- Hey, you early bird.
It's okay, just fake it till you make it.
(upbeat music)
Hey there, welcome back to AmyTV.
If you've been around here for awhile,
then you know I like to make the most out of every day
by waking up early somewhere between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m.
Okay, unless it's the weekend,
in which case, I absolutely sleep in.
Obviously.
I'm not a robot.
Getting out of bed before the sun comes up
can be really challenging.
So what you decide to do during those first hours
of the morning to keep you out of bed
are extremely critical.
So today I'm sharing my early morning routine
so you can kind of get an idea
of what I do to make sure I stay on my A game
and start my day off right.
Hopefully it can be helpful for you.
Before we dive in, make sure you subscribe to this channel.
I make new videos every Wednesday and Sunday
and I would love to have you back for the next one.
So my early morning routine.
First, I always dread the sound,
but it's not a bad sound, of an alarm.
Let me tell you why.
My phone is my alarm,
but my phone is not allowed to sleep with me.
So, my phone stays in my office,
this room right here,
every at least Sunday through Thursday night, okay?
If it's a week night, if it's a school night,
that phone is tucked away in another room.
I might go a little rogue on the weekend but not usually.
I actually kind of like putting it in here no matter what.
But there are nights when I don't on the weekend.
Friday night I might do a little extra scrolling.
So when the alarm goes off I'm forced
to not only get out of bed, but to leave the room,
which requires a lot of steps.
Steps that are very difficult to do
if you are waking up that early in the morning.
But, it's the first challenge I give my body.
So if we get that far, we're moving right along.
I turn off the alarm in my office
and I keep it off, I don't snooze,
and I leave it in my office.
I don't wanna touch my phone yet.
I've got other things that are much more important to do.
So then I go to the kitchen and I tiptoe around Lucy
who I'm hoping will sleep a little bit longer.
She's pretty good at that, but I swear these days,
the moment she smells me she just wakes up right away.
I don't want her to be a part of my morning routine
until I've at least had my lemon water.
So, that's the first thing I do.
I quietly put together a lemon water to wake up the body.
You guys know I haven't really been drinking coffee lately
so this lemon water, which I've been drinking for years,
is even more critical than ever before.
'Cause it's pretty much the only thing
that I'm doing to naturally wake up the body.
Water alone will, of course, do this
if you're very good at drinking water.
But I kinda want a taste of something,
and lemon is just so, so good for you.
So, that lemon water first thing in the morning
just it's the most amazing routine.
It feels right every single morning.
It's like, okay, time to wake up,
and just giving myself the purpose
that I have to drink all at least 16 ounces
of that lemon water by, you know,
the end of my morning routine
kind of helps me move things along
and get super hydrated after a really long
amount of time without water.
You don't think about it,
but you literally don't drink water
for like eight to 10 hours.
Depending on sort of how your night went.
That's a long time to go without hydration.
It's a long time.
So, this water is extremely crucial to my body waking up.
Not surprising to most, the next part of my routine
is to wake up my face so that I can proceed
with anything else, which means my skincare routine.
I've talked about this in great detail in the past.
And you can watch another video
to get updated on that entire process.
So kinda different about my routine lately
is I'm working out as early as possible.
Because I noticed that as I kept telling myself like
oh I'll workout after I do all of my other routine things
and then it got to be like nine and then 9:30
and then 10 o'clock and just hate working out mid-morning
because as nice as it feels because I can,
like I have that flexibility in my schedule,
it gets to be really late in the day
by the time I, you know, shower afterward
and then get ready,
maybe I have to make a video or something.
Suddenly, it's the afternoon.
So it just got to feeling like I was losing
a lot of my day by putting off the workout.
So I've been really trying to get into that workout
by six or 6:30.
That way I'm not even wasting a moment
getting it done and I can do literally everything else.
So the next thing I do obviously after working out
is hop in the shower, because otherwise,
you just feel disgusting, no matter how little
you made an effort during your workout.
You just feel gross.
The first thing I do in the shower is wash my hair
but that only happens twice a week.
I don't wash my hair more than twice a week,
sometimes I'll put conditioner in,
a little bit more but I swear if I just like let it
get wet or just keep it dry altogether and put it
in a shower cap I tend to do that mostly
throughout the week, I don't overwash my hair.
I just noticed it was stripping out color,
it was stripping out oils and it's just not a thing.
You probably know that that's best practices at this point
so nothing new, but I always put my hair up
in a towel to get it out of the way.
I have this weird complex about my hair touching
my body soap, I don't know why.
I just don't like the idea of it,
they shouldn't be together, so my hair is always
up in a towel or a shower cap if I'm moving on
to the next phase, and that next phase is the daily
essentials starter set from Dollar Shave Club.
I'm totally obsessed with this little kit.
It is exactly what I need for the rest of the shower,
sometimes the only thing I need in the shower
if I'm obviously not washing my hair.
The first thing is the body cleanser,
it's the Wanderer body cleanser.
It is lavender scented which means I love it,
I love the smell of lavender.
I don't care what time of day it is,
it's amazing.
So it's kind of this combination of coconut-derived
cleansers, which I love coconut so I'm totally in on that
and vitamin-rich conditioners so your skin
just like feels amazing as soon as you're done using it.
I'm all about that loofah life.
I know a lot of people aren't but I do the loofah,
that's what I do.
So loofah and Wanderer body cleanser, perfect.
The other thing I love and I think you need to be
about this life is the One Wipe Charlies.
Seriously, you gotta hear this.
You know how sometimes you're in the shower
and you're like I feel like I want to get everywhere clean
but I don't feel like I have everything I need
to get everything clean because that's kind of
not something that I would ever want to keep?
Like I don't want to use a washcloth
in certain areas, I just don't.
These things are amazing because they are of course,
disposable, they are wipes and they have
that peppermint tingle that makes you know for sure
you got it all.
I don't think I need to go on and say anymore about that,
that is a reassuring feeling.
I'm all about the One Wipe Charlies.
And of course the Executive Razor and the Shave Butter
which are the things that I just like never
run out of, thank goodness for Dollar Shave Club,
oh my god.
Remember when we had to shop for razors?
So annoying.
Big shout out to Dollar Shave Club for sponsoring
this episode of AmyTV and you get to take advantage
of something pretty cool, the Daily Essentials
Starter Set is available to you for just five dollars
if you join as a new member, so you'll get everything
I mentioned including the body cleanser,
the three One Wipe Charlies that come with it,
the razor and the shave butter.
So all the details to that are in the description below
or you can go to dollarshaveclub.com/amytv.
The next part of my morning routine might depend
a little bit on what day of the week it is, again,
because I do a little bit of fake tanning here and there
and I love my Saint Tropez products for that
so I will pop out of the shower and kind of apply
some lotion that's specific to maintaining
a fake tan and if I need to apply all over
or if I'm just doing some touch up somewhere
that's usually that next step.
The skincare never ends around here, does it?
No it doesn't.
The next part of my morning routine is meditation,
so I have been waiting to do this a little bit
throughout the morning because I noticed when I did it
first thing, that it kind of made me wanna go back to sleep
and that was not ideal for staying productive.
So now that I've done the workout, I woke up,
I did the shower, I did the whole thing it's time
for just sort of a moment of get back to zen,
get back to chill, and have five to 10 minutes of silence.
And I've been using the Headspace app a lot more lately
than any of the other apps that I've tried.
I think that the voice is just so calming
so at least, I really have been shooting
for 10 minutes because I feel like if you don't have
10 minutes to just allow yourself to have that time,
you probably don't have a great life.
You're not very organized, you're not able to give yourself
some flexibility and man, it's just amazing
when you're able to just have that moment with yourself.
After meditation, I like to do some writing.
So one of the first things I've been doing
is just going over my affirmations.
So this is a little bit of like what are my goals
and what are the things that I'm going to do to work
toward those goals.
And that kind of starts my writing practice.
There's about five things that I go through
that I just rewrite that I already have written somewhere
but I just rewrite them because I think the practice
of rewriting something means you have to review it
and go over it, and that helps you stay in tune
with why you do everything you do, and you're more likely
to say no to things that don't align with the things
that you're working toward.
If you don't review those goals, review your affirmations
on a regular basis, it's easy to lose track of that stuff.
And from there I kinda just roll into morning pages.
I've been letting affirmations just start my morning pages.
If you're not familiar with the morning pages practice,
we've talked about it a little bit here,
but it's essentially just three pages
of anything that comes to mind, and I felt like
the affirmations were a really good way of starting
those off because otherwise you can tend to just
let your mind wander in other places that maybe aren't
as productive, and I know I'm trying to control
my morning pages a little bit more than I should
but it just has felt like it's such a better result
by the end because I feel like my head was in
the right place when I sat down and maybe tried
to epiphanize a little bit and just have something cool
happen as a result of just writing,
for three pages straight.
If you're not familiar with morning pages,
the traditional teaching of this, I highly recommend
you check out the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.
Just a great, great book and it talks all about
this morning pages concept.
If you're interested in sort of helping your creativity
come back in a big way.
So that is my early morning routine.
Hopefully it's helpful for you if you're trying
to figure out what the heck do I even do
if I wake up at five o'clock in the morning,
how do I make the most of that time?
So if you're watching this video and you really
just want that time to be for you,
maybe try a couple of these things to see how it goes.
If you enjoyed these tips, make sure you give
the video a thumbs up.
That helps me a lot, that tells me that you enjoy
what we're doing here and if you do enjoy it,
make sure you subscribe to this channel.
I make new videos every Wednesday and Sunday,
especially if you like this productivity routine thing,
we do that quite a bit, so come back for the next one.
Don't forget to check out the Dollar Shave Club
Essentials Starter Set, the links to that,
they're all in the description below
and if you do join, thank you because you continue
to support this channel so we can continue to do
bigger and better things.
That's all for today, thank you so much for tuning in.
I appreciate it, as always, make sure you subscribe
for good vibes and remember to continue to go after
the life that you want.
Cheers.
(upbeat music)