The Morning Routine Trap: How “Mindfulness” Got Hijacked

Let’s talk about how mindfulness got turned into merchandise.

Somewhere between Buddha and burnout, we managed to turn presence into a product. You can now subscribe to it monthly, track it on an app, or pair it with a wellness smoothie that tastes suspiciously like liquefied lawn. I’ve been in yoga classes where people were checking their smartwatches to make sure they were “relaxing correctly.” I’ve seen ads for “mindful workspaces” that look like the set of a minimalist sci-fi movie. White walls. Soft lighting. And always a plant. Just one. Why only one?

And then there’s the content.  There’s an endless carousel of morning routines that promise to “rewire your brain” or “10x your productivity before 8 a.m.” Mindfulness has become a cousin to hustle culture just with better lighting and more comfortable linen pants. The problem is when we treat mindfulness as a morning checkbox, something we do to earn our way into a better day, we’re missing the point.

Mindfulness isn’t a life hack, or a daily habit, or even a reward for getting up early.  Think of it more a relationship with yourself, your time, your surroundings, your emotions, your clarity, and your attention to your attention.  And relationships take more than routines to be successful.

Now, let me be clear: I’m not against morning routines at all. I just want to pull back the curtain on how we’ve started treating mindfulness like a self-improvement subscription, instead of a practice that helps us meet reality with attention. For some people, a carefully crafted morning routine can be an anchor, a way to build structure in a world that often feels chaotic. I get that. I live that. But what I’m interested in now, especially as someone who teaches communication, business, and mindfulness, is the part we skip over in all the “day in the life of a digital nomad” vlogs. What happens after the routine ends?

When the meeting goes sideways. When your kid gets sick. When your inbox explodes before you’ve had your second cup of coffee. What kind of mindfulness shows up then?

Here’s where I think we need a shift in conversation from ritual to readiness. And I think we do ourselves a disservice when we elevate the aesthetics of mindfulness over the application. You can have a beautiful yoga flow and still snap at your coworker by 10 a.m. You can take a cold plunge and still be emotionally frozen by feedback in a team meeting. I’ve been there.

So what do we do?

The Myth of the Perfect Morning

I don’t journal in color-coded pens or own a gratitude rock. And I’ve never plunged my body into freezing water on purpose, though I have, like any human who’s lived abroad long enough, taken an unexpected cold shower thanks to forgetting to turn on the water heater in a misjudgment of available time.

Depending on what corner of the internet you frequent, you’d think that a meaningful life begins with the perfect morning routine. Everywhere you look, someone’s got a formula: wake up before the sun, lemon water, breathwork, green juice, cold plunge, push-ups, guided visualization, maybe a podcast or two for mental enrichment… all before coffee.  It’s not that I’m against routine. In fact, I have one. It’s just not “content-ready.” It’s not something you’d find in a productivity guru’s YouTube channel.

Here’s what my morning looks like:

I get up, usually a little before 6:00am. I make the bed. Not because it’s part of some left-over Air Force troop discipline strategy, but because my wife appreciates order, and I appreciate her. I try to converse with my daughter over some breakfast and coffee that my wife so lovingly prepared while my daughter wipes the sleep from her eyes and tells me what dreams she had. I brush my teeth, throw on a shirt and flip flops, and I walk her to school.

That’s it. That’s the routine. No hype. No optimization. I don’t think I would be wrong to assume that your morning routines out there are remarkably similar.  But here’s the thing I’ve learned, especially over these past few years of studying mindfulness, teaching business, and raising a family here in Vietnam: the moments that matter rarely announce themselves. That walk to school? That’s part of my mindfulness practice.

We walk along the sidewalk, hand-in-hand. Street vendors are setting up their bánh mì carts. The air still holds last night’s rain as the Vietnam sun heats up the day. You can hear the city waking up, early scooters, light laughter, distant honking. That walk is a daily ritual. Not the “set a timer and empty your mind” kind of ritual. The real kind. The kind that comes with repetition, attention, and love.

We need to stop confusing the wrapper with the gift. We need to remind ourselves, and each other, that the point isn’t to perform presence but rather to practice it like any other skill you wish to develop. Morning routines, when done with the right mindset, can prepare us. But they are not the work itself. They’re simply the warm-up before the real game starts. 

For me, walking my daughter to school is part of the warm-up. But the real work starts when I show up to class, or lead a workshop, or manage a miscommunication with my wife, or just sit in traffic without letting it hijack my nervous system. That’s the kind of mindfulness I want to explore which is not one that is packaged and sold to the masses but the simple one that help you stay human in the middle of all of life’s synthetic anarchy. 

And while I do value meditation, stillness, and silence, I’ve also come to believe this: Mindfulness is not something that only happens sitting on a cushion on the beach before the day begins.

It happens while brushing your teeth in the morning.

It happens while going through your closet searching for the right shirt to pair with those pants.
It happens while sipping coffee beside your wife in shared morning quiet.
It happens while waving to the security guard on the corner who always waves back.

My mornings may not be optimized for Instagram. But they’re optimized for something else; showing up. As a husband, as a father, as a teacher, as a neighbor, as a human. That’s the kind of mindfulness practice I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The quiet kind. The kind that starts with making the bed, stirring the milk in your coffee, tying your shoes, and walking into the day with your eyes open, ready, prepared.

Practicing Presence in the Interruptions

I want to pause here and recognize something important. It's easy to sound like I’m judging and criticizing people who wake up early and engage with the routines that have been modeled to them on social media. But that’s not my aim. If those practices bring clarity and meaning, that’s beautiful. I’ve been there myself. What I’m really trying to point to isn’t the people.  it’s the subtle shift in mindset that happens when mindfulness becomes performance. It’s not the tools I question, but the pressure we put on ourselves to use them perfectly. True mindfulness includes observing even these judgments—with curiosity, not contempt.

Mindfulness in the morning is the easy part. You’ve got your favorite cup, the lighting is soft, your intentions are fresh. It’s a curated space, even if it’s imperfect. But real life doesn’t stay curated for long. It’s those unplanned moments that test whether our morning ritual was just performance… or practice. That’s where this idea of flipped mindfulness starts to take shape.

In traditional Buddhist psychology, there’s a concept called Sati. It’s usually translated as “mindfulness,” but it more accurately implies remembering to return to awareness. It’s not a fixed state, like enlightenment. It’s more of a reflexive loop consisting of noticing, forgetting, and then returning. In that sense, mindfulness is never maintaining some flawless zen throughout the day. Instead, it’s the act of returning to the present, again and again, especially when things go sideways.

Take this recent moment: I was at a tire shop in Da Nang. Simple errand, or so I thought. Turns out, wheel alignment takes a while. My phone was dead. I hadn’t brought a book. Just me, the mechanics, and a small blue plastic chair parked near the sidewalk. Nothing to distract me. No notifications. No scrolling. No clever quotes about presence or gratitude to screenshot and forget later. And yet, I felt calm. Focused. Almost… relieved. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t “me time,” or at least planned to be that. But it reminded me that attention doesn’t require a formal setting. In fact, most of the time, it flourishes precisely because of the disruption. I wasn’t “doing” mindfulness. I was just there, just like we all are anywhere we go.

Here’s where the flipped part comes in. Most popular content about mindfulness presents it as a precondition for success: “Get your mindset right before you check your email.” “Breathe before the chaos starts.” However, I believe that true mindfulness isn’t necessary about building a buffer against the anxieties of life but rather showing up to it.

Think about it; it’s actually deeply practical. Psychologist Ellen Langer, often referred to as the “mother of mindfulness” in Western research, has long argued that mindfulness is less about relaxation and more about engagement; the art of actively noticing new things, paying attention to context, and remaining open to shifting perspectives. In her framework, mindfulness is cognitive in addition to being contemplative and studying how we stay flexible in the face of changing conditions.

And let’s face it: conditions are always changing. Back to that tire shop, I sat there watching as one guy balanced the tires and another laughed with a customer. I noticed the pattern of oil stains on the concrete, the way the tools were arranged functionally, not really neatly. I didn’t check out or “use the time wisely.” I just used the time.

That’s flipped mindfulness. And I’m starting to think that’s the version we need more of especially in leadership, parenting, creative work, or any life lived outside of a retreat center. This kind of presence happens during the ruins of your plans like when your phone is dead or when you’re stuck in traffic. When you’re sitting across from someone and realize you were about to interrupt them just to make your own point sound smarter (admit it, we’ve all done that). Those moments are a test and the good news is they happen all the time, which means the practice is always available.

I teach university students, coach professionals, and speak to leaders about communication, purpose, and performance. I also spend a lot of time sitting in Vietnamese coffee shops, answering emails with the buzz of scooters in the background and the smell of strong drip coffee in the air. No matter what the setting is, there’s a recurring pattern I see around me: people are simply trying to get through the day.  I know many of you are very guilty of this mindset and I am too.

That’s the mindset we’ve built around routines. Do the morning ritual so you can survive the storm. Steel yourself with your green juice and breathwork so that when the inbox fills up or the investor backs out, you’ve got your shield in place. But real mindfulness, the kind that holds us up in those moments isn’t about having a shield or hiding from the uncomfortable. Too often we are mistaking the arrow for the enemy when, in reality, the arrow is the reality of life itself. 

Here’s what I mean: mindfulness is too often sold to us as a tool you use to avoid stress. No! It’s what helps you relate to the stress of being a human with more clarity. It doesn’t keep your kid from spilling their juice on your laptop, but it keeps you from reacting like the world just ended. It doesn’t remove tension from the boardroom, but it lets you breathe through it without losing your voice or your dignity. And here’s the part I try to bring into my teaching: the practice is the point. 

There’s a story I often return to from my time teaching in China, years ago. I was in a lecture hall, jet-lagged and underslept, facing a room full of college students whose eyes were glued to their phones. I wanted to get frustrated. I wanted to tighten my voice and raise my authority. But instead, I just paused. I walked to the window. I looked out at the same campus I’d been walking through for months. And I remembered: I could go crazy and lose my mind trying to control everything, but instead, why don’t I connect to it?  That one moment, about eight seconds of stillness, changed the whole class. I don’t think I even said anything profound. I just noticed the room and let myself be seen not as a teacher giving a performance, but as a person present in the discomfort of disconnection. And oddly enough, that was the most connecting thing I could do. That’s the practice.

Mindfulness is what you reach for instead of the automatic reaction. It’s what you build, over time, when no one’s watching. And it’s what makes the difference when everything else feels like it’s falling apart.

The Anchor and the Wild Card

Every morning, I walk my daughter to school. And every morning, I remind myself that this routine, simple as it is, represents a rhythm that grounds my day before it spins out into emails, lectures, headlines, errands, meetings, family conversations, and the thousand other unpredictable turns life will take. 

The paradox is that while that walk is my anchor, it’s also my reminder that nothing ever really goes as planned. Some mornings, she’s full of questions about dreams or bugs or outer space or food or America. Other times, she’s quiet, lost in her own thoughts. We might stop to get a pebble out of her shoe or detour around a motorbike blocking the sidewalk. Maybe the clouds roll in, maybe it rains. I might carry her backpack, or she might run ahead of me and wave at her friends. I never really know. And that’s the point. Routine can be about control if you want it to be, but in addition it’s an orientation; a set of directions that helps you stay connected. This is what I mean by flipped mindfulness. It’s mindfulness in the storm, with the dishes in the sink, the inbox full, the kid crying, the deadline looming. And you softened a little and tried again.

If I’m honest, writing this article is part of my own mindfulness practice; noticing my resistance and watching my ego creep in. I’m catching myself wanting to be “right” about mindfulness. But that’s the work. Real mindfulness means being present with even that: the tension between clarity and judgment, between calling something out and remaining open-hearted.

When I hear people talk about “starting the day right” with cold plunges and journaling templates, I nod. There’s value in that. But I also think about the quiet walk to school and the way my wife sets out the coffee and the way the city slowly stirs to life around us. The way I’ve learned to notice all of it because it’s real and it lives where we live in the often-messy texture of our days. We don’t need to escape our lives to find mindfulness or place it in a box to practice between certain times. We just need to reclaim it from the algorithms, the influencers, and the endless checklists that hijacked it. Remember that the real ‘trap’ was never your morning routine, it was the belief that mindfulness only lives there.

So, the next time someone tells you that success starts with a 5 a.m. smoothie and 10 tasks designed to optimize your brain waves, smile. And then ask yourself this instead: What am I practicing for?

Because whatever your answer is, that’s where the real routine of mindfulness begins.