I Figured Out Why My Morning Routine Keeps Failing

Every night I have a plan for my morning. Hifdh, exercise, write a blog post, etc. They’re all tasks I set for myself to do before the daily grind begins.

Why the morning hours are important to me

For me, the morning hours are something I’m constantly striving to get. It’s not because I want the perfectly-sounding morning routine or to hear the twittering of the early birds. It’s because the Prophet (pbuh) prayed for us to be given barakah (blessings) in the early hours of the morning.

And so I really really want to be able to use that time to work on my growth – physically, spiritually and intellectually.

But for some reason, I end up waking at Fajr time so groggy and brain dread that before my mind can even comprehend anything, I’m back in bed snoring away even before my head hits the pillow.

I wake up 2 hours later and then it hits me, there’s no way I can do all the things I’d planned for. Now, the daily chores begin and I’ll only have a few hours to myself.

And it carries on, day after day after day.

It happened again

The same thing happened today morning and I’d had enough with myself. I spent nearly the whole morning thinking about this – what am I doing wrong?

Why am I not able to get those few hours in the morning – those hours ripe with barakah (blessings)? Was it because of my sleep cycles, or maybe the type of dinner I was eating? There was nothing drastically bad about them.

Then late into the afternoon, as I slowly got up from the couch to get ready for dhuhr, it hit me – I was asking the wrong question.

The actual question should be – why is Allah not allowing me to benefit from those barakah-filled morning hours?

And I knew the answer.

A sad realisation

I was actually living the answer in that very moment as I made my way to my prayer mat – 3 hours later from the start time of the Dhuhr prayer.

If I’m late to my five daily meetings with my Lord, then how can I expect to be given assistance to be in time for anything else…including waking up in those morning hours?

How can I expect My Lord to unlock the doors to these moments filled with barakah for myself?

An example

I see it this way — you are an employee of a company and as part of your job, you are required to attend five set meetings a day. At the same time, the company offers daily optional sessions that will help boost your employee profile helping you to fast forward into your career.

But you have to sign up to attend these optional sessions and there are only limited places. Would the employee who shows their dedication by attending all five daily meetings punctually and prepared be given first preference to attend these optional sessions? Or the employee that turns up late and unprepared?

(Allah is above any of these human examples, but I wanted to share this just to provide an example easier to understand)

The real answer to fixing the morning routine

It’s not fun realising you’re slipping up in things, but I wanted to still share this reflection. I think a lot of the times, in these scenarios we think the answer to ‘waking up early’ lies in getting more sleep or eating less for dinner.

These are important, for sure. But focusing on just the physical needs of our body will never be enough. A whole dimension of our body is being missed out — our spiritual needs.

I used to do the same too but over time I started noticing a pattern. The days that I spent doing more dhikr or my salaah was more punctual, etc. my eyes would shoot open a good while before Fajr. And there’s an energy coursing through me and my body is ready for the day ahead. This was regardless of whether I had 3 hours or 8 hours of sleep, 8 cups of water or none at all.

More times than we realise, it’s not our physical or mental health that is holding us back, it’s actually just a poor spiritual health.

So going forward, I know the only real solution to catching those morning hours is to turn up punctually to the five daily meetings prescribed to me. To exercise and feed my spiritual self through the actions that have been prescribed to it.

May Allah keep us all in the best spiritual health.

Ameen ya Rabb.

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If you reached till the end of this reflection, thank you my friend. I appreciate it!

I hope we get to meet each other in my next reflection too. Until then, if you have any thoughts about what you’ve just read let me know (in the comments or any other way). I’d love to start a conversation!

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