INTRODUCTION
Every Wanderer needs a morning routine that acts as a phase shift for the Body, Mind, and Spirit(BMS), which is done every morning on on-path days to declare to the universe and the gods that today I am walking down the path. Even on off-path days, the morning routine can(and truthfully should) still be done to strengthen the ritual while encouraging having successful days off the path.
The point of the morning routine is sending a multi-domain signal to your body, mind, and spirit, that you are on the path. The Andreia philosophy is binary–there is on the path, and there is off the path–we use the morning routine to declare that we are ON the path.
OFF path is different.
OFF/ON.
We want a ritual that optimistically and nurturingly encourages total adherence to the path. We want a morning ritual that removes choice, self-doubt, or anything else that may slow a wanderer down. Our morning routine declares that today, we are walking forward down the path.
A good morning routine activates Body, Mind, and Spirit(BMS) by touching each pillar. When thinking about your morning routine, make sure each domain is accounted for.
Morning Routines should be short to get onto the path quickly. You conduct your morning routine then get onto the path immediately.
Those first steps on the path could be thought of as part of the morning routine, like waking up, praying, stretching, meditating, then going to surf each morning. Surfing can be part of your path and part of the morning routine; the path and the morning routine can bleed into each other.
The morning routine should almost be called the immediate wake-up routine. It’s the first thing you do when the alarm goes off. You can have your morning routine and eat breakfast–or not. We are specifically focusing on post-eyes-open existence.
Below are example morning routines separated by categorized by unique, archetypical personas.
Do not feel obliged to use exact replicas of the morning routines below. You should steal what is useful based on your internal motivation/desire for morning routine components, understanding that wanderers are unique and are on unique paths so they must have unique morning routines, and unique codes in general.
You can do the morning routine in any order.
However, we recommend this order for most:
- Body
- Mind
- Spirit
The initial bodywork will wake up your mind and spirit so they are ready to be primed.
Mental/Spiritual activities can be done in bed, like reading or meditating. This is okay as long as you can control not falling asleep again. This is why starting with the body is a good idea. You can do your body morning routine, then go back into bed for spiritual/mental warm-ups, or since you’re out of bed, you can do it somewhere else, like meditating on the couch, a premium yoga mat, or somewhere outside in the sun.
Yukio Mishima prescribes SUN & STEEL.
Your morning routine MUST BE documented and standardized into your personal code. Understand that your morning routine will change as the path changes for you. (About Andreia)
Below are 10 archetypical persona-based morning routines.
The General Standard
- Physical Exercise
- Mental Exercise
- Spiritual Exercise.
This is the most basic, general template for a morning routine.
Fill in what you want for each. Each domain can receive as little as a minute or two of attention.
(B)5 pushups, (M)1 minute deep breathing, (S)1 short prayer. The standard morning routine touches each domain. You decide how long each domain gets attention. If you are a beginner, the morning routine should be short to encourage adherence.
Your morning routine can be three minutes to an hour and a half, or more; The Andreia Philosophy requires making your own prescriptions from shared knowledge.
If you haven’t done morning routines before, we recommend doing the shortest routine possible. For example: 5 pushups, 5 deep breaths, 5 second prayer or affirmation. It’s much more important to have consistent routines than long ones. It’s difficult to start with longer routines.
Understand the objective of the morning routine is to activate or “prime” each domain so that each domain knows that we are on the path today and will perform accordingly. We want to “wake up” each aspect of the self. We want to turn ON for the day.
Be cautious of morning routines that are so long they hinder your progress down the path. The point of the morning routine is concise actions that wake up your three domains. Do not over-indulge in your routines & primers.
The general can be useful because it’s open-ended. So one morning for body you stretch, for mind you Duolingo, for spirit you pray. The next morning you can run, read, and meditate. However, the open-ended is easier to skip than the set routine; keep this in mind.
The College Student
- B: General Calisthenics/stretching for 10 minutes
- M: Prepare for class for the day
- S: Visualization or ponder on the career or objectives that college will help you obtain
The college student shakes off the mental/spiritual rust that comes from imperfect sleep by training their body for a short period. Then they prepare for class for the day, review notes, or work on assignments before class starts. They take a moment and visualize what occupation they want after school, or if they don’t know, ponder what they could become based on their interests. This daily reinforcement helps keep the student on the path which is one reason why your spirit–your energy for life–cannot be neglected.
If the college student is an athlete, this routine still applies. You can visualize your sport and your performance, do some sport-specific exercises, and study plays and game plans for your sport. The morning routine creates positive repetition for the athlete that strengthens all domains.
The college student may know what career they want to pursue and master for the rest of their lives. Or they may not. Not knowing is more common. When we are young we must grind to understand who we are.
Reflecting on the campaign to achieve a degree will keep you on the path with vigor regardless of whether you know where that path will take you. At the minimum, you will know you are on the right path when the path is engaging and you are making progress.
The Athlete
- B: Sport-specific bodywork
- M: Puzzles + Language learning
- S: Review Code+Meditation
The Athlete wakes up and immediately conducts sport-specific bodywork. For a Martial Arts Fighter, this could be shadow boxing for 10 minutes, Using a reflex ball, possibly freestyling, or working on combinations, moves, or defense learned in the past week to keep it fresh. For the Football player, this could be stretching, going on a run, or possibly early-morning sport-specific drills and work like parachute sprints.
The basketball player can shoot 3’s for an hour every morning which may touch all three pillars and be the sole morning routine.
Athletes often become dominated by the body domain and will neglect the mind and, less so than the mind but still valid, neglect the spirit.
As an athlete, you need to have a mental pursuit so that all domains are balanced. That could be doing puzzles of any kind like a brain-teaser, starting a business, mathematics, or learning a new language which you could view as a gigantic puzzle with every word as a piece that fits into the overall picture of the language revealed to you over time.
Athletes identify with their position as a player for their sport. Few athletes identify with their position as a member of the sport beyond being a player.
When athletes can no longer play their best, they often have spiritual melancholy because they do not have other masteries and identify solely with the athletic nature of their body mastery. To avoid this, the athlete must see himself or herself as a member of the community of his or her body mastery, not just as a player.
The athlete should volunteer to coach those underneath them to disengage from the isolated view of only seeing themselves as an athlete, as opposed to a master.
An athlete plays and then retires. A master plays, retires, and continues to play at a lower level for the love of the game while helping to bring up the younger generation, giving back to the mastery that provided them with a strong identity.
Understand that you can have multiple masteries in a domain. Similar to how Michael Jordan is a master at basketball, while simultaneously pursuing golf, which now appears to possibly be his primary body mastery.
Diversification of mastery. Similar to how a diverse portfolio of investments outperforms, and hits diminishing returns around 15 stocks. We know we cannot master everything we choose, but we can pursue mastery in many things we choose.
15 masteries is not recommended.
The runner
- B: Run
- M: Run
- S: Run
Some masteries can touch all domains at once. These are rare. There is no cause for concern if your masteries do not do this. Remember we all walk different paths on the same path of life.
Running trains the body, but also the mind; you are doing something difficult in the morning, you may see a sunrise while listening to music you like, or listening to something educational like an audiobook(get a free 30 day trial here). So you can see how an activity like running can hit each domain, even more so with slight modifications like listening to an audiobook, running with a friend–even running without headphones can be a greater challenge if running with headphones is your default.
The runner’s singular morning routine can alternatively be for the surfer, the yogi, the baller, the golfer, the dancer, the woodworker, etc.
Running doesn’t have to be your primary body mastery for it to be your morning routine. Any sport that involves cardio will likely involve running as a component of primary mastery.
The Lost, hurt, or Confused Wanderer(Infirmed Spirit)
- B: floor exercises/standing stretches
- M: Reading/podcasts/videos
- S: Meditate + Prayer
The lost, hurt, or confused wanderer is a depressed wanderer who struggles to make progress on any path. This is a temporary condition called the dip–some let it become their identity which infuses a false sense of permanence.
Getting out of the dip comes from the inside and manifests outward. However, many wanderers make the mistake of looking outside themselves when they are lost, hurt, or confused. Or worse, they accept the dip and do not look for a way out at all.
The lost and confused wanderer must DEMAND they get out of bed so they do not ROT in bed.
The hurt soul does not have the spiritual drive to get much of anything done. The depressed has a sick spirit, so the spirit must be healed. It may feel impossible to exercise with a weakened spirit, so do the easiest exercises possible, which allows you to shuffle down the path at a slow pace–this is a good thing because it means you are going forward. The rate at which you go forward is less important than the decision to go forward, as opposed to backward.
When you are lost, do not think about monumental goals, as that can hurt the spirit as they seem impossible. When the spirit is sick or hurt, you need to stack up many little wins. A single pushup. A little bit of stretching. That’s it for body. It’s more important to be consistent than it is to have a moderately well-performing day, only to lose momentum afterward.
When you’re lost and hurt, which is depression of the spirit(sometimes body and mind but not always), training the body can refresh the spirit via the positive hormones and optimistic effects generated from training, regardless of whether or not you’re an elite athlete, or haven’t exercised in ten years.
The Business Builder
- B: Full Morning training
- M: Read industry news
- S: Review your code & mission
The business builder dedicates most of their time towards launching their venture. This can cause them to become overly mind-dependent, leaving their body and spirits neglected. They can also neglect their mind by not engaging in areas outside of their business.
The business builder needs to understand that a strong, healthy body, allows the mind and the spirit to be stronger so that the mind and the spirit can build the vision inside the business builder. Because the business builder will spend most of their time building their business, they need to get non-business activities completed as soon as possible.
The business builder can wake up early and immediately do a full workout, whatever their workout may be. This could be going to the gym at 5am, running at 4:30am, or early yoga. They need to train their bodies in the morning so their body and spirit can tolerate spending a significant amount of time and energy in the mind domain.
After their initial workout, the rest of the day is set for business building. Start with a post-workout mental workout by reading relevant industry news. Lastly, review your code. Reinforce your desire to stumble through the darkness, where no other have gone before. Recall why you started this mission, or why it’s rewarding to you. Or to put it more simply, engage in repetitions with your why for building the business. This will keep you moving forward on your long journey.
The New Father
- B: Home training
- M: Audiobooks
- S: Child check-in
The new father will have less time than he had before. He must not neglect his body. This is where new parents will often cut time first.
As a new father, you must have excellent time management skills. You must cut out what does not reward you or provides smaller rewards than other endeavors. Cut rewardless activities like social media, gossip, and other in-between-time and replace with bodyweight training and home gym workouts.
Think about in-between time as a new father. If the microwave is going for five minutes, you could check social media for that time, or you could sneak in an ab workout using a wheel.
Some might say: “But I lift the baby now.” This is not enough. You should train to meet the standard of being able to save your life as well as the life of your family. Strength, Endurance, and will which are born from the spirit and body mastery, must be pursued to mastery at all stages in life.
Holding a baby is not training.
For the new father, he could wake up, and immediately check on his child–maybe he wakes the child up, maybe he lets him sleep. Either way, he can do bodyweight and home training while listening to audiobooks with one earbud out to be aware of any noises the child could be making.
There is no downside to collecting equipment for the home to train, even if you already have a gym membership. One pair of adjustable dummbells saves a massive amount of space, and you can have your dumbbells for decades with proper care and maintenance.
The new father must not neglect his body or his mind.
New parents too often decide to neglect themselves to give to the child. Do not fall into this trap.
All members of the family must seek their own fulfillment and this is possible for all individuals. Do not neglect your needs to serve the needs of the child–do both.
The Creative
- B: Morning walk
- M: Morning pages
- S: Prayer to the Muse
Many thinkers, inventors, and writers take a walk every morning, or when they get stuck while in the creative process. The creative has to bring something to the world that has never existed before.
Beethoven took walks in nature and would bring paper to write down notes about music and other ideas that came to him.
Charles Dickens, author of classics like Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield, was known to walk almost every day, and often for long distances of at least 10 miles.
Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the greatest philosophical thinkers who wrote Beyond Good & Evil and Thus Spoke Zarathustra:, A Book for Everyone and No One, believed that taking walks through the countryside–like Beethoven–helped bubble up philosophical ideas into his mind.
Steve Jobs, creator of the iPhone, was known to hold walking meetings to discuss ideas.
The creative can start the day with an immediate prayer to the muse, to God, to the spirits that inspire creativity, to their dead heroes, or their fictional models, the moment they are awoken by their sunlight alarm clock, a much better way for the creative to wake up.
Their prayer can be asking for creative direction. You don’t have to ask for things, either. Instead of asking for help, state that today you will walk down the path. Affirm it to your Gods and yourself. Maybe they’ll help you. Maybe you’ll help yourself. Prayer certainly won’t hurt you.
After a 20-minute walk, the creative can write morning pages. Morning pages were popularized in the book, The Artists Way by Julia Cameron. Morning pages are where the creative fills two pages of a journal(this is a nice journal). The pages can be anything. Drawing, words, thoughts, scribbles, or writing ‘I don’t know’ until two pages are filled.
The idea of morning pages is to get everything out of your head so that your mind has open spaces to fill with ideas. Morning pages is like cleaning the filter of a device made to attract and catch ideas. It’s a form of meditation.
Morning pages were popularized by the book, The Artist’s Way.
You don’t have to be a writer to write morning pages. Morning pages are good for the business person, the student, and many others.
The creator must understand that training his body will allow his mind and spirit to produce greater art. You must not neglect the body as a creative or an intellectual.
The Go With The Motioner
- B: Walking
- M: Meditation
- S: Meditation
The go with the motioner has a life where everything is fine. A flat line with no spikes of joy from overcoming challenge and no dips from the struggle of challenge. Instead, the go with the motioner is in a permanent dip they have adopted as their version of normal.
The go with the motioner is often worse off than the lost, hurt, confused, wanderer with an infirmed spirit because the lost wanderer knows they are lost–the go with the motioner knows nothing of themselves–for if they did, they would have direction; a target to pursue.
The go with the motioner has no control or exerts little to no effort to control or influence their destiny or the paths they travel–so others do it for them–so they are led to places they may not want to be at.
The go with the motioner is exceedingly common when corporations police the behavior of the individual in order to encourage consumerism as a virtue.
The go with the motioner works their job and consumes entertainment and distraction. They do this until they die.
They could be a functioning drug addict, which includes functional addictions to weed or alcohol. They do not improve at their job: they do just enough, then distract themselves. As they consume what does not fulfill, the world moves past them.
Being a go with the motioner means your significant other, your parents, your boss at work, your “friends”, decide who you are to best fit their own needs. This is because the go with the motioner does not have a self-constructed identity, so others label them with an identity because they have nothing else.
The go with the motioner is the depressed person without the emotions of depression. Or the emotions are hidden from the outside, and sometimes hidden from themselves. But they are, without a doubt, depressed; they’ve just found treatments to numb themselves to it.
Walking is to prevent catatonia. When you are going with the motion, you probably aren’t exercising much, because that requires fighting against the urge to do nothing.
For mind and spirit, the go with the motioner needs to meditate on their lives. Going with the motion of life means you are not analyzing your life, so you don’t understand it.
We must analyze our lives to control them.
The go with the motioner must meditate to find what they are willing to do. They must find a way to reach their neglected spirits. They must train their bodies in any way they are willing to train while also working to demand more of themselves via spirit conditioning.
They must analyze their lives to look for sources of energy that can be pursued–to find their masteries.
A person who goes through the motions has no masteries and is waiting to die with a wasted life. This is unacceptable.
The Retired Person
- B: floor exercises/standing stretches
- M: Reading/podcasts/videos
- S: Meditate + Prayer
The retired person has all of their time belonging to them.
The retired person has three goals:
- Make the world a better place every day
- Pass on all of the wisdom contained within you
- Train your body, mind, and spirit to remove, or reduce your burden on others
True retirement occurs when you retire from the living.
If you pursue mastery in Body, Mind, and Spirit for a long time, you are disciplined in these areas and will enjoy the fruits of this discipline with a longer lifespan.
Even though the retirement age set by governments can be from 60-70 years old or whatnot, the retired person’s goals as listed above may not need to be activated until 70, 80, or older.
Also understand that you can still pursue mastery in your retirement although those masteries may shift, like how undefeated samurai Miyamoto Musashi put down the sword and picked up the paintbrush.
Understand that pursuing mastery in your end years without pursuing the three retired goals of making the world a better place, passing all of your wisdom, and reducing your burden on others, is selfish. You can still pursue mastery as an elder, but you must not expire with unshared wisdom.
Every lesson you have learned in life and all you know about your chosen masteries must be passed down through an apprentice(s) or a transmissible medium like books, videos, articles, etc. This is how we grow our lineage and improve as a society and as a species.
The retired person must do everything they can to help the younger generations not repeat the mistakes the retired person made, and saw, during their lifetime. The retired person has an obligation and a duty to share their wisdom with all who will listen. Often, the retired person may need to persuade others to listen to fulfill their honor-obligations to society.
The retired person must not perish with wisdom contained inside of them. This is the most important mission of the retired person.
The retired person must train their body, mind, and spirit every day to remove the burden they could place upon others.
Today you see young people whose actions constitute a burden on society–not based on genetic disease–this can only be viewed as shameful. Many young people are a voluntarily greater burden on society than the elderly–this can only be viewed as shameful.
Those who tax society pull it down. This includes domineering governments. We must all follow the path so that humanity can continue to progress. Without progress, humanity is lost.
“do not ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”
As a retired person, train your muscles & bones, your cardiovascular system, and your mind. This will help you complete your three missions.
Closing
Every Wanderer on the path needs a morning routine that tells their body, mind, and spirit that today we are walking down the path–today, we are putting in the effort to travel further down the path, regardless of whether that objective is completed or not.
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