The Science Behind a Good Morning (For Dummies)

How to design a morning ritual that makes your body work for you.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but apparently, caffeine is not our morning best friend. In fact, drinking it as soon as you wake up does more harm than good.

But more on this later.

This is one of the few things I discovered over the quarantine as I sought to establish not just a morning routine, but a solid morning ritual.

Step 1 was, of course, to google it.

“X Things You Need to Do for a Better Morning”

“These Morning Habits Will Change Your Life Forever”

Different stories preaching similar things, while offering the same promise: This is the perfect morning ritual. Do all these so you can have a stress-free morning, a smooth day, and happy life!

And so I tried to build a morning routine that closely resembled the ones in articles. I decided to wake up at 5:30 am every day, do a short stretch, have breakfast, get some sunlight, and read a few pages.

As I was embedding this routine in my daily life, I couldn’t help but feel like there was something amiss.

It struck me that I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. At the back of my head, I couldn’t help but think, “Do I really have to do all of this every day? Should I continue? How does this even work, if it does at all?”

I’ve always believed that when people are told what to do without explaining why they even have to do them in the first place, it automatically feels like work. Pointless work. And if the task is out of their league, even downright intimidating and discouraging.

And that’s the challenge with these articles. When they tell us to do this and that, the morning feels like just another to-do list. So, rather than googling what morning habits were effective, I began to look into why they were effective.

Because of this mental shift, my morning ritual has evolved into something I actually look forward to waking up to. And I’m even more proud of the fact that I understand why it works — that it does boost my performance.

So, out of my love for the morning, I want to share a different approach to creating a morning ritual. Instead of blindly trying habits just because they’ve been repeated by multiple sources or because successful people do them, it’s much more helpful (and interesting!) to understand what makes these habits so popular in the first place.

There is no picture-perfect morning structure or exact formula. The only exact thing behind a good morning is the science behind it.

If you’re a morning person who wants to put more structure in their routine, knowing the basic science behind the habits will really help you to stay committed. If you’re not the morning type and have zero interest in being one, I completely respect that. But you may be able to pick up a few valuable ideas that can improve your overall wellbeing, no matter what time you wake up.

Hacking Your Way into a Good Morning

In my story, I suggested that your morning ritual only needs to pass two criteria: (1) It should optimize your performance, and (2) It shouldn’t make you want to kill yourself.

This story discusses the first criteria in depth. And it is key to understand that we can only achieve peak performance if our body is conditioned to do so.

Certain habits are suggested in the morning because they trigger hormones and neurotransmitters in a way that allows them to function properly, help our internal systems work the way they’re supposed to, and thus enable us to go about our day in a smooth, stable way.

In this comprehensive morning article, Professor Benjamin Hardy explains:

Your body is a chemical system — and the chemicals your body releases produce emotions… Your body becomes your mind because your physical body quite literally is your subconscious mind. And your subconscious mind makes up around 95% of your behavior.

Here’s the basic narrative: Chemical X plays a role in a certain body or psychological function. This function affects us in some form or capacity — energy level, mood, emotions, strength, cognitive ability, etc. — , which then drives our behavior. Thus, supporting or regulating chemical X sustainably improves wellbeing and performance.

So, the name of the morning game is hormonal balance.

And your star players are dopamine, serotonin, and cortisol.

Now, unlike that short burst of energy from caffeine, these chemicals can actually power you through the day.

If you treat them well, understand what makes them tick, get them on your side, and to act in harmony with each other and the other stuff in your body, they will do wonders for your wellbeing. They will cheer for you, boost your mood, sustain your energy, support your health and mental state, and help you perform at your best.

However, a word of caution: There is a multiverse of chemicals and factors at play when it comes to regulating emotion and behavior. And while not everything is within our control, we can certainly take steps that will move us in the right direction.

Your 3 Chemical Best Friends

Consider this: One common advice is to workout early in the morning. Finish a 45-min HIIT session. Go on a 30-min run. Do a 15-min vinyasa yoga. But it’s not about how long, how intense, or even what kind of workout it is. It’s about the fact that simply getting moving in the morning triggers the right chemical, in the right way, in the right places in your body.

In this section, I will introduce your three best friends. As I said, I don’t believe in listing down specific actions, so what I’ve included is a menu of principles to help you effectively “befriend” them. It’s up to you to incorporate them into your morning in ways that you see fit.

1. Dopamine to Fuel Your Drive

Dopamine is so high up there in the most wanted hormones that a diet was built around it. Seriously. The Dopamine Diet.

This is because dopamine is key to our daily motivation, productivity, and focus.

How easy would our lives be if we always woke up excited and inspired to get shit done, right? Though we think of motivation as some kind of resource we need to constantly replenish, science tells us something else.

Motivation is simply a reaction to stimuli. We are “motivated” when dopamine reaches a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens which predicts whether a good thing (reward) or a bad thing (punishment) will happen. This is what triggers us to act.

Motivators can either be intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation comes from doing something for the pleasure, challenge, and novelty of it — without anybody asking. External motivation, on the other hand, relies on some external push (e.g. recognition) or tangible factor (e.g. money).

Both kinds of motivations have their uses and merits. But being intrinsically motivated is often linked to sustaining long-term engagement, cultivating a sense of meaningful work, and inducing happiness from experiencing the “flow” state.

So, your morning ritual should help (1) regulate dopamine levels and (2) make space for intrinsic motivators.

Here’s how to nourish the dopamine environment:

• Complete a task (It can be as simple as making your bed)
• Do something you enjoy for at least 10 mins
• Eat tyrosine-filled food (Tyrosine is the building block of dopamine)
• Acknowledge small wins & blessings (Bonus: Here’s a cool tip from The Forge)

2. Serotonin for a Stable Mood

Known as the “feel-good” hormone, serotonin is even more, if not just as, popular as dopamine. But unlike the stereotyped dumb popular cheerleader in high school, this hormone does way more than just cheer us up. It also affects social behavior, appetite, digestion, sleep, memory, sex drive, motor skills, and cognitive functioning. Serotonin imbalance has been linked to a bad mood, poor memory, cravings, difficulty in sleeping, aggression, and anxiety.

When we wake up, we want to feel good, calm and focused. And we want to be able to carry a steady mood for the rest of the day. Serotonin helps us with that as long as it is kept at normal levels.

The hormone is made by converting the amino acid tryptophan. An important thing to note is that serotonin cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. So the only way to produce brain serotonin is to get enough tryptophans in there so they can “natively” convert to serotonin.

Thus, your morning ritual should help (1) regulate overall serotonin levels and (2) raise brain serotonin.

Here’s how to nourish the serotonin environment:

• Expose yourself to bright light
• Exercise (Any kind of aerobic exercise increases serotonin)
• Eat tryptophan-rich food with complex carbs (Carbs help tryptophan access the blood-brain barrier more easily)
• Get adequate, quality sleep
• Practice gratitude or a positive outlook

3. Curb Your Cortisol for Less Stress

Cortisol is the star of the show when it comes to dealing with stress. This “stress hormone” triggers the body’s fight-or-flight response upon sensing a threat or stressor.

The natural cortisol rhythm goes like this: As you wake up, the body starts to produce the hormone and levels rise rapidly within the first hour of waking, called the Cortisol Awakening Response. We experience a natural energy boost in the morning because of this cortisol spike. Throughout the day, levels remain steady, but may fluctuate (but not too much!) as we respond to daily stressors. Levels then begin to taper off at night.

Healthy cortisol rhythm and levels are what stabilize mood. But with the world we have today, it is all too easy to put those levels out of whack. The demands of our jobs, personal matters at home, social media, relationships, topped with the paranoia & complexities that the pandemic has brought upon our lives — All of these can easily put cortisol on overdrive — and sometimes, for an extended period — if we are not mindful enough.

Too much cortisol makes it difficult for our bodies to properly respond to stress. On top of that, it naturally suppresses dopamine and serotonin!

Thus, your morning ritual should help (1) manage cortisol activity and (2) fence off stress.

Here’s how to keep the cortisol environment in check:

• Hydrate
• Delay your coffee (Caffeine increases cortisol, so that’s a double whammy if you take your coffee in the morning while cortisol levels are at its peak)
• Get some sunlight (Just keeping your windows wide open helps!)
• Stay away from unnecessary stressors (As Jay Z said, “You got 99 problems”, so the morning shouldn’t be one)
• Do a relaxing activity

Now that you understand your new friends better, it’s time to trick them into your side.

As you experiment, don’t pressure yourself to incorporate too many things at once. Nowhere in my research did I read that the more things you do in the morning the better day you’ll have. Moreover, customize them in ways that interest you!

Take baby steps. Test a habit or two for a week and see how it improves your mood and energy. Did you feel less groggy compared to yesterday? Did your energy last longer? Were you more focused or motivated?

Building a great morning ritual is one way of taking control of your mind and body. With smart habits, you’ll be able to think clearer, feel more balanced, and perform better.

So, understand those habits, own them, and make your body work for you.