By Dr. Femke E. Bakker

Some mornings, you wake up already behind. The alarm goes off and before your feet have even touched the floor, your mind is running through everything that didn’t get done yesterday, everything that has to happen today, everything that could go wrong. Your body is barely awake and you’re already bracing.

I know this because I lived inside that pattern for years. Not in a way anyone would notice from the outside. Just that immediate sense of tension in my chest from the moment the day started. A kind of low-grade readiness to perform, if that makes any sense.

What changed it for me wasn’t a productivity system or a better alarm time. It was something much smaller. A single minute, before I opened my eyes, where I chose to meet myself before I met the world.

Why the first moment of the day matters

When you sleep, something resets. The inner critic goes quiet. The loops of overthinking slow down. Your nervous system gets a small, partial reset, which is less dramatic than it sounds, but still real. And in that brief window between sleeping and fully waking, before the to-do list floods back in, there’s actually a choice available to you.

You can pick up right where you left off yesterday, carrying all the unresolved stress and self-judgment forward with you. Most of us do this automatically, without realizing we’re choosing it.

Or you can use that moment to reconnect with yourself. Just briefly. Just enough to notice you’re there, and to ask what you actually need.

That second option is what this practice is.

A morning practice you can do before you get out of bed

This takes about one minute. You don’t need anything except to not grab your phone first.

Before you open your eyes, let your attention come inward. Feel your body resting. Notice the weight of yourself against the mattress, the warmth, whatever is comfortable around you. You don’t need to manufacture anything. You’re just arriving.

Then greet yourself. Genuinely, the way you’d greet someone you’re happy to see. I say something like: Good morning, my darling. How are you today?

I know that might feel strange the first time. Or the fifth. I remember saying it quietly to myself in the early days and half-laughing at how unfamiliar it felt to be that gentle with myself in the morning, when I was so fluent in being immediately demanding. But something in me responded to it even then, a small softening, like something that had been holding its breath relaxed a little.

Then pause. Listen. Don’t answer with what you think you should feel. Just notice what’s actually there. Tired? Anxious? Okay? Tender? Fine. Whatever it is, it’s information.

Place a hand on your chest or belly, and ask: What do I need today?

Let the answer come without chasing it. Sometimes it arrives clearly: rest, a slower start, a conversation you’ve been putting off. Sometimes it’s vaguer, more of a felt sense than a word. Either is fine. You’re not trying to solve anything. You’re just listening, which is itself a form of gentleness most of us forget to practice toward ourselves.

If you can meet that need today, even partially, do it. If you can’t, make a small, honest promise to come back to it. That’s where trust starts to build, not with grand gestures, but with the small repeated experience of keeping your word to yourself.

This is not a morning routine

I want to be clear about something, because there’s a version of this that can get distorted. This isn’t about optimizing your morning. It’s not a productivity hack dressed up in softer language. It’s a daily act of self-honoring. And the distinction matters, because one is about performance and the other is about relationship. With yourself.

The first few times you try it, it may feel like not much is happening. That’s normal. You’re essentially reversing a long habit of leading the day with pressure. Give it some time. What shifts, slowly and genuinely, is not your morning. It’s the quality of how you move through everything that follows.

You meet yourself first. And that changes the rest.

If this practice feels like something you want to build on, the quiz below is a good next step. It takes a few minutes and gives you a clearer picture of where you tend to be hardest on yourself and where there might already be more gentleness than you realize.

All love, Femke

P.S. This practice pairs well with a selfgentle evening practice. Your mornings will land differently when the night before is closed gently too.