Name: Do This Before 8 AM to Transform Your Day (Save This Morning Routine!)
Uploaded: 2026-03-08T02:30:47.000Z
Duration: 24 min 6 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.

Today is about how to reprogram your mind before 8am I want to share with you the most practical science backed morning routine that I could find.

Adverbs of manner

Here's something nobody tells you about your morning.

The first 60 to 90 minutes after you open your eyes is, neurologically speaking, the most programmable window of your entire day.

Your brain is literally in a different state.

It's transitioning out of theta and alpha brainwave patterns, the same frequencies used in hypnotherapy, into the waking beta state you'll spend the rest of your day in.

And what do most of us do with that window?

We hand it over, we pick up our phone, we scroll through someone else's priorities, someone else's outrage, someone else's curated highlight reel, and

we wonder why we feel behind before the day has even started.

Today, I want to share the most practical, simple, genuinely achievable morning routine.

I found one that I tried myself, one built entirely on neuroscience and peer reviewed research.

And I promise you there's no ice baths at 4am, no two hour rituals that require monastic training, just six small surprising science back steps that that take about 45 minutes total and that anyone, night owls included, can start tomorrow.

There's a clear reason why it works at a biological level.

When you understand the mechanism, you're not relying on motivation.

You're working with your brain, not against it.

I know mornings are something we all struggle with and I want to be honest, I've struggled with them as well.

It's not easy for me to wake up energized and early.

Sometimes I want to stay in bed, sometimes I want to scroll too and end up doing that as well.

And so I've worked really hard on developing some of these habits that have changed the way I feel.

I want you to go through your day feeling ready, energized and prepared.

And I found that when we do certain things, we actually end up doing the opposite.

So let's start with the most controversial thing I'm going to say today.

Hitting the snooze button is one of the worst things you can do for your brain in in the morning.

When your alarm goes off, your brain is finishing its final sleep cycle, usually REM sleep, the phase critical for memory consolidation and emotional processing.

When you hit snooze and drift off for another nine minutes or nine times, your brain starts a brand new sleep cycle.

You're essentially fragmenting your sleep into useless chunks.

Research on sleep inertia, that's the scientific term for that groggy, disoriented fog you feel after waking, shows that fragmented sleep from snoozing actually worsens cognitive function.

We're talking about slower reaction times, impaired memory and reduced executive function.

You're not getting rest in those extra minutes.

The internal clock, controlled by a tiny brain region gets conflicting signals and the grogginess can linger for hours.

It's a little weird, but I want you to try it.

I want you to try something called the future you is calling alarm.

Now, I've never loved the word alarm because we think about alarms as a fire alarm.

When there's an alert, when there's some danger, imagine you actually shocking yourself to wake up out of danger.

But try the future you is calling before bed.

Record a 10 to 15 second voice memo pretending you're you from six months in the future.

Make it oddly specific and slightly dramatic.

I'm literally standing in the kitchen of the life you wanted.

Today is one of the days that got me here.

Also, you still hate rushed mornings, right?

Your brain doesn't expect your own voice.

Future you creates curiosity instead of dread.

It reframes waking up as time travel, not obligation.

And you can put your phone outside your bedroom and only allow yourself to hear the ending of the message if you stand up and walk to it.

What I find fascinating about this example is that we're completely tricking the brain, right?

Usually think we have to force ourselves out of bed.

Usually we have to find a way to get that energy.

When you hear your own voice in the morning that says it would mean so much for us to wake up right now.

Because if we wake up right now, we'll actually be really happy.

There's a voice in your head telling you, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.

And we're not strong enough to fight it in our head.

And that's why the alarm can does that for you, right?

Having an alarm, that's your voice telling you the reasons you want to wake up.

The amazing day you want to have the Life you want to build to encourage you specifically is actually allowing you to externalize that powerful voice, that motivated voice, that conscious voice, before the subconscious takes over.

The subconscious is saying, just lie in, hit the snooze button, sleep in more.

And your conscious mind at that time is switched off.

It doesn't have the ability to fight back.

So use your conscious mind to create a conscious alarm.

I also want you to seriously consider moving your alarm across the room if you need to.

The physical act of standing upright triggers a blood pressure change that signals wakefulness to your brain.

It's a micro decision that becomes a macrohabit.

This might be the single most impactful thing on the entire list and it costs you absolutely nothing.

Within the first 30 to 60 minutes of waking up, get outside and expose your eyes to natural sunlight for 10 to 20 minutes.

Now, I know that sounds like a long time.

You could pace and take a phone call if you wanted to.

Not through a window, ideally not through sunglasses.

Outside with the light hitting your retinas.

Here's the science, and it's genuinely fascinating.

Your eyes contain specialized cells called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, or IPRGCs if that makes it any easier, that have almost nothing to do with vision.

Their job is to detect ambient light and send timing signals directly to the part of the brain.

That's the master clock I mention earlier.

That signal does several things simultaneously.

First, it triggers a healthy pulse of cortisol.

Now, before you panic, cortisol gets a bad reputation as the stress hormone.

But the morning cortisol awakening response is not the same thing as chronic stress cortisol.