If you’ve ever tried a CEO-style 5:00 AM routine, you know how quickly it can collapse. Life happens. Kids, pets or work interruptions make rigid routines nearly impossible. The truth? You don’t need a perfect checklist. You need a flexible morning routine that adapts to your season of life.
Why a Flexible Morning Routine Matters
I used to follow a strict version of ‘The Miracle Morning’ by Hal Elrod. I loved it – journaling, workouts, meditation, reading. But when I became a mom, everything fell apart. Instead of adjusting, I clung to my old system. I blamed myself for not keeping up. But I wasn’t the problem. The system was.
A flexible morning routine solves this. It allows you to feel grounded without demanding hours of quiet or unrealistic discipline. It’s designed to work with the chaos of real life, not against it.
How to Build a Flexible Morning Routine
The first step is letting go of rigidity. Instead of a checklist, I use what I call a morning routine menu. Here’s how it works:
- Make a list of activities that fill your cup.
- Add them to your task system. I use Asana.
- Block time on your calendar labeled self-care.
- Choose from your menu daily, depending on your energy.
Some days I journal. Other days I do Peloton or yoga. Occasionally, I just stretch with coffee. The key is protecting the time block, not the items on the list.
This approach helps you enjoy the benefits of a morning practice without guilt when life feels heavy.
Protecting Your Time Block
When my youngest was an infant, I often skipped self-care. My therapist suggested I leave the house to get space if needed. That advice taught me to defend my time fiercely. Now, my one-hour block before the kids wake up is non-negotiable.
This is why a flexible morning routine works long-term. It’s consistent because it adapts to your life season.
Release the All-or-Nothing Mindset
The biggest mistake I made was thinking if I couldn’t do it all, I shouldn’t do anything. That mindset fuels burnout. Instead, one small intentional action daily compounds over time. Journaling for five minutes is still better than nothing.
You don’t need to “do it perfectly” to get results. You just need to do something.
Design a Routine That Fits Your Life
Whether you’re parenting, caregiving, or building a career, your routine should support you, not stress you out. Your flexible morning routine doesn’t need to look like mine or any influencer’s. It just needs to give you energy and confidence by 9:00 AM.
Remember: you’re not behind. You’re simply building habits that match your reality today.
If you want more support in building systems like this, check out my Capacity Clarity Hour mini-course. It helps you identify energy leaks and create daily rhythms that actually work, especially when you’re feeling stretched thin.
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[00:00:00] If you’ve ever tried a picture perfect CEO morning routine and lasted maybe two days before life got in the way, then you’re not alone. Those 5:00 AM morning routines sound amazing until you’re also responsible for small humans, pets, and a job, or all three at once. So in this episode, I’m gonna show you a way to build a consistent, soul filling morning routine without overthinking it and without needing four hours of silence and a sunrise yoga deck.
If you’re done with rigid routines that don’t work for real life and you want strategic ways to stay consistent without burning out, then make sure you hit subscribe so that you never miss a new episode.
Hey there, I’m Corrie LoGiudice, a keynote speaker, leadership coach, and upcoming author of The Five Overwhelm Culprits,
and I used to have the perfect morning routine. I wasn’t until I had kids. After that I spiraled [00:01:00] trying to keep it together and eventually realized that I needed to let go of what wasn’t serving me and ultimately create a new system that actually supported this season of life I was in.
Before I had kids, I had a very structured morning routine that worked beautifully. I had many years ago when I first started my leadership journey I had read Hal Elrod’s The Miracle Morning, and I loved his framework. Loved it. Everything from journaling to making sure I had daily workouts, to meditation reading, making sure I’m reading something every day, learning something.
All of it loved it. But once motherhood entered the chat, everything fell apart.
And the crazy part about all this is instead of adjusting. I held onto it for dear life because I absolutely loved it and I believed I needed it in order to be able to continue to perform at a high level. And as a result of that I blame myself, right? I thought I was the problem, and I was the reason that I couldn’t find the time [00:02:00] to do all these things that I usually did, and truth was I wasn’t the problem.
The system was.
Let me share with you what ultimately did end up working and how I now usually work with my coaching clients to create routines and systems that actually work for them.
First up is ditch the rigidity, right? Instead, embrace a menu of options.
So I started using something that I now call my morning routine menu. Instead of trying to force a checklist every single day that I felt guilty, if I didn’t get to check each item off the list, I created a list of activities that fill my cup, right? So a lot of these were the same activities that I loved in my Miracle Morning.
Everything from my morning movement to meditation, journaling. Reading, right?
So I created this list of activities and I added them into my Asana ’cause I do all of my tasks and to dos in Asana, and then from there, I gave myself a [00:03:00] Google Calendar time block, mine is listed as daily self-care. It’s non-negotiable. It is on my calendar every single day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And during the hour that I give myself, and for some, if you have more time, you can do two hours, three, whatever works great for you.
I’m a mom of four kids, so one hour is enough, and I choose from that menu based on what I have capacity for that day. If I’m not feeling physically great, then maybe I don’t work out, right, that. Or maybe I do yoga instead of my standard Peloton, but maybe then I really double down on doing something like reading or journaling.
Instead, what’s important is that time block is for me for my specific routine and whatever I need to do to make sure that I can perform at a high capacity throughout my day, even if I’m low on energy that day. So some days for me it might just be journaling. Most days it is Peloton. [00:04:00] I love Peloton and I love moving physically during the day, even if I don’t want to.
I know after I do it, I’m gonna feel so much better and it’s gonna carry with me throughout the day. So I make myself to it. Some days, like on certain weekends, it may just be a stretch and having some coffee. So I don’t put any pressure on myself though, to do it all right? It’s just simply, it’s a menu.
What do I feel like doing today to take care of myself?
So from here, it’s important to protect the time window and not the individual items, right? We’re not protecting the menu, we’re protecting the time that we have on a calendar. So for me, the time block is one hour before my kids wake up, right? That is my only non-negotiable. And let me tell you, this was really difficult because when my daughter is now four, she’s the youngest of my four, but when I had first had her and I was up all hours in the night feeding her and things were really challenging with sleep and whatnot.
My self-care time in the morning was one of the first things to go out the window, [00:05:00] and it was really affecting my mental health. To the point where I had a conversation with my therapist one day and she had told me, she said if you can’t get that time to yourself, get in your car and go and leave and go somewhere to get it right so that everybody else in the house can step up and actually like step in with the kids and help you.
So that was very difficult initially for me to learn how to block and protect that time and to set boundaries regarding it. But now it’s pretty much my only non-negotiable.
Now what happens within that hour is a hundred percent flexible, and having that level of flexibility is what actually gives me the consistency to make sure that I am doing something for myself, for my own morning routine to set me up for a successful day each and every day.
From here, it’s important to let go of the all or nothing mentality. This is the big one. I used to think if I can’t do the full routine, I just shouldn’t even bother. But truth is that mindset is ultimately what [00:06:00] leads to you feeling burnt out, mentally as well as physically.
But One small intentional action done every single day consistently over time is better than none. And it’s gonna compound over time.
So I’d love to know what is one thing that fills your cup very first thing in the morning, even if you only have a couple of minutes. Drop it in the comments, let me know. DM me on social media. I’m most active on LinkedIn I’m, in the process of building a new menu and would love to hear your ideas
and whether you’re in a season of parenting, caregiving, career building, or all of the above, you deserve a morning routine that works for you, not against you.
It doesn’t have to look at all like what I do or what other influencers do. You’re allowed to design a rhythm that matches your actual life and still feels like a confident, grounded leader by 9:00 AM
I.
If this idea of creating consistent but flexible routines is resonating for you, you’ll love my mini course Capacity Clarity Hour.
it’s a [00:07:00] quick but powerful training that helps you pinpoint your energy leaks and create daily systems that actually work, especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed right now.
Hopefully you found value in me sharing this today and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. See you next time.
Thanks for checking out the next step with Corrie Lo. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a review. Together we’ll transform overwhelm into action and we’ll keep taking the next step towards competent leadership. See you next time.