Mornings Matter: How to Create a Morning Routine that Sets You Up for a Great Day Featuring Jennifer Dukes Lee

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Life Audio. Hey, there, I had the creak more here. Thanks for listening to the Compared to Who podcast. Today we're talking about mornings. Do you ever think about your morning? You might think about bedtime, or what to eat during the day, or what you have schedule for the day, But how intentional are you about your morning? And are you intentional in a way that will set you up to have a good day spiritually, physically, mentally, all the things. Today my guest is Jennifer Duke Slee. She's a best selling author, speaker, and a morning evangelist from Iowa. She's the author of several books Growing Slow, It's all under control stuff I'd only tell God. And today we have a great conversation about how we can look at our mornings as a time to set intention for the entire day. So if your mornings need some inspiration, not shame, no shame or blame here. This is an amazing conversation. I think you're going to enjoy it. Hey, our forty day journey for the Spring started last night, but it's not too late for you to join us. You can watch the replay of the first week. If you are ready to stop struggling alone, go to improvebodymage dot com and you can learn more just click the four to day Journey tab. Oh, we'd love to have you join us on this journey. Now, let's get to today's episode with Jennifer Dukes Lee on how to Love Your Mornings. Jennifer Dukes Lee, thanks so much for being on the Compared to You podcast today.

00:01:40
Speaker 2: Here we are again. I love getting to talk with you.

00:01:44
Speaker 1: Yes, it's always fun. We've talked about some interesting topics over the years. Control. I know that was one of them. I can't remember what the others were.

00:01:55
Speaker 2: Maybe it's growing slow.

00:01:57
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe yeah.

00:01:59
Speaker 2: Only tell God like the things that we would tell on I don't know. I can't remember for sure.

00:02:03
Speaker 1: You know, like I've known you since you wrote Love Idol back in the day. That's a fantastic book. Now an aging book.

00:02:13
Speaker 2: Like I'm twelve years old.

00:02:15
Speaker 1: Yes, crazy, how fast time has blown up?

00:02:18
Speaker 2: I know.

00:02:19
Speaker 1: But today you have a springing book coming out called How to Love Your Morning. I'll hold it up for the YouTube audience, and I thought it would be super helpful for us just to talk about, like what does it mean to be intentional about our mornings?

00:02:36
Speaker 2: Right?

00:02:36
Speaker 1: You spend a lot of time on the show talking about what does it mean to be healthy? And that's more than just like what you eat and how you exercise. Those are part of it, but like there's physical health, there's also spiritual health, there's mental health, and kind of what we do every morning. It really does set the trajectory for our days.

00:02:56
Speaker 2: It does, yes, and I think sometimes you can get into a routine of just waking up and immediately sort of running over the list of things that are weighing your mind down, or just jumping headlong into the chaos. You know, maybe kids that are running down the hall or out the door and you yourself are trying to get ready for work, or you wake up to grief, you wake up to anxiety. There's so many things, and we all know as Christians that it would be super helpful to start with a whole bunch of healthy practices first thing in the morning, but we kind of wonder do we have time to do it. We get overwhelmed thinking that a morning routine has to look like the one that we've seen on Instagram. Wake up at five am, run a half marathon, iron your bed sheets, have a gourmet breakfast on exeget the entire Book of Leviticus and so on before like eight o'clock, and that's just not realistic for most of us. But what is realistic and what is possible are what I really outline in this book and why it's important to answer your question, Heather, why does this matter? What I know to be true is that when we do these things at the beginning of the day that are healthy, in particular, when we meet with God at the front end of our day, the rest of our day automatically has to level up to meet God. And so that is to say that in the morning you have a really incredible opportunity to set your daily intentions and expectations around the heart of God. So for the remainder of your day, the best things that happen are made even better purely by you having developed a morning awareness right away that the blessings that come your way later in the day are not by chance, they're from God. And then also that the worst things of the day that will come to all of us, that the worst things are made more bearable because that very morning you already assured yourself of God's presence, protection, provision, and promises. It's really important to be intentional about our mornings.

00:05:13
Speaker 1: And I feel convicted maybe with like, oh, I don't know, I couldn't even guess a percentage of the audience because I feel like what happens most mornings is I grab my phone and I start scrolling and I grab my phone. Honestly, Jennifer, I grab my phone to read the Bible, because I read the Bible on the Bible app most of the time I'm doing a plan with people. And but first, I mean, my finger just goes to all the wrong places firs, right, I mean, for I know what, I'm like, Oh there was there was twenty minutes whoa yeah, and you have a liturgy in here for what's it called? Like the liturgy of the screen something or else?

00:05:57
Speaker 2: Save us from our screen?

00:05:58
Speaker 1: Name us from our screens?

00:06:00
Speaker 2: Are brilliant.

00:06:00
Speaker 1: But I mean I think a lot of us do that. Now, Why is that not the most helpful thing for us?

00:06:08
Speaker 2: Well, obviously it puts you into that whole fight or flight mode. As soon as you wake up. We know that on our phones are going to be notifications things that, whether it was news or people that have texted us, maybe the boss saying can you come in earlier? Some things it just feels like avoidable, like I need to check the phone to make sure that school isn't canceled two hours late due to snow. I mean, so much of our life is on that phone, you know, like whatever, you know, we're counting our macros, where like our workouts are on our phone, our Bibles are on our phone. It is so hard to live a kind of analog life. So figuring out how to not just throw the phone across the room, although sometimes that might not be work, trying to figure out a balance, you know there, maybe it is that you just have that phone across the room where you you know, you'd have to literally get up and go get it, or maybe even in another room. There is this thing called an alarm clock. I don't know if you remember those.

00:07:11
Speaker 1: You plug in and you said, can you buy them on eBay?

00:07:14
Speaker 2: Yes, and you know you could. You could have those and then you know, discipline yourself too. Then when you wake up that even if it's just for the first three to five minutes that you pray, Lord, I give you this day. Before I pick up my phone, I'm gonna come before you and read a short devotional. You can get to the Bible on your app later, but maybe like finding these analog ways of just being present might work for you. That said, there are ways to use your phone that can be a really great tool to help you grow in faith, and I've got a lot of those in the book too, So I feel you, Heather, And it takes it does take a lot of discipline, and I don't always have that discipline either. I do the same thing, I hit the wrong buttons.

00:08:00
Speaker 1: But it's such a good reminder, and I mean, especially for women who struggle with comparison and body magicues. If you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is start strolling Instagram and seeing other women's bodies and other women looking perfect, and then you get out of bed and look in the mirror like you're gonna have an issue.

00:08:20
Speaker 2: That's right, And that's like the whole morning this whole morning routine industry. Like if you go look up hashtag morning routine, you get this idea of what it's supposed to look like, and my mornings do not look like that. I mean, I wrote a book on mornings, and you would believe how hard it is to think through how to market that and not try hard. I couldn't try if I wanted to make my morning look like something from a Pinterest mood board. My hair is like sticking out in seven different directions. I'm shuffling to the coffee maker. My house is like there's parts of it that are so out of date. Nobody wants to see that in their Instagram squares. But when we compare that reality to what a morning routine is quote supposed to look like, we can feel like we're failing before the day even begins.

00:09:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, agreed, agreed, And I was laughing. I loved your little like run through of you know, the breakfast and exegeting Leviticus and the one I heard like that it was a spoof on it, but it was like I made myself a healthy breakfast and then I completed my intermittent fast until noon. It was like all these contrary things, like, you know, because there's so much contradictory information out there for women, right, and so it just highlighted all of those And yes, I've seen all of those reels and it just makes you feel like, oh, well, forget it.

00:09:41
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:09:42
Speaker 1: And yet as people who were designed who bear God's image, designed to commune with him right man, waking up and doing that practicing that is so important. You have these arc types. Yes, in the book, I couldn't figure out who I am. I think I think I'm the daybreak one. But can you just give us a little taste we find about these arc types because people love like a quiz and what their type is.

00:10:19
Speaker 2: Well, the good news is that you, Heather, can take an assessment at how to love your morning dot com forward slash resources. That's what I was missing, That's what that's what was missing, So that'll help you. But as I go through these briefly, listener, you may identify with one or more than one. So just a backstory on this. When I was writing the book, I wanted to find like a fool proof, one size fits all, tried and true morning routine that would work for everybody. And it became pretty clear pretty quickly that because we all have different seasons of life, and even that we all have different interests, we all have different things that motivate us to get up. I'm like, I'm curious, not gonna to be such a thing that's going to look different for everybody. But what I did find is that we fall tend to fall into four major personality types what I call archetypes. But what I did find is that we fall tend to fall into four major personality types what I call archetypes, and none of them is superior to another. There's one that's related, for instance, to Bible reading and meditative work, and it can seem like, oh, well, that must be you know, that person must be better, God must love them more if they do that right away. It's not true. So I'm just going to walk through these and then maybe we can talk about which one you are, because I'm really curious. The four are number one daybreakdoer. I guess you said you think maybe that one. So this person is really ready to hit the ground running. They feel relaxed when they have a clear sense of purpose, like this is what is going to happen today, I'm excited about it. They're actually probably really productive in the first hours of the day, so the way they may want to begin their day is just a com plishing a few morning tasks, whether it's just like quickly reviewing a to do list, like writing down some intentions. That the risk for a daybreak doer can be just to skip all the other things like skip all meditations, skip all Bible reading, and this jump right into doing, which isn't healthy, so you have to kind of pull back. But knowing that you are a daybreakder and that that's what motivates you to wake up can be a really powerful thing. The second one is a morning mover, and this person functions best if she can get moving right away in the morning. So she's got a hit work out with her friends, she likes to take a two mile run through the neighborhood, maybe a stretch routine in the living room, and is something that really motivates her, kick starts her mood, kick starts her metabolism. So that's a morning mover. And then there's the meditative mind, and this person is drawn to meditative prayer, Bible study, devotional reading, quiet activities with God. And then you know we should all have those in obviously, but the medadatea mind begins right there, which is cool. And then there's the social seeker. So this archetype craves social interaction right away in the day and it makes her feel connected, purposeful, energetic. This actually, this might sound surprising, but this actually might be a person who picks up the phone pretty early on in the day to text on social media. Let's say it's a widow who is a social seeker and their person is no longer with them, and they wake up to an empty echoing house. What a blessing to them to have like a group of five friends that she texts with every morning and says, good morning. Let's read our U version versus the day, and I'd love to hear what you guys think, or to go for a morning walk with your morning mover neighbor. And you're a social seeker and God honors that, Like, what a beautiful way to start your day. God is the embodiment of all of those. He is the ultimate daybreakdoer. He is the ultimate mover, the ultimate meditative mind, the ultimate social seeker. So when you start your day with your type, with an activity that's common to your type, what an incredible way to start your day. It's going to motivate you to get up and going and you can pick up the rest of your ritual from there.

00:14:22
Speaker 1: I love that for a multitude of reasons, but one of them is I think in the world of fitness and health and body image and all these things that I deal with all the time. I think some of us carry shame for not being mourning movers. But I've learned personally that, like just the way my cortisol goes and all those things that you have studied when you're in midlife, Like it's better for me to exercise between two and four in the afternoon. But like you said, watching those reels, it's like, oh, if I didn't get my work out in before six am, yeah, it doesn't even cut right. And so I really appreciate it from that standpoint. And then just you know, the affirmation that we are all created differently. I think I am a daybreak doer. I think that's me I am the I get started and then I'm like, oh, oh, it's going to read the Bible. Okay, I gotta stop now and do that. Because most mornings I do remember right away. But sometimes you know it just especially if it's if I wake up ten minutes late, it just messes out the trajectory of everything up. But yes, learning to pause, but then also learning, like I think for me personally, that time in the afternoon when I exercise is also a better reflective time for me, Like I am much more likely to go work out and then come back and then be able to sit and study God's Word. Yeah, okay, bring it down then absolutely.

00:15:54
Speaker 2: And so this is really important to what you're raising here, because I think that what some people are seeing is just how come you're just that you're saying it's okay to just settle for like five or ten minutes of prayer time and quiet in the morning. We need to be digging in the Word one hundred percent. We need to be digging in the Word. And also that deep study with commentaries and like a lengthy Bible study does not have to have to happen in the morning. I do want strongly encourage God desires to meet you in the first moments of your day, but it does not have to look like this sort of idealized version of quiet time that we've been sold as the ultimate way to connect with God. Again, I am an extreme proponent of biblical literacy, but that is different from starting your day out with God, giving him your day, giving him like your worries, and moving from there. It's awesome to move later in the day. It's awesome to study later in the day, and also to have like these brief but intentional moments with him at the start of the day.

00:16:58
Speaker 1: Yes, I love it wearing a T shirt that says m person in progress. So what does that mean? Like you gave us a little taste of why you wrote this book, but like what got you said on thinking about mornings?

00:17:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this T shirt is a pre order incentive for people that order a certain number of the books because we have Bible studies and books, so they've been really fun to sell or not sell. They're free. You get them free, including stickers if you buy a bunch fib or more. And we just wanted to have like a really fun, playful way of approaching mornings. But the truth of the matter is we are actually all mourning people. That was what I discovered when I started writing this book. I wrote this book. I think you asked, like, how did the book come about? Okay, So we were on vacation and college age daughters and I Scott was doing something I don't know, but we were talking about all the things we wanted to do that morning, walk on the beach, espresso, the breakfast, the Bible reading together and I said to the girls, I wish mornings would just go on and on. I wish they would stand still, I just there's so many things. I just love mornings. And Lydia put her hands straight down on the table and she said, Mom, you need to write a book about mornings. And I didn't even know what that meant, like, I wasn't going into it, like oh, like what. So while on vacation, I started my study of every one of the two hundred plus mornings of scripture. That took me a whole year. But I started on that vacation because I'm like, what does God have to say about mornings? And in Genesis I discovered that the very first thing that God created on this earth before anything else, was a morning when he said let there be light. And all throughout the Old Testament, God was telling people to get up and do hard things. Go walk around Jericho, do it in the morning. Abraham, get up in the morning and take your son Isaac up a mountain, really hard things. You know. David Moses a biblec over and over. I mean, then Jacob, he wakes up one morning with a blessing and a limb. You get to the Old Testament and we've got, you know, the hardest moment morning in all of human history, which was crucifixion morning, and a few days later we have resurrection morning, like key moments in the Biblical narrative happening on the backdrop of a morning. Then you move all the way to revelation and we are introduced once more to Jesus as the bright morning star. So through all of that I came to understand that God is a morning person, and because we are made in his image, we are mourning people too, not just like mourning people in progress, like my shirt says, but some people need just to be like Okay, maybe I can say I'm a morning person in progress, but we are mourning people. It's not about the time we wake up. It's about how we wake up. So you are a morning person. Whether you wake up at five am, nine am, or even later, you are a morning person. If you're an idol, you are a morning person. If you work the overnight shift, yeah.

00:20:22
Speaker 1: I love it well because the blessing of the twenty four hour day, I mean, we just we couldn't handle any more than that, right, We need that the clear cut brake of night and then that new every morning, that fresh grace, that fresh mercy, that start over, begin again, Like we need that every morning, and I think you know, learning how to really embrace that, not just drudge through it is a beautiful concept.

00:20:58
Speaker 2: It's so woven into scripture, the verse that you are referring to Lamentations three that says that his mercies never fail, they are new every morning. David writes in the Psalms that you know, weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Isaiah says to the Lord, you awaken me mourning by morning. It's so cool, like God has a soft spot for mornings. And I'm lot too as well.

00:21:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it.

00:21:29
Speaker 2: I love it.

00:21:30
Speaker 1: So I know you've got some really specific help in the back of this book. What like, what else do we need to know about this book? What else can we expect?

00:21:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, So through the book you end up customizing your mourning ritual. You come up with a plan that works for you that might not look like anybody else's, to help you start your day off right, to help you love the Lord, your God with all of your heart and soul and mind and strength. So that includes spiritual practice, spiritual practices, It includes mind practices, and it also includes strength practices which relate to our embodied selves. It's how we treat our bodies. Jesus had a body, we have a body. And I think that the Church has done a really good job of helping us figure out out how to steward our souls and how to grow in our hearts and our minds and our spirits. But God has something to say really important about the body. So the last part of the book is all about that. It's about food, it's about movement, it's about sleep. So the morning ritual helps you go through all of those things come up with a plan that you can work with as you move through seasons of life. Also in the back of the book, I have mourning guides for various seasons of life. There's a college Girl's Guide to mornings, working professionals, office moms, stay at home moms, retirees, empty nesters, little all kinds of guides that help you in the various seasons of life, whether you're single, married, kids, no kids, young or old. Love it and it's based on interviews with hundreds of women's in those stages. So I was like, I've never been a whittle. I think the Lord I don't know that experience, but I couldn't speak into their mornings if I didn't really hadn't done some research in understanding what a morning is like for a widow.

00:23:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. That's so helpful. Okay, last thing, as we talk about sleep, I heard you say sleep. I'm really fascinated with studying sleep lately. I got me an or a ring every morning. It's fantastic. I should be getting a kickback from the company because I tell so many people about it. But sleep, I think is one of the most underrated health habits that we have missed for decades. What did what did you find when you were researching sleep?

00:24:00
Speaker 2: One of the things that I found was the real rhythm altering impact on sleep from two major events, the Industrial Revolution and artificial light. So the Industrial Revolution sort of advanced this idea that sleeping too much was a waste of time, and it was seen as a sign of laziness. That's why we see people, I think even now, kind of wearing I only need five hours of sleep. That's maybe rare cases, but that's not really the science doesn't really bear that out. And then on the other side of things like this gas lighting that came into the streets in the eighteen hundreds, and then the light bulb. It meant that people could stay out longer, They could be out later for play, for work. No longer was our activity restricted to daytime hours. Now you could keep on going well into the night. And that happens now as well. That loss of or the innet action of the light, the artificial light, is believed to be the key reason behind the fact that we are three hours less sleep than we used to be back in those days. Three hours no wonder, we're so tired. And then you compound that with the fact that we participate in what's called revenge bedtime procrastination.

00:25:21
Speaker 1: Okay, what's that all right?

00:25:24
Speaker 2: So this is when you all of your day, you have been busy taking care of other people, think, taking care of things at work, taking care of things in the home, and you revenge bedtime procrastinate. It happens when you put off sleep, you procrastinate it and instead you scroll on Instagram or you binge watch another show. It's a way to decompress at the end of a long day. It's seen as a way to reward yourself with a little me time because finally, everybody else is takes care of it, and you can do this something for yourself, and it is having a profound effect on our sleep as people, and I really think especially as women who are a call to do so many things, and we're doing such a huge favor for ourselves if we decide this is how much sleep I need and making yourself get to bed in time instead of procrastinating and putting it off.

00:26:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, that's so good, right on. I mean, the thing about the aura ring gives you data around your sleep, and I've always gone to bed fairly early. I mean nine thirty were like, you know, we're in bed, But I thought, because I was in bed from nine thirty till let's call it six thirty, that I was, you know, getting that many hours of sleep, and now wearing this ring getting my gnostics. Like some nights I'm in bed even longer than that and only getting seven and a half hours of sleep or eight hours of sleep. So it's fascinating to just like really know what's going on and realize, oh I will, oh goodness, I have to go otherwise I'm just not getting enough. And it does make such a difference. So yeah, it makes the difference to my morning.

00:27:15
Speaker 2: It's fun. So many of the right things though, Heather, one of the things that sleep specialists recommend is setting a consistent bedtime and wake up time. And I hear you saying that you know nine thirty, you know that that's the time when you need to go, and you know that you're going to wake up around six thirty, So your day presumably starts a little less chaotic than if you were to just decide, well, you know what, I'm going to push it off till eleven o'clock. So whos to you?

00:27:42
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we keep learning, right, Yes, that's for sure. Keep learning how to navigate aging, I think is part of what I'm navigating here too, well, Jennifer, How to love your morning, faith filled habits to build a life of joy and purpose one day at a time. Is the buck. It's available April seven, you said, And I know it's available all the places. Tell us again about your pre order bonuses and the quiz.

00:28:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the quiz. You can find out how to Love your morning dot com Forward Slash Resources. If you buy one book or two or three or four, you can get a digital download called the Morning Survival Kit. But if you order five or more, you can get this T shirt Morning Person in.

00:28:27
Speaker 1: Progress and it's so cute if you're just listening.

00:28:31
Speaker 2: And then these morning person in progress stickers. So I have a Bible study too. A lot of people are getting They're like, well, we're gonna go ahead and do this Bible study anyway. So if you did, like two books and three Bible studies or five Bible studies or whatever.

00:28:46
Speaker 1: So yes, awesome, and they're all available everywhere books are sold.

00:28:50
Speaker 2: That's right.

00:28:51
Speaker 1: Great. Oh well, Jennifer, thank you so much for being on the show today, Thanks for having me, and thank you for watching or listening. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and start living.

00:29:00
Speaker 2: Bye.

00:29:01
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