up in the morning and I don't want to go work out. I don't want to work out, especially don't want to work out hard, right? Because I'm like, oh, no, I don't feel like it. And the feeling, the overall feeling and experience pre -workout and post -workout, like I'm a different person.

And it's not magic, there's science behind all of that, but by moving your body vigorously, you're hitting the gas pedal, so to speak, through your carotid arteries of sending massive amounts of oxygenated blood up to your brain. It turns it on, it activates, it lights it up, all your brain sensors go, it releases all these wonderful chemicals into your body. And then you're like, I feel great, and I'm ready for the day.

Rachel Denning (19:52.045)
And the same is true mentally and spiritually and socially. I mean, we'll touch on these elements today, but activating those things, unless there's something biologically wrong with you, which could be. No, I'm throwing that up. It feels like, I'm gonna throw that out there. And part of it, I'll be honest here, part of what's biologically wrong with you could be with what you're eating.

and your evening routines and sleeping poorly. Yeah, so yes, you're right. That could be things that are biologically wrong. Yeah, because you're like, well, I work down. I don't feel any better. Well, there's several elements which we're going to cover, but for the most part, if you're a decent functioning human body, there are ways to feel good. And why not? If you can choose to feel better, why on earth would you stay feeling less than better?

Yes, so there are very specific things you can actually do that will help you feel better. And this isn't just like faking it thing, it's physiologically changing the chemistry in your body. So that you're actually producing the chemicals that make you feel better. So there's a couple things I wanted to talk about. One of the things you said was, you know, no matter what your current life situation,

there's no excuse for not doing a morning routine. And I want to touch on that because in reality, you can start doing a morning routine tomorrow that's two minutes. And that's the beginning of making this transformation into creating mornings that go better and days that go better and a life that's fills better just by starting with a two minute morning routine. And along with that idea is,

You're not gonna wake up in the morning and start doing Greg Denning's routine. You're gonna wake up in the morning and, well, actually you have to start the night before. You're gonna sit down the night before and you're gonna think about the type of morning routine you want, the type of, the amount of time you have to do this morning routine. And then it's a, it's kind of a ongoing process and it's gonna be very unique, I feel. Like, yeah, there's some common denominators, but ultimately you're working with what works for you. Like,

Rachel Denning (22:13.805)
What is it that makes me feel good and how can I do more of that in the morning? And you've got to be really, really honest with yourself here. Like what is it that truly makes you feel good? Not what you prefer doing, your little preferences, like what actually adds value to you feeling great. Hey, let's wake up in the morning and have some chocolate, a bar of chocolate. That makes me feel good. Or avoiding cold showers.

Because here's what happens, you might be like, well, no, I don't really like working out because it makes me sweaty and sore. I definitely don't like cold showers. So I'm going to avoid those. That makes me feel good. Be honest with yourself enough to say, you know what, I'm going to try a cold shower. Holy cow, you're right. Afterwards, I feel so invigorated. I hate that blasted thing. But afterwards, I genuinely do feel invigorated. Boom.

There's your answer. If you move your body, especially if you're out of shape and you're getting into shape, you might not feel energized after a workout. You might feel dead and then you're like, why did I do that? I'm just tired of all day. And I get it because I've been there. But if it works and you work through it, then on the far side of this, after workout, you actually feel way better. You have more energy.

And you're doing more things. So I love what you're saying. Now, I do want to add to that, I want to add Rachel Dennings version. I love when you do this. I know. Because I have to add this because in my mind, I'm thinking of my own psychological boundaries to the things you're talking about. And I know it's all a progression for me.

And so starting out, if I don't have a morning routine and I have to start doing a morning routine by doing something I really hate, like taking a cold shower, it's not going to happen. What's going to happen is I'm going to stop doing a morning routine. Yep, totally agree. Actually, I 100 % agree on that. Do not start with something you hate. Yeah, so if you're trying to establish the habit of creating a morning routine, start with something you actually love. Yep.

Rachel Denning (24:17.197)
And I do that as well. I don't start with a cold shower. Something you want to do so that you actually want to get out of bed and go do this thing because it is enjoyable to you. Whether that's reading, I love to make, like one of the first things I do in the morning is make a cup of herbal tea that I then read. I read while I drink my tea. I meditate. So I'm doing things I enjoy and then you can work to the other things that work that are not necessarily...

100%. The cold shower is the end of my morning routine. Yep. Because I'm already awake, energized, and live, ready to attack the day and I take a cold shower. Now one of the first things I will do that helps a ton is move my body. But it's not, again, I'm the less active member of this group.

It's not your intensity of moving my body, it's my intensity, but it's enough that it gets the blood flowing. I have a rebounder. Things like finger wiggles. Yeah, like this. I'm like, ah, move my body. Blinking your eyes. Sometimes I gotta do, I gotta start there. Okay, blink my, open your eyes and wake up. Working into intensity movement here with my blinking. No, but I have a rebounder. I'll bounce on that.

you know, I will do like arm movements just to get the blood flowing in a simple way like that. Marching in place, stretching things, a little bit of yoga maybe. I think people would be really surprised how effective deep breathing is. Just breathing. Just some really deep breaths, just auction at your body and maybe hold your breath for a little bit. Just kind of wake things up. That is something I do. It's pretty awesome. Although sometimes if I haven't gotten out of bed yet, I just fall right back to sleep with my deep breathing.

So you might want to get out of bed first. Get out of bed, that's a good one. So start building out things that will snap you...

Rachel Denning (26:20.493)
Maybe snap's not even the right word. Some of you might want to gradually work into a slow wake up. I personally am not a fan of a slow wake up. Well, I am very much the slow wake up champ. Yeah. So two different methodologies here. I want to get going. So I wake up, I pee, and I go down for ... Wait, you get out of bed first. I wake up, I pee in bed because it's warm and it's like, oh, that's a weird ...

to start this day. Okay. Okay. Thanks for clarifying. I go to the bathroom and then pee. And then I go immediately for a large glass of cold water with lemon juice in it, which I also drink water. And then after I pee, the water to rehydrate your body and actually activate your body. And the lemon juice is helps cleaning out the detox that your body naturally does while you're sleeping. Right. So by the time I've gotten down to the fridge and a big glass of water,

Okay, I'm ready. That's what I was gonna say. Actually drinking water is another thing that helps you wake up. Now, this is an interesting other technique I actually heard of, the peeing part, because I read one time about, this was a tradition with the Inuit people in Canada and Alaska that...

At night, they would drink a lot of water or liquid so that they had to get up in the morning because they lived in a very cold climate. They did not want to get up.

But if they had to pee really bad, it made them get out of bed. So that's something I kind of do, although if you drink too much, I end up getting up in the middle of the night. You don't want to be waking up to pee in the night. Ideally you sleep through the night. But then you should have to really pee in the morning when you wake up. If you don't, you're probably chronically dehydrated. You got to be able to like, oh, I'm awake. And that's a wonderful thing. It gets you out of bed. Yeah, that's actually a good thing. If you have a problem getting your butt out of bed, drink more water.

Rachel Denning (28:24.943)
to help you get out of bed because that is once my body wakes up, I need to go and that helps me get up. So the things that'll get you going if you're really like I just want to go back to sleep is cold and light. So get some cold water, drink some cold water.

And light turn on lights. So I know you may not like it. Like open the blinds. Yeah, click on a light like if I'm really feeling the inertia and Rachel's still asleep and I go on my in there in our bathroom in our closet and I'm like I'm not feeling it I flip on that light because the light wakes you up Which is another thing your body in the evening you want to start dimming all the lights less screens less lights start turning things down and you'll actually go to sleep better but in the mornings BAM more light

Get some cold if you got a splash cold water on your face for a long time in an early marriage I was getting up between 4 and 4 30 every morning and sometimes I had to walk in there and just stick my head under cold water just to wake up and get things going and and again like it's so amazing to me within a matter of moments you can be like I don't feel like doing anything to like let's go in moments and if you don't believe it try cold water like it just works

Bam, bam, boom. I want to add to this. So, I mean, we're kind of making a list here if you keep track. But I want to add to this because one of the things that certainly helps me because when in this question that I received, it was like, how do you get excited about...

going? How do you? Good. You know, you wake up in this morning depression, how do you get excited about the day? So one of the things that I do that helps with all of these physical things we're doing is mentally thinking about anything.

Rachel Denning (30:16.141)
that would excite you that day. And I do this. I'll lay in bed and sometimes I have to think of something before I get the motivation to get out of bed. Maybe it's I'm gonna go write on my book or maybe I'm going to research something that's exciting me or maybe I've gotta work on this project. Like I think about, even if I'm not working on it right then, I mean if I can, great. But I've gotta think about why am I excited to be alive today?

And sometimes that can take some practice. I know for me and for a lot of people I've worked with, it's not that difficult to get into a mental emotional slump where it starts to seem difficult to have anything to be excited about or grateful for. It's surprisingly easy to get there, but it's also surprisingly easy to get out.

And so that's why you hear so much about gratitude practices. Those things are real and they are legit and they are viable ways to get going. So if you've got like, what are you grateful for? Genuinely, what are you grateful for? And at first you're like, nothing. Like really? Well, how about eyesight?

I want taste, I want smell. I want the fact that you have a pinky. Some people don't, right? And you can move it and you'll be alive. Like your kids, yeah, but my kids are troublesome. Well, yeah, but like - They're alive. They're alive and you have a chance. Like get going through that. What was really interesting about the things you mentioned, you mentioned writing your book, right? So it's -

That's a noble aim. That's a goal you have. That's a big thing you're excited about. We want to share something that's meaningful, it's purple. It's contributing. You talked about learning something. The human body, our brain actually rewards us with dopamines when we learn new things. So doing new things and learning and challenge, any of those things will automatically make you feel good because that's how your body is literally wired.

Rachel Denning (32:16.429)
And so you've got to have a goal. You've got to have a target, something you get out of bed to shoot for. Now, if you don't have a target, you might be listening to this and be like, I don't have a target, that's why I'm discouraged. Okay, that's your own fault. Because you can pick a target right now. There's nothing preventing you from picking a target. So if you don't have one, pick one. Or at least spend the time to think about the target you might want. Hey, what could I do? What could I try? Who could I become? And you can pick any kind of target from like, oh, I'm a...

lose some weight, get in shape, I'm gonna sign up for a race. I'm going to build something, I'm gonna learn a new skill. I'm gonna start doing, here's something, like this is a simple thing, you've heard us talk about this, like our Duolingo that we do as a family. Like I'm gonna start doing Duolingo, learn a new language. I'm gonna practice my instrument. Like get to a point, and I invite you to condition yourself to be excitable.

Come up with lots of things that you're excited about. My life is packed, literally packed with things that I'm excited about. And why not? If I have the choice to go through life like, just another day.

Sucks then you die. We just listened to this section from in this book right here on the desk where he's like Yeah, you know if you if you believe that life sucks and you die is like the the problem isn't with life It's with you like you have the problem not life and if you have a choice Let this really sink in if you have a choice between living an exciting life and living a lame life Why not choose excited life? But let me twist it a little bit

If you have a choice between being excited or being dull or unexcited, why not choose excited? It's your choice. And ultimately you get to choose. Now we'll play the victim to that sometimes like, oh, my life's hard right now. Great. Get excited about that. Seriously. Does challenge prevent you from being excited? Nope. We don't feel very well.

Rachel Denning (34:25.581)
Does not feeling very well prevent you from smiling and being excited, being grateful? Not at all. Right? So choose that. That's what's exciting to me. And I think you're modeling it perfectly. You're laying there like, okay, what can I get excited about today? What can I be grateful about? If you don't have something... That's a sign of a bigger problem. Yeah. There is a big, big thing. But it's... In my experience, I was working with...

literally thousands of people, that's an easy problem to solve. All it comes down to is picking something to work on. Which people don't solve because they just don't take the time or effort to actually sit down and think about what gets them excited, what they want to do, what they are driven or motivated to do.

I did a whole podcast on what I call the I don't know syndrome. Because I know this is coming up right now. I know there's people listening. I don't know. I don't know what I want to do. I don't know. Like that's a form of indecision, which is a decision. And so by you saying, well, I don't know and dismissing it, you've decided not to be excited and you decided not to have a target or name. So pick something and start with anything like, I'm not really interested.

Well, like, you'll never know what you're interested in, what you really like, until you actually start doing it and get into it. And you'd be shocked how much you love it once you're into it. So, like for me, I say across the board, I think every human being should learn another language and some kind of musical something or other. Singing, instruments, music appreciation.

Something because music's amazing. Some kind of moving your body, some kind of physical movement, exercise, anything from yoga to rowing to horseback riding. Yeah, something and some learning and then go on a challenge, right? So we're sharing common denominators. Like if you really are starting from zero and I don't think any of you who are listening are, but you could start from zero and tomorrow morning you could wake up with things to do.

Rachel Denning (36:44.973)
and be excited about. Which is a key ingredient to learning how to wake up. You have to know why you should even get out of bed. Because if the only reason you get out of bed is because you have to... That's lame! That's lame! And there's no reason, there's no wonder you don't want to get out of bed.

Okay, just to be fair, we've had times like that. Oh, absolutely we have. Where waking up sucked. Yeah. Speaking from experience, yes, we know. We've been there where waking up was hell sometimes because we would rather be asleep. Because our lives were bad. Right. And yet looking back, those were formative good times. But...

The part of what helped us get from there to here was continuing to be intentional about how we started our days. And that took some grit and discipline to force ourselves during those time periods. It was really just a few months that were the hardest part where we lost all ... This was in 2008 when we lost everything financially. It was just really low point. And there was a few months that were just incredibly difficult. And both of us ...

would wake up and force ourselves to go through things that we used to do because we knew they worked. And that's what I think ultimately pushed us through that and got it out of it is because we kept saying, no, I'm going to do this whether I feel like it or not. And of course, it brought us out of it. Exactly. So, but I want to come back to the question and this idea.

You can't.

Rachel Denning (38:37.101)
Start the day by moving into drudgery. There has to be a space between waking up and getting into the have to things of the day.

Okay, so I'm glad you came back to this because we'll have somebody will say like, you know, what if I'm a nursing mom? I got an infant that needs to nurse and I got toddlers or a man who says, well, I got to be to work at six 30, man. And I got a crazy workload. And as soon as I turn on my phone, I got messages of things falling apart. So in those instances, is that an exception to what you just said? No, absolutely not. Because, have you no,

I don't. Well, because... How do we do it though? Logistically. Going back to what I said, logistically it starts with just a two minute routine. Something. If you can start, because it starts like this wedge. If you can get your foot in the door, you can start pushing open more space for yourself. But it has to start by sticking that foot in there first. Absolutely. And so that's a two minute routine where you meditate for two minutes or you...

while you're nursing a baby. Even while you're nursing a baby. Or a little one wakes you up. Like it's just getting clear in your head for two minutes. Yes. Or it's praying. So the little one wakes you up and is like, I need food, I need food. Like, I don't know if your kids do that, our kids. The first word out of a conscious mind of a Denning child was, I need food. What's for eat? What's for eat? Our little guy. What's something for eat? And it was the first thing out of his mouth every single morning. And so you run, you get him some food. And if you have to do that, wait. And while he's eating.

You can take your two minutes. And sometimes I'll explain, OK, you're getting your food now. I'm going to go and I'll tell them, I'm going to go do my morning routine. Now that they're older, our youngest is five now and our oldest has moved out, I can do that and be gone for 15 or 30 minutes and it's OK. Now when they were all smaller though, I would have to go and be gone for two minutes. And sometimes I got lucky and it was five minutes or 10 minutes or more.

Rachel Denning (40:44.973)
You take what you can get, but the point is I did it. Yep, and you have to do it. And for the men who's like, I gotta get up and go to work. Wake up two minutes earlier. Yeah, two minutes. Or if you don't, you're like, oh man, I didn't get up and go. Don't just dismiss it. You're like, oh, I got a blade. I was tired. I didn't sleep well, whatever. You just dismiss it. Don't dismiss it. On the drive to work, do some quiet meditation. Just clear things. Listen to a podcast. This might be the man master class, right?

There's all kinds of modules in there that can be consumed every single day. And that's the point there to be consumed every day. So you jump in and you consume daily just a bit of information, even if it was just an inspiring quote. I've got a book here behind me. It's like, what's it called? One of the most brilliant thoughts of all time in two lines or less. Right? If at an absolute minimum, all you did was read one or two of those a day,

it would spark your brain's like, oh, that's fascinating. Let me think about that. It starts chewing on it and it activates things. You can do your breathing. There isn't anything that stops you from doing your breathing. There isn't anything that stops you from memorizing something or practicing some words in a different language or listening to something. If you're getting into music, you want to listen to something classical or beautiful or a piece, you have a song as piece or whatever. A podcast or an audio book. You can do all of those things. So don't...

Don't live behind your excuses. Because if you leverage it, if you make it matter, you, I promise you will find a way to do it. So it comes down to making it matter. And I mean, what I really want to emphasize on this, if we can step back for a minute and re...

re -emphasize the importance of the morning routine. The reason why we have to be intentional about designing this part of our day is because that's really the first step to being able to design our life. If there's one thing that we have been doing since we got married, pretty much, it's been reading and morning routines. And that right there, consistently doing those, took us from where we were, where we worked.

Rachel Denning (43:04.205)
you know, you worked a normal corporate job, we had a normal life, to now, we have our own business, we design our life, it contains the things we want it to contain. I wake up to whenever I want to, no alarm. That sounds gluttonous. But it's the lifestyle I want, I guess, is part of the point. Like, I don't have to get up to an alarm.

That's part of the life I wanted to create and I have that and I'm grateful for that. But it's also just representative of the rest of the lifestyle we've created. Yeah. And it's not you're chasing goals, working on all kinds of things. Right. Yeah, I am. For you specifically, you didn't want the alarm to wake you up. You just want to wake up. Just because I hate alarms pretty much. Into your day, right? Now I've trained and conditioned my body where...

for the most part, I'll wake up at a certain time without an alarm as well. You can train your body to do that. But you're right. You build your whole life around your mornings. Or upon your mornings. And so if your mornings are reactionary, your life is going to be the wake. If your mornings are chaotic, for the most part, your life's going to feel pretty chaotic. And so you lack that deliberate peace. And so...

When you stop to think, what about my life? Many of you are going to say, I want more peace. I want more deliberate action. I want more thoughtfulness. I want more harmony. I want more love. I want more excitement. And that starts by building that into your morning. By building more peace and deliberateness and harmony into your morning. That's how it begins. And so here's a couple of little hacks. Set up a space.

that makes it really easy to do those things. So we're sitting in my office. You can see I've got books all around. Right here in this drawer, I have a book I'm working on by Frederick Farrar that I read from. Then I have my journals right here that I write in. I do a lot of writing every day. We've got, so some of the books, my just all -time favorite go -to books would be As a Man Thinketh by James Allen.

Rachel Denning (45:25.741)
I couldn't recommend that book enough. If you're looking for something to read from every day, I read one or two pages from that book every single day for over two years. I don't think I missed during that time period. I just read and reread, just kept going because I wanted that level of thinking to be my level of thinking, so I just did it daily. I read a couple pages from How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. The Majesty of Calmness, one of my all -time favorite books. Right?

find the books that light you up and read from them every morning. Keep them right there. We have a book list. I'm actually going to include a link to it. And it will also include the morning routine audio program you did and the bibliotherapy program you did. So both of those pieces, like Rachel mentioned earlier, like if I could pick anything that was the transformative piece or element of going from being...

a teen on my own in a bad neighborhood broke, poor, hopeless, depressed, fixed mindset, like going nowhere, no targets, really stuck and looking forward to a life of poverty and struggle. Going from that to where we are, where we're going.

It was this element of the combination of bibliotherapy and a morning routine. And really that morning routine course I created was like, it's ultimately how to train, transform your entire life before breakfast. Like before you eat breakfast and start your day, you're changing your whole life. And that's the point of what we're talking about now. You can shift, however you happen to wake up, you can shift.

the state you wake up in to the state you want to be in. And then you can reset throughout the day. If you get knocked out of state, like go back to it. And you can set up these habits and these patterns, these rituals and routines to direct your life to be exactly what you want it to be. And why not live the life you want? And start by feeling the feelings you want. What comes first, you guys?

Rachel Denning (47:51.885)
Is it the result or the feeling? And we can go both ways, right? In some ways you're like, hey, do the thing and you get the feeling. But some ways you're like, feel the feeling and then you get the result. And I know that that's for sure how I used to think and feel that I'll feel better when my life is better. But then I realized that it doesn't work that way. You have to feel better for your life to get better.

And that's why morning routines were so critical and key for us because they were things that helped us at least during that part of the day we felt better in order to help create a better feeling life. Which makes perfect sense if we play that out with some specifics here so it's really we can conceptualize it. Will your parenting be more effective and more enjoyable if you feel great before parenting? Absolutely. Absolutely.

Will your marriage and your interactions with your spouse be smoother and more romantic and more passionate, more sparking, if you feel better as a person? Like if I feel better and I interact with you, is that going to be better for you? Spot on. And yeah, business too. And colleagues and neighbors and projects, whatever. Are you more likely to succeed in your project and your business if you're coming from a good place? Absolutely. Right.

And so in so many ways it does start with changing the way you feel. Okay, so there was actually one other thing I wanted to touch on and then I, that's all I've got I think, but, because I know for me, one of the big inhibitors I had, well, besides having children and being a young mom, a nursing mom, like that's obviously an inhibitor, although not an excuse to doing some sort of morning routine. But then even after that,

it was my own, I guess I would say insomnia or inability to sleep, which stemmed from one, a poor evening routine, and two, I would say a lack of understanding of my own sleep cycles. So I kind of want to just touch on those really quickly because I know that that can play a big role in, for,

Rachel Denning (50:19.885)
kinds of people I know it did for me. So one is you have to have, if you want to have a good morning routine, you have to have a good evening routine. Like you have to be getting to bed at a decent time. You can't be going to bed at 3 a .m. and think, oh, I'm going to get up and have a great morning routine. Yeah, that will actually have a negative effect on your day. And your physiology. Yeah, it just does. You'll physically, well, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you'll feel crappier. Yeah.

from not sleeping well. Right. So you should be, you talked about it before, like reducing light in the house, maybe closing windows, turning off lights, like we'll start turning off and making the lighting lower in the evening.

us and our kids. You guys should see me I'm running around the house flipping off lights trying to get the melatonin to start on my kids. Get the melatonin going on. And I'll even tell little girls no no don't turn that on because they want to walk around the house flipping all the big lights on. Melatonin, melatonin. They're like why? I'm like just trust me. Yeah. Eating shouldn't be happening late we try to at the latest eat by seven but usually we're trying to eat at 5 .30. I think a good target is no food three hours before bed. Yeah.

And some of you are like, sweet, I can eat till midnight. I usually don't go to bed till three. Don't do that. Yeah, so you want to stop eating because that prepares your body for sleep. You want to turn down the lights or turn off the lights. You want to, if it's a problem, stop using screens. I know that doesn't affect you. You can look at screens till later and still sleep great. And yet I still, I do strictly limit that. I don't have my laptop open cranking away.

you know, right as I'm going out to bed. Yeah. Where, yeah. So that makes a big difference. And then there's also, I read this book that made a big difference for me, which will be on the book list. It's called The Power of When. And I realized with me, because I, first of all, I was a young mom. When, W -H -E -N. When, like W -H -E -N. First of all, I was a young mother. And so I...

Rachel Denning (52:30.733)
slept whenever I could because you sleep when your baby sleep and they wake you up and you know that it's just off but then once I was actually sleeping through the night I was trying to sleep on your schedule because I thought that was a good schedule and it is but it's a good schedule for you when when I read this book I realized it wasn't a good schedule for me because I am more of a night owl it's fundamentally based on body types yeah well body types but it's chrono

cycles that they say relates to when human beings lived in tribes essentially and you needed different people to be awake at different times in order to protect the overall tribe. So it's like a thing that there's at least four different type chronotypes of sleep that ties in to sleep cycles. It doesn't just relate to sleep, it relates to other things as well. One of the things it relates to is a sleep cycle. Fascinating. So for me,

Turns out my sleep cycle is later, so I should not go to bed until 11 .30 and sleep until six or seven. That's my sleep cycle. Yours is different, because you can go to bed at nine and wake up at four or five, and that works great. But what was happening for me is I was trying to go to bed at like nine or 10, and I would spend the first three hours of the night not sleeping.

Laying there trying to sleep. Tapping, turning, trying to sleep, worrying about not sleeping. And turns out if I go to bed later, at like 1130, I'm out and I sleep great. So that's something else I'm just going to mention if that's relevant to people because that definitely was a big help for me. That's cool. A little fascinating research. Yeah. I think there's one more thing I want to address that may seem unrelated because it's kind of big life picture philosophical.

I want to invite you to consider like the whole of your life and do you like your life? And do you have any, are you harboring any resentments? Maybe you've kind of just been tolerating too much. You've let things be a little chaotic or messy or off. Maybe you've been allowing people to mistreat you.

Rachel Denning (54:56.013)
You want to be so agreeable or you want to avoid confrontation. And so you've never put your foot down with your spouse or your kids or your parents or your in -laws or the neighbor, whatever. Like, is there something or you've been, you've been talking about this dream or this goal for years or decades, but you've never actually done it or you're, I don't know. We can come up with all these different things, right? Maybe it's the, it's the car you're driving. You hate that thing. You just would rather.

burn it to the ground. As you're driving around, you just keep hoping somebody runs a red light and smashes your car so you can total it and get the insurance money. Whatever it is. Did that happen to you? It's happened to me. Whatever it is, what happens is that gets into your head and it seems. It's subconscious. Yeah, it's into your subconscious, but you'll wake up just feeling resentful. You don't know why. You wake up and you wake up feeling depressed. You wake up.

feeling discouraged. You wake up kind of irritated, bothered, frustrated. You're like, what is it? I don't know, I can't pinpoint it. But often, and this is big picture stuff, it's because you're bothered. You don't like your life or you don't like yourself. We often get in this subconscious self -loathing because we're doing, we don't like ourselves because we're doing things that are unlikable. Or you don't like the way you look around and you're like, this is a pig stuff.

and you feel like a pig. And you're like, I don't want to feel like a pig anymore. Or you have goals and dreams, but you don't do anything about them, like actual things. Right, and so you sometimes get disconnected with reality of like, I'm gonna be an NBA superstar, and I'm gonna do that by watching video games of the best basketball. I'm just making up something silly up here.

But it's just so disconnected from you actually working on real skills. And your business is gonna explode when you're not actually offering any real value to the marketplace that people are interested in. You could be the best ostrich groomer on the planet. But if nobody in your state has an ostrich, it's gonna be a tough go, even as the best, you're the best. Right, you with me? And that just harbors a lot of resentment and frustration. And some of you are waking up just, ugh.

Rachel Denning (57:19.117)
because you don't like where your life is going. You don't like where you are going. And so in this instance, I'm going after here. Well, no, it's fine. I just wanted to add to this because this does actually directly relate in small ways because some of us, we don't want to get up because where are we going to go to have our quiet space or to read our books and we can't even find our running shoes and like.

You were talking about living in a pigsty. I mean, that's a real thing. If our environment is in such a mess that there's no space for peace or clarity or thinking or goal setting, yeah, we say what's the point? Why am I getting up? You feel hopeless because your environment is hopeless in that there's just not space for you to pursue something better.

And so the reason I bring this up is you might stop and say, okay, where am I feeling frustration or resentment? It literally might come down to like, we just need to do a purge here and get rid of a whole bunch of stuff. Life feels cluttered. It's literally cluttered with things. Boom. Or you might wake up and be like, you know what? I have been so irritated about the garage or the car or this neighborhood. I hate this neighborhood. Right. And I'm like, I'm out. And so like that becomes your target. And you wake up every day and like, okay,

Where could I move? If I like to move, where would I move? What's that gonna cost us? What's the logistics? What's gonna happen? And you start setting up and like, okay, wait a minute. If we come up with an extra thousand bucks a month or 5 ,000 bucks a month or 10 ,000 bucks a month, whatever your target is, now, okay, if we made an extra 10 ,000 bucks a month, we could live in that neighborhood. Now, some of you are like, dude, 10 ,000 bucks a month, that's a big jump in the neighborhood. But couldn't you come up with a way to earn an additional 10 ,000 bucks a month? Of course you could.

I mean I am dead serious. Of course you could. And if you did, would that change things for you? And if you've been waking up day in and day out and realizing you've been tolerating this house and this neighborhood and you don't like it and you don't like living here and you don't like raising your family here and this isn't the kind of life you want to live, own that crap and wake up and work on it.

Rachel Denning (59:37.869)
and watch what happens, because now you have a target. Now you're excited to get out there. Now you got something. And then you start building those things, and you get into that space, and you're like, okay, this, this is better alignment and congruence with who I am as my best self. I know that was big and philosophical, but it's a critical piece of this underlying, like, what are you waking up to? Right, because. Yourself! Essentially, that is what we're trying to do. I mean, the morning routine and learning how to,

how to wake up is just one other approach to learning how to have more congruence in your life. Yeah. Love it. Okay, try this. Try all this stuff and let us know how it goes. Connect with us on social media, send us emails, tell us things that work with you. It's a big experiment. So don't be afraid to try and fail. You might try something like this doesn't work for me. Whatever.

Keep trying, keep experimenting, keep going to figure out what works for you. Again, that's why we do the coaching, because we can address specifics and cover things like this. That's why I created the Be The Man Masterclass. It's why we do this podcast and the videos, our YouTube channel, like all of it. And share this. My guess is, well, because especially because of coaching, like this comes up all the time. Like evening routines, sleep quality, and morning routines are so common right now. And...

I'm sure it's coming up in your conversation share this if you found this helpful share it Tag us take a screenshot of it pass it along like help people out. Let's let's get this out there so that that your family our family our communities are Living purposely like that think about that think about if a if a bulk of people were waking up Deliberately each morning how that would change the quality of life?

The quality of our communities, our churches, our extended family, the groups we belong to. Massive transformation. And it's possible, and the coolest thing ever, is it can start tomorrow morning. That's how cool this is. Even if it starts with two minutes tomorrow doing something that snaps you out of sleep inertia and gets you going. Step number one.

Rachel Denning (01:02:02.285)
remove the wrong side of your bed. So just this term and right now your bed no longer has a wrong side and you get up and get after it and make your days the way you want them to.

Rachel Denning (01:02:19.693)
Okay, love you guys, great shopping.