Morning Routine Tips For Chronic Fatigue | Stop Wasting Spoons!
Do you have a chronic illness, an invisible disability, and or chronic fatigue? And do you hate mornings with every fiber of your being?
By the end of this video you'll know four easy ways you can adjust your morning routine so you can stop wasting spoons and start having better days.
Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript.
If you struggle with chronic or mental illness and are tired of feeling alone, this is the place to be. You're not alone anymore. Subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when I post a new video every Tuesday.
So who am I to help you with your morning routine? I'm a fellow spoonie with POTS, hEDS, and several mental health issues, and mornings have been one of the banes of my existence since my health issues started taking over my life 21 years ago.
Mornings are still hard, but I finally have a morning routine that helps me instead of hurts me, and I want to share what I've discovered with you.
A couple weeks ago in this video, one of the tips I gave to reduce spoon debt was to wait to get out of bed for as long as possible every morning.
Why?
Because us spoonies take longer to transition from sleep to wakefulness and, more importantly, it takes longer for our bodies to acclimate to sitting up, let alone standing up to get out of bed.
So staying in bed longer helps our bodies and minds boot up for the day at a safe and comfortable pace.
What I didn't have time to talk about in that video, however, was what to actually do while you're lying in bed for that 60-90 minutes every morning.
And don't worry, I'm not going to tell you to stare at the ceiling and contemplate existence.
Nor am I going to tell you to meditate, because asking a spoonie in the process of waking up to meditate is like asking Baby Yoda to fix the wiring in your ship.
COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.
So what's a spoonie to do instead while they lie in bed and slowly sit up before getting out of bed an hour or more later?
Scroll A Social Media Feed You've Curated To Support & Inspire You
We all know doom-scrolling is a bad idea.
We all know social media in general can be detrimental to your mental health.
But as a spoonie social media can often feel like one of the only ways we can connect with the outside world.
And that's okay.
The trick is to ruthlessly curate your social media feed to include only that which supports you, and none of that which hurts you.
On your platform of choice (personally I use Instagram for this), follow anyone who makes you feel:
Inferior or Less Than
Triggered
Jealous or Envious
Worthless
Like you, your body, your ethnicity, your sexuality, or your beliefs are wrong
And follow people who make you feel:
Supported
Understood
Healed
Inspired
Alive
Like you, your body, your ethnicity, your sexuality, and your beliefs are wonderful
As spoonies, when we wake up, our bodies and minds are like old Windows 95 computers. It takes time for our bodies and minds to be usable for any sort of productivity.
So not only does it makes sense, but it's actually necessary to not do anything productive right after you wake up.
Scrolling a curated social media feed is the perfect activity for right after you wake up, because it doesn't require much physical activity, and it doesn't require much cognitive activity. It's an easy activity.
And as a bonus, when you scroll a curated social media feed designed to support and inspire you, once you're done scrolling for the morning and are ready to get on with your day, you'll likely be going into it with better mental health than you woke up with.
And if you're a fellow spoonie, you know how priceless good mental health is.
Comment below and tell me your relationship with social media. Do you already have a curated feed? Or is the idea that you can curate your social media feeds new to you?
After waking up in the morning, I scroll my curated social media feeds until my brain starts feeling alert enough to do something more productive.
Depending on how brain foggy I am, this can take longer on some days and less time on other days.
Either way, I wait until my brain feels alert enough to move on with my day.
The really important distinction to take into account here, however, is whether or not my body is also ready to start the day.
If my body still feels sluggish and useless, I'll stay in bed and start wrapping my head around my priorities for the day.
I'll review my goals, to-do-list, and schedule, and then I'll review my email and direct messages for anything that I may need to add to the list for the day.
I only get out of bed when my body feels ready and/or I can't wait to have breakfast any longer.
I take as much time as I need to go from sitting in bed to standing so as not to aggravate my symptoms.
Then, and this is just a personal thing for me, I do at least one chore around the house before I make my breakfast.
This is a habit I instilled a few years ago and it makes a huge difference for me because I'm so much less likely to do chores later in the day when I'm out of spoons.
So before making breakfast I do one quick-win chore, like unloading the dishwasher or starting a load of laundry.
Then I make myself breakfast. I've been having the same weird smoothie for breakfast for years now and it really helps with my POTS and Gastroparesis.
If you want the recipe, let me know in the comments.
And then you know what I do next?
I. GO. BACK. TO. BED.
Because getting out of bed was a feat and I've earned some rest already.
No joke.
I need rest already.
So I give it to myself.
I go back to bed and sip at my smoothie and continue planning out the rest of my day.
Long story short, your morning routine as a spoonie needs to be designed around helping you boot up for the day. It should be a routine that sets you up for success without costing you spoons.
You owe it to yourself to take the time you need to get going each day, to allow both your body and your mind the time they need to finish waking up.
Anything else will only set you back and make the rest of your day worse for it. Which will add up to more and more spoon debt over time.
Now you know exactly what to focus on when creating your spoonie morning routine.
And the next time you hear an able-bodied person telling you to meditate, journal, workout, read an advanced book, cook a healthy breakfast, and shower during your morning routine...
You can ignore them confidently, know that you're different, that those things are more likely to hurt you than help you, and you can get back to living YOUR best life (not theirs).
And in case you're someone who also struggles with procrastination and resistance, I highly recommend checking out my free Masterclass where I teach three powerful mindset shifts and one simple three-step process to get you unstuck fast.
All you have to do to get access is to go to this link and sign up.
If you liked this video, hit that like button and subscribe, and be sure to share it with your friends.
I'll be back next week with another video.
See you then.
Bye!
So here's a side note for you spoonies with chronic fatigue. Some mornings you just need to sleep in till 1:00 PM or later, and it throws off the entire rest of your day (and potentially the rest of your week and the rest of your month). 'Cause you made such a lovely little plan and you had priorities and you were gonna get them done at so-and-so a time. That was me today. It was not pleasant. But sometimes you just need to let yourself have a shitty day, and to recuperate, and to not get as much done as you had planned. Because if you keep trying to push yourself through on a day like that, you're just going to have more days like that in the future, which is really, really bad. Anyways, tata!