Miracle Mornings* are intentional, ritualized routines designed to enhance focus, energy, and purpose. This concept was popularized by Hal Elrod and has evolved into a broader wellness and productivity movement adopted by people all over the world. These routines are tools that automate low-stakes decisions. As a result, there is more bandwidth for important decisions, tasks, and plans.
Relevance of Miracle Mornings to Educators and Classrooms
Educators and students need grounding rituals in education today, more than ever before. Post-pandemic stress, digital overload, and equity challenges demand new coping strategies. During the pandemic, many educators, like the rest of the world, became used to meeting via Zoom. The ability to meet with anyone at any time via phone or computer accompanied by increased use of tablets, computers, social media, and texting apps leads to digital overload for many educators and students. Finally, discussions about equity issues, “wokeness,” and political acrimony, all demand new and creative coping strategies.
Morning rituals like Miracle Mornings are used by all kinds of people all over the world. All kinds of people ranging from entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 executives have started Miracle Morning routines. These routines are good for educators and students as well. Educators and students adopt Miracle Morning routines for several beneficial reasons. Theres include:
- Boosts Focus and Mental Clarity – starting the day with silence, meditation, or prayer along with journaling helps clear out mental clutter. This helps set a clam, intentional tone for the day that improves decision making and reduces stress.
- Strengthens Motivation and Self-Belief– a daily affirmation practice coupled with visualization serves to reinforce one’s personal goals and values. It can cultivate a growth mindset and help educators and students in their commitment to long term aspirations.
- Accelerate Personal Growth – when educators set aside time each morning to read, whether for 5 minutes or 30, they build knowledge and are able to gain exposure to new ideas. This is a ways for educators and students to learn without feeling overwhelmed.
- Create a Sense of Control and Purpose – structured morning routines give educators and students control and agency over their time. For those juggling many roles, a structured morning routine can help educators recover from burnout and anchor their day.
- Build Momentum for Productive Habits – a Miracle Morning routine, once established, makes it easy to add other healthy habits to one’s life. These routines encourage consistency which is a key to long-term transformation.
Exploring the Meaning of Miracle Mornings
Rituals are more than merely a routine. Rituals involve intention and symbolism. Ritual is attached to emotional resonance. This means there is a deep often, subconscious connection when something is done as part of a ritual. Emotional resonance is what makes a moment feel powerful and relatable. Rituals prime the brain for focus, activate executive function, and reduce decision fatigue. This means preparing one’s mind to pay more attention, to be motivated and productive. Priming the brain influences subconscious responses and creates readiness for tasks by aligning one’s mindset with goals. It can be thought of similar to warming up before a workout.
Rituals help with embodied learning. A Miracle Morning routine helps to connect to somatic awareness. This means engaging in daily practices that evoke physical presence, pay attention to what one’s body feels, not just what their schedule demands, and using one’s body as a guide for alignment, energy, and emotional truth. These things matter. Coupling rituals like journaling and deep breathing deepen impact. Somatic awareness keeps one focused on oneself rather than mechanically following routine. When a person is somatically aware, they are more aware of joy, tension, and fatigue in their bodies. This may help one to adapt rituals to support their well-being.
Morning rituals can help educators and students shape their personal and collective stories. Journaling, for example, can help educators and students reflect on their lived experiences, affirm their values, and articulate their goals. Over time, journal entries become part of a record of growth that can support one’s personal stories and challenge dominant narratives. When one begins their day with silence, it is easier for them to tune into their bodies and emotions. If educators and students add reading to their morning rituals they have the possibility to learn language that will be beneficial to their classrooms and communities.
Affirmations are a tool that can strengthen community and interdependence. When affirmations contain words like “we” and “our” they reinforce a sense of shared purpose. This part of the Miracle Morning routine cultivates community for educators and students. It reminds participants that their narratives are intertwined with those around them.
Adapting a Miracle Morning routine to honor one’s cultural practices is a powerful way to foster equity, belonging, and authenticity. We invite educators and students to manage their rituals to include their own traditions. This can include incorporating cultural language music, and storytelling. With morning rituals, one does not have to assume that Western or productivity-centered models of rituals are what should be prioritized. Instead educators and students should decenter dominant norms and embrace their own cultural traditions.
Miracle Morning Classroom Applications
Educators can use things like start of class check-ins, breathing exercises, and affirmations as part of their teaching methods. Visual schedules, sensory tools, or journaling can support both cognitive clarity and emotional regulation. When educators include rituals that honor identity and cultural practices they promote a sense of belonging and inclusion among students.
In order to help students get benefits from Miracle Morning rituals by inviting them to do activities like creating personalized morning rituals that combine sensory, cognitive and emotional practices. Another helpful practice would be to teach students about the neuroscience connected with habits and achieving clarity. Yet another activity would be for educators to have classroom discussions about what powerful mornings look like or how they shape the day.
Click here to download our Design Your Miracle Morning Printable Dashboard.
Conclusion
In conclusion rituals like Miracle Morning routines have the power to foster cognitive clarity, emotional grounding and narrative strength. One of the best features of miracle morning routines is that they are adaptable. They can be inclusive. In fact, the best Miracle Morning routines are deeply personal. We encourage educators to design their own miracle morning routines and to both share them with their students and encourage their students to create routines of their own. Think of it this way, with the right routine, all mornings can be miracles
*Miracle Mornings are the creation of Hal Elrod who posited5 that if people started their mornings doing a certain routine which he named SAVERS, they would have better and more productive days. SAVERS was an acronym for: Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, Scribing.
Reference:
Elrod, H. (2023). The miracle morning: The not-so-obvious secret guaranteed to transform your life (before 8AM) (Updated and expanded ed.). BenBella Books
Further Reading
The Best Educators Strive to Create Equity-Centered Classrooms
Unlock Your Doctoral Success: Coaching & Resources That Work
Adapting a Miracle Morning Routine for Educators
About the Author
Dr. Janeane Davis is Founder and Principal Consultant at Janeane Davis and Associates: Educational Consultants. Her mornings begin with movement, meaning, and a well-lit desk where rituals become roadmaps. She writes to help educators build mornings that nourish their mission and sustain their momentum.
Sunrise near. Pages open. Always becoming.