S4 Ep 236 Why Your Morning Routine Isn't the Real Problem (The Missing Piece of Motivation)

Have you ever known exactly what you wanted to do... and still couldn't make yourself do it?

You want to stretch.
 You want to meditate.
 You want to lose the weight.
 You want to build the business.

So why does your brain seem to hit the brakes?

In this episode, I'm sharing one of the biggest breakthroughs I've had in years of coaching midlife women. What started as research for my EFT tapping workshop turned into a completely new way of understanding motivation, procrastination, and why so many of us get stuck during life's transition moments.

You'll learn why I no longer believe motivation is the problem—and why your nervous system may be trying to protect you instead.

We explore:

✨ Why traditional morning routines aren't the whole answer

✨ How your nervous system influences motivation and procrastination

✨ The "Smoke Alarm" analogy for fight-or-flight

✨ The ancient Chariot story and what it teaches us about the mind, body, and soul

✨ Why I see our Arch Nemeses (like the Wine Wench and Fog Witch) as protective parts instead of enemies

✨ A new concept I'm calling The Transition Chamber—a simple way to move from survival mode back into alignment with your Highest Self

Plus, I end with a short EFT tapping exercise you can use the next time you find yourself stuck, overwhelmed, or unable to take the next step.

If you've ever asked yourself...

"What's wrong with me?"

I hope this episode helps you start asking a better question:

"What is this part of me trying to protect me from?"

Because I have a feeling that question might change everything.

Chapters (Approximate)

00:00 – Why I think I finally figured this out

02:15 – My client's morning routine struggle

06:00 – Why morning routines aren't the real answer

09:30 – The nervous system & the Smoke Alarm

15:00 – The Chariot: an ancient map for the modern mind

22:00 – Why your Arch Nemesis might be trying to protect you

28:00 – The Transition Chamber

34:00 – EFT tapping for motivation & overwhelm

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Transcript

Addie B | Midlife BadasseryZ65 (00:00)
You guys, I have unlocked some serious shit for this week. I am just like

It's like little, it's little pieces that have finally clicked together from all my years of self-discovery and coaching. And you know, as soon as I find these game changers, I have to run here and tell you about it because holy shit, like let's crack it open.

A coaching call with one of my clients this week, and she wanted to make a five-minute stretching routine part of her morning routine. she was like, I don't know why I can't do this. She's like, I just procrastinate everything. It's she's like, I just wake up, and she literally was not even like really getting in her phone or anything, she was just snoozing until it was time to get up and go to work. And I was like, I still remember that, you know. And when I asked her why she

She wanted this morning routine, it was because, well, all the gurus say you need this morning routine, And I was thinking, well, you know, yeah, I love my morning routine, it's changed my life, but it didn't start out with me building a morning routine, It was like I picked up these little things and it didn't click until this week. I'm excited to share with you because I've been building a workshop around EFT tapping

Tapping the emotional freedom technique and how we use this to uncover blocks and it's turned into really this motivational procrastination tool. because most of the women I work with and that I've struggled myself with has been related around procrastination, perfectionism, just flat out not showing up for myself. So, you guys, my me first guide process, which is the planner and the system I created, is really me taking care of myself.

and making decisions ahead of time with my smart brain before I'm in like red fire alarm and sometimes I have to get out of this red fire smoke alarm first.

And then that clicked with me reading this book.

As I'm preparing for my workshop today, and I was reading through the chapter on motivation, which is gold by the way, and it's got procrastination, perfectionism, all of that in there.

Alex, the author of this book, was talking about how he had this morning routine, the one all the gurus told him to have. He meditates and he journals and he did his play at all of the things he learned, but he'd go to sit at his desk and was still paralyzed. And it wasn't until he added tapping in that it really changed and moved the needle. I was like,

This is why my Me First Guide process works because every morning I'm sitting down. What it really is, is me figuring out how to take care of myself throughout the day, aka reset my nervous system. However, when I built guide, the transformation system, I didn't have this skill and the capacity that I'm gonna have it after today. It's literally changing everything for me.

And this is this is where the big shift came in with the me first, and my own transformation was shifting from judgment to being the observer. And that's what it takes me through every morning. sometimes you wake up and your mind is just spilling. You have so much stress coming from everywhere.

So as I go through the me first process, right, as I go through this part where I'm regulating myself, I'm asking, what is it I need today? What could get in my way today?

Where am I gonna get stressed, out of alignment, have my red smoke alarms go off, right? So we're gonna call this when our brain gets into fight or flight, we're just gonna call that the smoke alarm, right? Like it is going off, it is blaring and it overtakes our CEO brain, So we'll make all these decisions like Sarah, like, hey, I really wanna get up in the morning and stretch, but when I wake up, I just can't make myself do it. And so

We've created

A transition chamber. So think of it like this, you guys. astronauts have like this airlock system, right? You don't just jump from a spaceship onto the moon, right? You have to like decompress and take some time to adjust. And this is like us at points throughout our life. And throughout my coaching, this has been a challenge. I'm so excited to bring this tool to my peeps, man. Because it's like another big transition area where I would see people really struggle, is in between.

getting work and getting home.

Right? They're like, I'm just exhausted, like sitting in the car, white knock clay, not even want to go inside, right? Like I've seen so many like TikTok reels of women doing that, right? Like hiding in their cars before they go in their house. Because what's waiting for you in the house? You get to be a chef and to cook, and you got all the chores. Even if you're not doing this for other people, we like have these burdens in our head. We have this to-do list, right? And your brain is just constantly funneling through it. And

Again, the stress activates this smoke detector, your amygdala, the fight or flight response. Like I talked about last week, that tiger, It thinks that you wanting to clean your kitchen in the house is a big ass tiger looking to get you. And that's like not the case, right? So think of it like this you're gonna have all of these moments throughout your day that are pivotable transition moments. And if you can just start to be an awareness, we call this.

Pattern recognition, I saw Tony Robbins came in my feed again and he was talking about the thing you really need to be successful right now.

is to recognize patterns and then be able to create your own patterns. And I thought that of course this is the work. As I was losing my weight and found life coaching and all of that, the big thing I did was stop, sit in the urge, and move through it. And I didn't quite have like the tools I'm gonna share with you today, But it was that awareness recognition of training of making a different choice. And of course, this brings me to the praya and Shreya store.

Which buckle up, bitches, if you haven't heard this one before. And this is one of my favorite stories. This came out of Indian spirituality text called Epinochads. And this little teenage boy goes out to ask the king of death. He goes into meditation, he's in there for three days. I'm gonna shorten the story for you. So he asks the king of death, What is the secret to life? And the king of death says, You know what? I'm gonna tell you because you've been such a badass patient little kid.

So it's a

This is it. Life boils down to two choices. You have two paths in every moment. The path of praya and the path of Shreya. And down the path of praya is really sexy. That's the wine wench, the you know, brain fog that just wants to cash out watching Netflix, and it looks good down there. Shreya is that choice that gets us to the gym and lifts weights and cuts the sugar out of our diet, right? Those are the Shreya path. it's much less sexy.

Appealing, right? He's like the one road is gonna take you toward death and despair. He's really dramatic. And the other road takes us toward our healthiest, highest self. And it's up to you to choose the path. However, in every situation, you've got this chariot and it's got five wild horses out in front of it. These wild horses are your five senses: so your sight, smell, touch, feel.

Yeah, I'm gonna forget one. You know what? Here, right? So all these senses are taking these inputs from the world around you and they're going into

The reins, which is your mind, and it's traveling up to your intellect, where we have the CEO brain, the prefrontal cortex, and the amygdala, or your smoke detector fire alarm brain, the one survival brain that keeps you safe that you've needed for millennia to keep you away from the tigers. But now our brains don't know the difference between like you getting in a fight with your spouse and the tiger, right?

you've got the all of these things coming in and think of all the inputs you put in your life every single day, you guys, between emails coming on your phones, alerts, notification, text messages. I'm stressed just talking about it, watching me. Hopefully this is a nice soothing experience for you.

Okay, so back to your chariot, this chariot is where your soul sits inside you've got the intellect on top driving. She's got the reins, right? So your intellect with the brain parts in there is getting all this information fed up through the mind. And your chariot or your ego body or vessel, has the soul inside. And the soul's in there, like, hey, hi, let's make a left up here.

Let's go to the Path of Shreya. And your intellect up here is all drunk on all the shit you've put in it from watching Netflix and podcasts and doom scrolling and reading books. That's my thing, right? Like I can get in some romanticy right now, acature anybody. I mean, don't get me started. You see, my kid has a problem too. I think she inherited this. So, anyhow, you've got this.

this choice in every moment the king of death tells us. And I don't know about you guys, but once I hit my fifties, i I I start to think about the King of Death a little bit more.

My whys have shifted. They become not so much let me look good in my skinny jeans as let me live long and feel good in my body, how can I be the healthiest version of myself? And it sure as hell isn't listening to Praya. Like I slayed the wine wench the first time, but this is a reframe for all of us right here, too. Because another that came out of this was looking at our arch nemesis. So I do this alter ego work.

we build this alter ego to step into this identity. And it part of this is we have this arch nemesis, like that thing that stops you, whether it's the wine wench, Like that wanting that dopamine hit to escape from whatever. The the fog witch which comes in with a brain problem, you literally just shut down, you can't think anymore, Procrastination patty that shows up when like you got something hard to do and you don't know how to do it and you just are gonna avoid

Yeah.

Right, how many of those can you guys identify with? I think we all have. So we make this fun arch nemesis as part of in my community, we like personify this, right? Because it steps you away from judgment. But the other part of that that this work is so genius about is understanding that these arch nemesis are doing this because they protect you for something. So instead of being like, What is wrong with me? Why can't I just not respond to the wine wench? Why do I keep

Letting the brain fog take over. Why am I procrastinating? Why am I not showing up for my stretch in the morning when I want to? Instead of beating ourselves up and being in judgment of it, now it shifts to what is she trying to save me from? Do you see how that changes your whole perspective? And from a coaching standpoint, self coaching or when I'm coaching another person, it really helps.

Like, hey, this is just your mind trying to protect you from all the chaos of the world, from it feeling like you're hurt, because you have all these neural pathways built already.

So back to the chariot, So you've got this chariot with this intellect, right, that's trying taking in all this noise from outside. And half of us go to bed with all of this noise. We're waking up with all the thoughts we're spinning. And another one of the things that I uncovered in this and do in this research was that our minds that don't stop, this is another way the brain tries to protect itself.

It is trying to find a solution for you. So all night while you're thinking, you're thinking all these thoughts, it's because you're you have this high stress load, right? This chronic stress.

And we're just living in overwhelm, And so your your intellect's just wasted up there. She's like your soul's in there trying to direct the chariot. Like you know, you want to stretch and meditate and do plans and live your best life. And your intellect and your arch nemesis, they're just trying to keep you safe, They're like you, your body is just holding all of these old chronic beliefs, wiring all of the stuff in between.

Here's your solution, you guys. it's not just about seeing it and reframing it and writing a new thought when your body is in red fire alert, you know, and you might not even know this, you might not even feel this because you've been running in this pattern for so long.

We're heading from one thing to another thing to another thing. We feel like we've got these big to-do lists and and we just have constant inputs from everywhere, which is like, your system, can you just feel it? It's just on fire, red alerts. So, how do you neutralize this? And here is my thing as a coach. I was like, my God, I can see it so clearly now. Because I I had

I started tapping like seriously in 2022 and really this year have implemented it for my life like every day. And my God, what a difference. And I actually hired a coach to help me get out more limiting beliefs. And I found some of my stuff from 2022. And I'm like, my God, all those limiting beliefs had shifted, but now I've got 20 more. So we just have this constant rewiring in there,

the genius of this is all of these people I've been coaching, like I can't tell you how many women that I've coached, that I've talked to, that I told you about are like in the car ride on the way home.

Almost dreading getting home because that's just another job when they get home, Like when you exit the car and they just never stop and reset their system. So to be able to do something as simple as tapping, and why tapping does this, and this is where the click is, I was telling people, okay, let's set you up a habit so you go in the house and meditate. But it's when you're trying to sit into meditation, when your brain

is on red fire, red alarm alert.

I am would be really curious what Patan Patangili, the guy, the person, I'm gonna say person because it could be a woman, you know, that did the Yoga Sutras, which is like the base foundation of yoga, where the only physical practice was moving your body to be able to sit in stillness, right? I wonder if they were able to see the inputs that we have in our environment today, if they would be like, my God, if there would be like a whole nother layer to preparing yourself.

For meditation. So here as a coach, I was taking people from this fight or flight to fight or flight and trying to help them build this space where they can create space in their lives. And it's not wrong. However, if we can neutralize and get you there faster and where you're not sitting there in red fire alert.

This is what tapping does for you. And you guys, science upon, science, pine, science. I could drop all the studies here for you, but you can also just go look them up. What scientific evidence of tapping, and you're gonna find there's over 300 studies that show over 35% reduced cortisol from one tapping session. And to give you a perspective, it takes a talking session of like 30 minutes to an hour to have like a 20% reduction in cortisol levels.

So, you want to talk about a tool that you can use right in the moment, and what it does is it neutralizes that amygdala, your fight or flight, the red alarm that's going off over here, so you can access your CEO brain again. Because every time your survival brain comes online, your smart brain is shoved aside because the universe wants your body, it wants us to survive as a species, So it was like this dominates like survival over everything.

It wanted you to get out of the cave to go seek the berry so you could live, right? Like so to neutralize that and be able to hear yourself so that you can make the change. And this is your transition chamber. So you're gonna look through patterns through your whole life. You can do this easily right now, you guys.

Think of two or three times through your day where you see your arch nemesis come out or patterns that appear. Maybe it's you walk in the door and you pour the wine, right? Like that's that's a pattern. That's your relief. It's been like, okay, I can relax now. I can, when I drink this wine, I can relax. Or some of us is food.

Right. Like the only time we feel like we can sit down and rest is when we eat. This used to happen to me in corporate addie. Like when I first started meditating, I was like, it was around that witching hour, that 3, 3:30. And I was tired, my brain was tired. And I would go seeking candy or an afternoon snack. And instead, I started taking myself to go meditate. I didn't have tapping yet, But I would take myself to go meditate and calm myself and

reset my nervous system, and guess what? I no longer even wanted the candy. I could walk by the candy jar. I could go back and be more productive at work. But telling yourself to go sit and be still for 20 minutes when you're like, my God, I got 20 reports to do. I don't have time. I gotta pick the kids up. I've got to like do. No, your brain's like honestly, I can't I look back and I'm like, I can't believe I did it.

You know what I mean? Like I'm really freaking proud of myself. You know how I did it was I put it on my calendar like it was a doctor's appointment because I was at the point where I felt like I was gonna die. And I knew that I had found this tool that was such a game changer for me. But I can tell you after teaching a hundred people to meditate and coaching hundreds of women, that I'm like, I see this repeatedly,

This transition time being so critical, So you're gonna identify your patterns through the day as what's your witching hour look like, you know, where do you wanna shut down and just eat all the shit or drink all the things or not show up and produce? maybe you're building a business and you wanna show up and produce a video and you're pro and you won't do it because you're terrified, right? Like write all of those patterns down for yourself. And you're gonna now, when you see that pattern come up.

You put yourself in the transition chamber, right? You're going in the airlock. And in this place, you just start tapping yourself. And I'm gonna leave you with a little tapping exercise today about motivation, because I see so often we're like, and we wanna be motivated. And motivated isn't even like an emotion or a thing. It's a result of certain things lining up in your life.

Think about it like this, you guys. Like you're driving the car, right? You're driving the chariot. You got her going. And motivation isn't something you pick up along the way, right? She's like a passenger that comes on the ride with you. It's not the thing that moves you. I mean they say action moves you into motivation. Just take action. You know how hard it is to take action when your brain is in red alert stress mode? And when you've been carrying stronger chronic stress forever?

And so now it becomes now the trick is when you identify it, can you just start putting yourself in the chamber and tapping, tapping these meridian points, learning some of them? And listen, you don't have to be perfect where you tap. And I know some of you are listening on audio, so I'm gonna put some links for you to go watch a short tapping.

motivation video. In fact, I'm just gonna make a short and I'm gonna link it right here for everybody

So that you can have a visual. But this is also what I want you to know about tapping, you guys. It doesn't, you don't have to tap perfectly. Some tapping's better than no tapping. It's back to our same old perfectionism stuff, right? Something is better than nothing. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't not work if you don't tap all the places, right? So I would say something like, your setup statement is always about accepting yourself. And now that we know this about the brain, just think of how wonderful this is.

that you're going to be able to access your CEO brain when the fire alarm brain that might just sound like, I don't want to get out of bed, I want to, how and why is it keeping you safe?

So maybe you can talk her out of it, So we're gonna access our highest self instead of mourning bitch fog brain,

So we're just gonna use the getting out of bed in the morning because I find that very universal. We could also use the woman in the car, but a lot of us are working remotely. But it's very similar to that. When you shut down your work during the day, how are you transitioning into evening Addy? Right? Like what does that look like? So let's say I just wanna get out of bed in the morning and

do stretching or for me getting up to do my silent meditation because i'll lie in bed and do a guided meditation all day long but i've had to re-implement my silent meditation

Even though I wanna just stretch and I wanna get out of bed and I don't feel like it, I accept myself right where I am right now.

Even though I know I wanted to stretch, but I just want to lay here. I just want to keep sleeping. I still accept myself. I love myself right here. Even though I just want to snuggle in, I just want five more minutes. I just don't want to get up and do anything. I don't want to do anything. And sometimes shit like that'll come up when you tap, right? I accept myself right now. And then as you go through the points, you're gonna do eyebrow. I really don't want to get up. Corner the eye.

I just want to stay here forever. Under your eye, it just feels so good in bed. I don't want to move. Under the nose, what does it matter if I do it anyway? I never keep showing up. Under the lip, I'm just gonna fail over and over, I always do. Collarbone, I'm just a procrastinator. It doesn't matter. Under the arm.

This won't even matter if I get up right now. Top of the head. But if I did get up right now, eyebrow. I would feel so much better if I did. Corner of the eye. What if I don't worry about all the other days? Under the eye? What if I just got up and did this one day and stretched? Under the nose? What would that look like? Under the lip? How would I feel after I stretch?

Collarbone, I'd feel so good. I know I would. Under the arm, I'd be so proud of myself.

Top of the head. I'm gonna get up. I'm gonna go stretch. Now that's a shorter version than you might experience, But for the sake of this video here, what want you to understand what you're doing is you're talking through the negative stuff of why you're not getting out of bed, why you don't want to get out of the car, why you don't like is why you wanna pour the wine when you walk in the door.

you're seeing these things happen. And what you're doing is you're telling your body it's okay, we're safe. I see you trying to keep me safe. I see you trying to keep me snuggled in bed because I've failed so many times before and I might fail again. Maybe it's a fear of failure. You never, you're gonna uncover it as you're talking to yourself. So this is why sometimes as we learn a tool like tapping

and sometimes even with meditation, you will bring up heavier emotions and you might feel like it's not working because it's bringing up these root causes that you've been ignoring and shoving down forever, trying to keep you safe.

It's it's we're not broken, Our brains are just trying to keep us safe and we don't need them to keep us safe like we used to. So we're just in brain retraining mode, And what is that? It's gonna look a little bit different for everybody. And what you're gonna say to yourself is gonna be different for almost everybody.

Okay, I want to share that with you. I made a really cool tool you guys can use to get a tapping script for your blocks. I'm gonna drop that below for you. You can use that. You're welcome to come in our community and we're going to work on these transition chambers and tapping more and moving through this process. So it's called Midlife Badass, or you can look for the links wherever you're watching, and I hope to see you in there because we are just uncovering more and more stuff to help get us to that next level.

And midlife badass rate, this is where we do the identity work. This is where we change at a transformational level and start to really understand our mind, body, and soul, how it's connected to our highest selves and putting into the world the magic we're here today. I know I start talking about weight loss, but you guys, in the end, it's all about what lights us up, right? Like, how do we find more joy? But when we're in fight or flight and red alarms going, guess what? Joy is elusive.

That is a steal, a theft of your joy. It's a theft of your creative ideas. It's a theft of all of this. So as soon as you start processing, feeling emotion, moving through the other side and using a technique like this, like emotional freedom technique to help neutralize it, the world is your friggin' oyster. Let's go. I'll see you next week. Slayer out.

you guys, don't forget to follow, subscribe, like, tell all your friends so you can get more goodness because we're only just at the tip of unlocking all the badassery we're stepping into this year. Let's go. Slayer up.

I really like how they designed this book, which went was a perfect follow-up to their first one, The Tapping Solution. Okay, so anyhow, I can edit that in. Okay.

Shut it down.