I’ve watched it happen so many times. I see it in the comment sections and DMs people send me at eleven o’clock at night, and it starts like this: a woman decides she’s going to make a change. She wants to feel grounded or more productive or find some kind of consistency. She decides to start a morning routine.
She’s motivated. She’s ready. She opens up YouTube and finds someone whose mornings look like a film set. Cold plunge. Matcha latte. Journaling in linen. A six-mile run before dawn that she somehow filmed herself doing, which honestly, raises more questions than I have time for.
The woman watching is 41, she has three kids, a commute, and a boss who emails around the clock. She hasn’t slept past 6AM since 2017. But she’s hopeful. She writes everything down. Monday morning, she tries it.
By Thursday, it’s over.
And here’s the rub… the part that gets me every time. She doesn’t blame the routine.
She blames herself.
I’ve spent over a decade in rooms (literal and virtual) with women who are attempting to build something meaningful in the margins. They carve out bits of time for themselves: to chase a dream, or heal from pain, or fight for a better life. They attempt to do all of this with whatever minutes are left after everyone else’s needs have been met. And if there’s one pattern I’ve watched repeat itself more than any other, it’s this: a woman borrows someone else’s system, applies it to her completely different life, experiences it fail, and then files that failure as evidence that she is the problem.
The diet that didn’t stick. The journaling habit that lasted six days. The sourdough starter she absolutely murdered. All of it quietly stacked in a mental folder labeled: more proof I can’t follow through… more proof that I’m not as strong as my sister… more proof that I’m not capable of change…
It’s not true. But it feels true. And that distinction, between what’s actually happening and what the story in your head says is happening, is where most people self-sabotage .
There’s a concept in psychology called optimism bias: that’s the brain’s near-universal tendency to overestimate how well a new plan will go, while underestimating the obstacles that are absolutely coming for it. Research suggests it affects about 80% of the population. It’s been studied for decades, but neuroscientist Tali Sharot’s work has done more than almost anyone’s to bring it into mainstream conversation.
In other words: most of us are wired, on a neurological level, to believe that this time will be different.
And honestly? That’s not all bad. Optimism bias is also what gets us out of bed in the morning. It motivates us to sign up for Hinge and into business ideas that might actually work. The issue is that when optimism bias is applied to borrowed behavior (to someone else’s life, someone else’s season, someone else’s goals) it stops being optimism and starts being a setup.
She doesn’t watch the cold plunge video and think, that would never work for my life, I despise being cold and I live in an apartment with nary a plunge in sight. Her brain skips straight to If I really want to change, I just need to commit harder. And so she does. She tries all the things. And when it falls apart before the end of the week, the optimism that lit the match is nowhere to be found. What’s left is just the “evidence”; a story or a reinforced limiting belief that will absolutely not help her.
The reason she looked to someone else’s routine in the first place is also deeply human — and there’s research on that too.
In 1954, psychologist Leon Festinger proposed what’s now called social comparison theory: the idea that when people don’t have a clear internal benchmark for how to evaluate themselves, they instinctively look outward. At other people. Not because they’re insecure, necessarily, but because the human brain defaults to external reference points when internal ones are missing.
When a woman doesn’t know what a grounded, intentional morning looks like for her, her brain goes looking for evidence. And in 2026, the evidence is everywhere.
Festinger also noted that we tend to compare ourselves specifically to people who seem similar to us. And since we’re looking for guidance, that means similar but slightly ahead of where we are. The influencer who also has three kids and a demanding job and still manages the 5am workout feels like a relevant data point, not an anomaly. And so the woman watching imports the whole framework: the alarm time, the supplements, the journal prompts, everything except the context: the schedule, the support system, the life stage, the actual goals.
She’s applying someone else’s answers instead of asking herself any questions.
For the record, I want to add this point, because I think it matters.
I have been profoundly shaped by the teachers I’ve found in books, podcasts, and personal development conferences. As a kid in the early 90s, I was watching Oprah and attempting to absorb what Eckhart Tolle was teaching long before I had any business trying to understand it. Spoiler alert: I’m still working on it.
Learning from people who are further down the road than you is one of the most efficient things a person can do. I believe this with my whole heart and I’ve healed and grown so much through this method. The problem is not learning from others. The problem is attempting to implement what you learn without any augmentation— without running it through the filter of your life, your values, your current season.
Think about it this way. When you move into a new house, you don’t keep all the previous owners’ furniture arranged exactly as they left it. That would be weird. The bones of the house are useful, the layout gives you ideas, the light shows you where to spend time. But their couch was positioned for their body, their family, their way of moving through a room. You take the ideas that work. You reconfigure the rest.
A morning routine borrowed wholesale from someone else’s life is furniture you didn’t pick, in a room built for someone two feet taller than you. It’s never going to feel comfortable and you’re always gonna need a step stool to reach the counter.
Unfortunately, most people don’t look at it that way. They try, and it fails and they take that very external experience and internalize it. They blame themselves.
Psychologists distinguish between two types of self-blame. Behavioral self-blame is when you attribute a failure to something you did: something specific, something potentially changeable. Characterological self-blame is when you attribute it to something you fundamentally are. Brené Brown captures this distinction perfectly: guilt says “I did something bad,” while shame says “I am bad.” Or as she puts it even more pointedly… guilt is I made a mistake. Shame is, I am a mistake.
The research is pretty consistent on which one is more damaging. Characterological self-blame, the kind that sounds like I’m just not a disciplined person or I’ve never been able to follow through, doesn’t motivate change. It confirms identity.
And that is exactly the shift that happens when the borrowed routine falls apart. It stops being that routine just didn’t fit my life and becomes I am the kind of person who quits. She adds it to the list: The diet, the journal, the Dualingo subscription, the ceramics class, the 5am alarm that lasted one week. And she stays in that story, quietly accumulating evidence against herself, until someone new comes along– someone cooler, with better lighting and a more compelling morning aesthetic, and the whole cycle starts again.
Same story. Different linen.
Here’s what I know, after ten years of this work:
The women I’ve watched struggle? They are not lazy or weak or “just not that kind of person”. They are women who are trying so freaking hard for their families, their kids, their partners and all the people they love most. They are trying to become the best version of themselves. And they are capable of enormous change. They’re just following the wrong blueprint.
The question isn’t what does her morning routine look like?
The question is: What does this season of my life actually require… and what would a morning that genuinely supports that look like?
That’s the only morning routine worth building. Not aesthetically aspirational. Not borrowed from someone whose life looks nothing like yours. Not optimized for someone else’s goals and someone else’s 6am and someone else’s season.
Built for the specific, imperfect, completely worthy life that you are actually living.
