Why I went from inspiration to silence during my morning routine

I have always been a morning guy. I just love the feel of the early morning. There is magic within it.

The anticipation of a new day, that feeling that you are ahead of most, that you got an early start—I love it.

No surprise, then, that I am a morning routine guy and have been practicing the 5AM routine for a while.

For those who don’t know, here is how it looks.

I wake up around 5am. I move (yoga, HIIT, etc). I meditate. I learn.

Those are pretty much the containers. Now, what I do specifically during those phases can differ, but this is the outline.

It has worked for me perfectly over the years, allowing me to anchor some important habits for physical and mental health, and personal and professional growth.

For instance, I work out about 6 times a week, just by adding in those 20 minutes in the morning. I don’t even count those as a workout — those are more maintenance. So my physical health is excellent.

Daily meditation helped me raise my overall awareness and helps me tune into what I am feeling and what I might need more or less of. Plus, it has helped me tremendously with focus.

And learning has accelerated my professional and personal growth by years.

For example, I did not use to read. I never felt the space for it anywhere else in my day. Over the last years I have read tens of books, completed deep-dive courses, and watched countless masterclasses, all during this final block of my morning routine.

20 minutes a day goes a long way, and the beauty of moving your self-study and lifelong learning to the morning is that there is no distraction and your mind is still fresh.

But lately something started to shift.

I noticed that I was having more and more resistance to listening to yet another podcast and to reading yet another book. It started to feel like noise.

I started to realize that I would rather hear myself think than listen to an interview.

And that’s when it hit.

I didn’t need more knowledge. I needed more integration — but I wasn’t giving my brain the space to do so.

So lately, I have changed things up.

I no longer listen to an audiobook in the morning or put on a motivational talk. I sometimes don’t even put on meditation music or a guided meditation. I prefer silence now in the morning. I want to hear my own thoughts.

So here is what I am doing instead.

I put on music that is specifically designed to bring your mind into a certain state of relaxation so that you can think more clearly and hear your own thoughts more clearly. Music like Quantum Healing Frequencies, soundscapes, Indian pipe music — whatever feels good at that moment.

And that’s another thing.

I don’t try to hack my brain — that would get me into my over-optimizing state of mind. I just feel what feels good and go with it.

And I am loving it. I am even extending it to listening to soundscapes when riding my bike through the city. It just calms my mind and helps me think so much more smoothly.

I think that a lot of us are drowning in knowledge and noise and keep feeding ourselves with more noise because we always think that that’s the missing piece of the puzzle.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love learning — but I realized that I didn’t need more knowledge at this point. I needed to integrate that knowledge more deeply.

So that’s why I am moving toward silence, toward thinking over learning.

Sometimes it’s uncomfortable because my dopamine-craving brain loves more stimuli and hates to be overwhelmed.

But when I get into that state, it feels truly blissful, and magic happens.

Things click, insights emerge, and new perspectives unlock.

And what often happens next? I write a post about it :)

Are you sensing the same thing? Are you longing more for silence and shifting your behavior? Let me know in the comments.