The Miracle Morning framework was developed by Hal Elrod, who proposed that starting each day with a purposeful routine could lead to greater clarity, productivity, and personal growth. He named this routine SAVERS—an acronym for Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, and Scribing. Each element is designed to help you center yourself, set intentions, and move into the day with focus and energy.
At Janeane Davis and Associates, we’ve thoughtfully adapted Hal Elrod’s SAVERS framework to support educators committed to equity-centered, student-focused practice. The image to the upper right outlines the steps in our version of the Miracle Morning—a routine designed to ground your day in purpose and clarity.
We encourage educators to treat this routine as a daily anchor. Routine is more than habit—it’s a stabilizing force. It helps you show up for your responsibilities even when you’re exhausted, under the weather, or simply running low on motivation. It’s what keeps your life and leadership aligned.
What makes our adapted Miracle Morning especially powerful is its practicality. Educators can complete each step right at work, spending just a few intentional minutes before the formal day begins. It’s a small shift with a big impact—one that honors your role and reinforces your commitment to students and self.
One of the best things about the Miracle Morning routine is that it can be adapted to match each person’s style, talents, and needs. In this article, we explore a new way educators, doctoral students, and community leaders can use Miracle Morning routines to ground themselves and create better educational spaces for themselves, their colleagues, and their students.
Silence as Strategic Stillness in the Miracle Morning Routine
Silence is the first step of the Miracle Morning routine. In this article we encourage educators, doctoral students, and community leaders in the educational arena reframe silence as an intentional pause, with a purpose. Silence should be seen as strategic silence for cognitive clarity and emotional regulation. During the Miracle Morning silence period, educators can process complex equity work. Engaging in strategic silence allows a person to center themselves and mentally prepare high stakes activities that will occur later in the day. There are a variety of ways one can spend their silent time that will be empowering and help them be ready for the next day.
Using the silence period as a time to engage in breathwork may be helpful. When doing breathwork, the actor engages in conscious breathing techniques that regulate the nervous system, reduce stress, and enhance focus. There are a few different methods:
Box breathing – To do this, inhale for 4 counts, hold your breath for 4 counts, then exhale for 4 counts. This type of breathing helps with stress relief, focus, and emotional regulation. All of which are valuable for those navigating high-stakes environments.
Coherent breathing – To do this, inhale and exhale for equal counts (for example 5 in, 5 out). This technique is useful to calm the body. This type of breathing helps regulate the nervous system, reduce stress, and improve emotional resilience. It does those things by slowing the breath to about five cycles per minute.
Extended exhale – To do this, inhale for 4 counts then exhale for 6-8 counts. This technique engages the part of the body that is responsible for calming the body and supporting essential functions like digestion, rest, and recovery. This type of breathing helps calm, the nervous system by reducing stress and improving emotional regulation by lengthening the time for breaths out. It also helps with grounding and clarity.
Affirmations Anchored to Intentions in the Miracle Morning Routine
Affirmations are a common and powerful part of Miracle Morning routines. In this article we suggest practitioners move away from traditional affirmations to anchored intentions. Anchored intentions are purpose-driven commitments tied to a cue that help practitioners stay grounded, focused, and aligned with their values throughout the day. People who practice anchored intentions like the fact that it blends mindfulness and strategic action. Both of which are particularly valuable for educators, doctoral students and other equity leaders who navigate, complex, high-stakes environments. Anchored intentions promote emotional regulation because anchors like breath, touch, and visual cues help one to pause and respond with intention rather than reacting impulsively.
Below are some examples of anchored intentions:
- I will honor complexity with compassion.
- I will protect time for reflection and growth.
- I will speak the truth with clarity and care.
- I will make space for joy and justice in my work.
- I will sit down and rest.
- I will make space for myself to daydream about tomorrow.
Visualization and Vision Mapping in the Miracle Morning Routine
Visualization is the third step in the Miracle Morning Process. In this article, we encourage educators and doctoral students to move from visualization to vision mapping. This is a dynamic process during which one defines their desired future, breaks it into milestones and manageable steps. This is done using visual formats like diagrams and timelines to track progress and maintain motivation. Vision boards focus on designed outcomes. Vision maps emphasize the journey by showing the gap between where you are and where you want to go. It works by activating neural pathways that boost motivation and focus. Seeing a mind map helps the brain recognize opportunities and anticipate challenges. In addition, it builds cognitive clarity, making abstract dreams feel achievable.
There are several benefits that come from the vision mapping process. It connects daily actions to long-term legacy. It encourages adaptability because vision maps can be revised as goals shift. Vision mapping clarifies priorities and aligns them with personal values. It boosts motivation by making progress visible. Finally, it supports strategic planning for complex goals like writing dissertations or curriculum design.
Vision mapping can be done via a variety of formats. Timelines for example are good for project-based goals like dissertation milestones. Staircases or pyramids show progression from foundation to goal achievement. Journey analogies uses paths, islands, or mountains to represent phases of growth. Even simple lists and diagrams can be used for modular goals or mult0track planning.
Educators or doctoral students who are working to figure out their research goals, write dissertations, create community engagement plans, or who have legacy-building aspirations should start using vision mapping ideas. Tools like mind map programs, Canva templates, or sticky note walls are great tools to help with vision mapping. Visualizing has impacts that can be felts well beyond the academy.
Exercise and Embodied Momentum as Part of the Miracle Morning Routine
Instead of just thinking of the E in the Miracle Morning routine as exercise, think of it as a way to bring embodied movement into your life. Embodied movement is a mindful, intentional practice that connects the physical movement one does with their emotional awareness. This helps one feel more present, grounded, and aligned with one’s inner self. It involves moving in ways that:
- Support healing, self-regulation, and expression
- Integrates breath, awareness, and emotion
- Honors the body’s sensations in the moment
Embodied movement helps you reconnect with your body after periods of stress or trauma. It helps you process emotions that may be stored physically like tension and fatigue. Embodied movement can help one build resilience by regulating one’s nervous system. Educators and scholars are supported by the use of embodied movement because it provides a non-verbal outlet for stress and burnout. It encourages presence before action which is good for tasks like teaching, writing, or presenting. Some examples of embodied movement are:
- A period of breath-led stretching before teaching or writing
- Freeform movement or dance to release tension
- Somatic journaling where one moves and then writes about what one’s body is telling them
- Walking meditation while paying attention to footfalls and one’s breath
While embodied movement is important as part of a Miracle Morning routine, it can also be done throughout the day. Movement supports emotional regulation and idea generation. So one could take a walk around the building before sitting down to write. It is important for educators to reclaim movement as part of their scholarly practice.
Reading for Radical Reception as Part of the Miracle Morning Routine
If one took the reading activity of the Miracle Morning routine and pushed it to be radical reception. This could be understood as engaging with texts in an active way. It would mean one used curiosity, critique, and looked for ways to connect with the text. This type of reading involves reading across disciplines. It would encourage educators and doctoral students to annotate their reading with equity lenses. Educators and doctoral students would read texts and then reflect on how those texts shape, support, or fail to align with their scholarly stances. When you read with radical reception in mind, you are actively reading and making a real connection with the material. It is a good idea to use a reading tracker or annotation guide for intentional engagement.
Click here to download our Educator Reflection and Planning Worksheet
Scribing for Reflective Composition as Part of the Miracle Morning Routine
The final step in the Miracle Morning routine is scribing. In this article, we encourage you not to merely scribe, but to scribe for reflective composition. That means to write in a way that captures, supports, or facilitates deep personal reflection. It is more than recording thoughts. It is shaping thoughts intentionally through writing. When you write as reflective composition, you are more than just the writer, you are a witness to your own evolving understanding. When you write with reflective composition in mind, you document your tensions, insights, and transformations as they unfold.
When you write for reflective composition you choose structures, prompts, and metaphors that guide the reflection. You move beyond recounting events to interpreting their significance. This may mean connecting personal experiences to broader themes like power, community, and identity. To write with reflective composition means to allow space for discomfort, composition and uncertainty. Reflective composition can be repurposed in mentor libraries, blog posts, and community toolkits.
Click here to download a copy of our “SAVERS for Scholars & Change-Makers”
Conclusion
In conclusion, the purpose of this article is to give educators and doctoral students permission to reimagine the Miracle Morning SAVERS program in a way that gives room for strategic stillness, anchored intentions, visual mapping, embodied movement, radical reception, and scribing for reflective composition. The ability to adapt Miracle Morning routines to suite the needs of the user is one of its greatest strengths. The benefits of starting the day with a plan that enables one to be more mindful and intentional will lead to better, more productive, and justice filled days.
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.