62: Aligning Morning Self and Evening Self

Have you ever noticed that the version of you at night makes plans that your morning self dreads? Or that your weekday self is disciplined, but your weekend self throws everything out the window? You're not alone! In this episode, I explore the disconnect between different versions of ourselves and how aligning them can make life so much easier.

I’ll share:
✔ Why our nervous system plays a role in this disconnect
✔ Small, doable steps to support your future self without needing perfection
✔ How this applies to missionary moms who are still navigating real life
✔ Simple strategies like setting yourself up for better sleep, a 10-minute evening reset, and creating morning shortcuts

Your growth doesn’t have to be all or nothing—just small intentional choices can shift everything. Tune in for practical, realistic ways to show up for yourself and set yourself up for success.

Takeaway Challenge:
Tonight, try one small thing to help your future self. Maybe it’s putting your phone away earlier, laying out your clothes, or doing a quick tidy-up. Pay attention to how it changes your morning!

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Send me a message on Instagram and let me know what works for you. And if this episode helped, share it with another mom who might need it!

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Transcript

0:30

Hello and welcome to the podcast. So I told you in another episode that I coached girls high school wrestling and now I am coaching the younger girls and so elementary school through kind of junior high middle school age and It has been delightful. These girls are so cute and they came in in a brand new sport and They are so much fun. I just can't convey how much fun it is. So that's something small that I have been up to. So I want to talk about something that I think that we all experience but we're not always aware of and that's the disconnect between our evening self, our morning self, our weekday self, and our weekend self and how we can get them aligned so that it makes life a little bit easier for us. So we've all been there at night. I've had these great intentions. My evening self is feeling ambitious, setting plans for the next day. I'm going to get up early. I'm going to get my workout in. I'm going to eat healthy breakfast. I'm going to be on top of everything. But then morning comes around and suddenly morning self is like, yeah, no, I'm tired. I don't want to move, where's the cinnamon rolls, or it's in reverse where my morning felt, my morning self feels great and wants to do all the things, but by the time evening rolls around, I'm tired. You may want to be sitting on the couch eating cookie dough, binging on Netflix. This also happens on week day self. And our weekend self. So how many times have you seen people, or have you done it yourself, where they say they're going to start something new on Monday, maybe an exercise program, or they're gonna study their scriptures, or they're gonna pray, or whatever, and by Thursday or Friday it's out the window because all of a sudden weekend self has shown up, and that no longer sounds like fun. And Weekend Self is all about short term fun things that don't give us lasting improvement and lasting growth. So if you've ever noticed this disconnect, you're totally not alone. And I actually noticed it last week. This is a concept I've learned over the years a number of times. But I noticed it last week for me because I noticed my evening self wasn't doing some of the things I had set up for myself. Like, I try and make sure I get the dishes loaded or done the night before and then in the morning I put them away. Well, my evening self wasn't doing that, so my morning self was having to do it. And so it, it causes a problem for morning, my morning self, because there's other things that my morning self, when I'm in my highest brain, when I'm feeling energetic, that my morning self needs to get done. But instead morning self is cleaning up after evening self. So let's talk about what this looks like. I think step one is just having that awareness that that exists. As soon as I could see that I had these different versions of myself, then I was able to get a lot more grace and I was also able to try not to hustle through some of those things. But let's talk about what this looks like, especially when you're in team hypo, because this is all related also to your nervous system, of course. So it's kind of sluggish. You have a low energy where your motivation is. Almost non existent. So I'm going to share some small doable ways that's going to help hook your future self out without expecting perfection. So first of all, why does this disconnect even happen? Our evening self makes plans that our morning self dreads. Or our morning self make a plan and our evening self cancels has a lot to do with how our nervous system is functioning. So in the evening, I often find myself in team hypo where I'm in a more relaxed, low energy state. I might feel kind of depleted. You may feel depleted after a long day and it's easy to want to check out to relax, but because of the low energy, it's more likely that you'll avoid tasks rather than doing them. To help yourself out later and you can tell your your brain kind of shows up here and tells yourself. It's fine It's gonna be alright. I can deal with this tomorrow The problem is that tomorrow always comes and if I don't set things up the night before My morning self is left scrambling stressed feeling behind Before the day even starts think about this also with the weekend, right? Like you're you've done really good all week. You've said your prayers or you know you've eaten the way that you wanted to eat or you've exercised and then your weekend self just goes on a full fledged binge and so then by the time your weekday self shows back up on monday morning it's very discouraging because you're having to clean up after weekend self and it's kind of like a toddler with a knife your weekend self is just running around You know, doing whatever, but here's the good news. You don't have to change everything overnight. Small intentional choices make really big differences. And when you take small steps to support your opposite self, you feel so much better the next day. It's not about being perfect. It's about thing, making things easier for myself in little ways or yourself. Here's some strategies that have worked for me. So number one. Set yourself up for better sleep. Most of us totally underestimate how sleep affects everything. Our mood, our energy, our decision making, our nervous system. So if my morning self is exhausted. A couple things to set yourself up for better sleep. Turn off your screens earlier. Blue light from phones and TVs, they mess with your melatonin. They make it harder to fall asleep. Try reading a book or a journal instead of scrolling. Or watching Netflix. This helps you really wind your brain down so it's getting ready for sleep. Try to stick to a solid bedtime. Even if you don't feel tired, getting into bed signals to your body it's time to rest. So if you could do only one thing tonight that helps your morning self. This is it, but what if you have plans for example, my husband and I went to a kind of a comedy show and I knew that when we got home, it was going to be a lot later than what I normally go to bed. I planned for the next day to be a little bit more low energy. I was doing less things. I was taking care of myself so that I could get back into. That regular mode where I felt like I was in, you know, team resilient and I could function at a higher level. And so I'm just aware of it and I didn't beat myself up. I planned a lot less things on my plate. I made sure that during the day I kind of hooked myself up the next day and didn't leave myself a bunch of things to do so that I was scrambling. So sleep is ideal. But if you can't get it. Plan for it so that you have ways that you can recover. I also plan, I the night, the day before we went to the show, I took a nap and you know, it was like 20 minutes, not anything too much, but then the next day after I also plan for a nap. That way it kind of helps my body just kind of refresh a little. Okay, so number two, do a 10 minute evening reset. When I'm in team hypo, I give myself tasks that do not require high thinking because everything feels overwhelming. And so what I end up usually doing is not doing anything, but the trick is instead of trying to finish everything or do all the things that you normally do, just commit to 10 minutes of resetting your space. Set a timer for 10 minutes. Do one small task to help tomorrow feel easier. Is that the dishes? Just 10 minutes. Even if you don't finish, it's still better than nothing. Prepping lunch, chop a few vegetables, or you put leftovers in a container, tidy up the main area, even putting shoes away, clearing off a counter helps. Just little things. And it's amazing how much you can get done in 10 minutes. And your morning self will thank you. Because then that's something morning self doesn't have to take care of. Number three, create a morning shortcut. What is one small thing you can do tonight that will make the morning easier? So try this. Lay out your clothes. Decision fatigue is real. So you want to make it easier on yourself. If you've never heard of decision fatigue, like very high functioning people like Zuckerberg, he wears the exact same thing every day so that he doesn't have to change and think about what he's going to wear because when you have to make multiple decisions throughout the day, it does get fatiguing. Is there something small like that you can do the night before that it doesn't take a lot of energy or brain power and makes morning self. Go a lot easier. Pre fill your water bottle. Your morning self will be hydrated before you're even thinking about it. This is a big win. It takes 30 seconds. Write a note to your morning self. Seriously, this works. Something as simple as you've got this. It can help you shift your mindset in the morning. Something that I like to write to myself is you're enough. What you're doing is enough. The goal isn't to change everything. It just. to change little steps to remove like that morning stress. So why is this important for missionary moms? And how does this apply to you and your life? Because you are still living a regular life. Just because you have a missionary out doesn't mean everything else slows down. You're still running a household. You're still dealing with personal challenges. You're still waking up to a new day. Every day, and the more you show up for yourself in small ways, the more you have to give to your family, to your missionary, to your callings, to your job, to your spouse. And guess what? It's not about perfection. Some nights I do all of these things and I feel super organized and I feel like amazing and other nights I'll collapse into bed, face plant and I'll do none of it and that's okay. The goal isn't all or nothing. It's just to create small moments of support for wherever you can. And sometimes one of the things I like to think is if I'm in kind of this team hypo where I'm a little bit more low energy I kind of save some of those lower energy things to do in the evening. So that don't require a lot of my brain power. So I can load the dishwasher without a lot of effort. I can, you know, pick out some clothes that doesn't take a ton of effort and it doesn't require me to get all amped up and high energy as you can do the same thing in reverse. The same thing with your weekend self. Don't forget about your weekend self cause Your weekend self is going to want to come in and sabotage. So the way that you can do that is just be thinking about your weekday self. Think about your Monday morning self. How can I hook my morning, Monday morning self up? What can I do that's going to get me closer to being out of a stress, stressful, judgmental mode? Monday morning. And so making sure that you're aware of your weekend self and then having your weekend self be aware of your weekday self. And that helps really slow down and eliminate some of that self sabotage. So takeaways, one thing to try tonight. Here's the challenge. So before bed, just pick one small thing to help yourself, your morning self, just one. And it doesn't have to be any of these things that I mentioned it can be folding laundry, just anything where you put your, put your phone away earlier, maybe set your clothes out for tomorrow, clean up for 10 minutes, whatever it is, just notice how it feels in the morning. Pay attention to the difference it makes when evening self supports morning self. And just start somewhere. And I would love to hear what you do, what works for you. So if you want to come on over into Instagram and send me a message. And if this episode resonates with you, please share it with another mom who may need it. Thank you so much for joining me. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the comments and the things that people have reached out and told me. And it is. This is my deep, meaningful work that I try to put into the world to really help give some good, solid support to missionary moms. All right, until next time, take care and I'll see you next week. Bye bye.