Why You Can’t Stick to Your Morning Routine (It’s Not You—It’s the Blueprint)
One-Size-Fits-All Wellness Plans and 5 A.M. Morning Routines Don’t Work and are Burning Out the Modern High-Achiever (Here’s How to Create Health & Wellness Plans That are Actually Made for You)
The Lure of The Perfect Plan
If you’ve been interested in health and wellness for any length of time at all, I’m guessing you’ve brushed up against at least one of these “life upgrade” templates or “wellness hacks” floating around the internet before:
The “ideal”, high-protein, low carb, absolutely delicious, and totally affordable meal prep plan, complete with matching containers
The digital detox that prompts you to get rid of every piece of technology in your home and insists your phone is the villain ruining your life
The 5 a.m. wake-up morning routine that all the millionaires are using to 10x their productivity (complete with five minutes in the cold plunge every morning—because we all definitely have that just lying around)
The 2-hour HIIT workout routine clearly designed for someone who wakes up genuinely craving burpees
We’ve all seen these “wellness hacks,” or at least something like them. They’re often beautifully packaged and sold as easily implementable shortcuts to the ideal version of you.
“Do this exactly, and you’ll finally feel like you’re winning at life.” (All you have to do is input your credit card number to get the “secret” to health and wellness.)
And honestly? The temptation is powerful.
I mean, what would you think if you saw an ad where the guy with glistening abs was polishing his Ferrari, wiping sweat with sandalwood-scented hundred-dollar bills, and telling you he had unlocked the secret to your best health?!
Sign me up for that, right?
All jokes aside, there is a spark that lights inside of us in these moments. That pause and bit of hope where you think, Okay… maybe this is the secret that finally straightens everything out.
Even if part of you is skeptical, another part is already imagining what life might feel like if it actually worked—more energy, more money, less constant battling with yourself.
That hope is very real, and there’s absolutely nothing naïve about wanting it.
So for a little while, that hope carries you through. You follow the routine. You try to live inside the rules. You tell yourself, Just stick with it. Everyone in the reviews says it worked for them, so it’s got to work for me, too.
But then, the routine starts to feel like a chore instead of something supportive. The effort feels disproportionate to the payoff. And in coaching, this is where I see people slowly, almost imperceptibly, shift the question from Is this right for me? to What’s wrong with me that I can’t make this work?
This is the moment where I want us to pause. Because here’s the truth that the big players in the health and wellness industry don’t want you to know:
You’re not falling short of your health goals because you’re failing to fit the blueprint—the reality is, the blueprint is failing to fit you.
Because it’s easier to sell at scale, most of what you’ll find outside of working 1:1 with a personal trainer, wellness coach, or other health and wellness professional, is a one-size-fits-all blueprint.
And that blueprint doesn’t work for you because it wasn’t made for you.
So when you try it, and experience that ongoing friction between your real life and someone else’s idealized template, what results is what I call The Trap of Fitting In.
The trap opens the moment you try to pour the full, chaotic, beautiful reality of your life into someone else’s rigid mold—and snaps shut when the resistance that, naturally, shows up gets mistaken for personal failure.
In this blog, I want to show you why that resistance isn’t a flaw at all.
It doesn’t signal anything wrong with you or say anything about your ability to stick with things. It’s actually your body and nervous system quietly saying, “Hey… this wasn’t built for us. Let’s do something else.”
And that’s the moment where a different, more useful conversation begins—one that doesn’t start with the need to fix yourself, but instead with understanding what’s really happening and how to adapt.
The Cost of the One-Size-Fits-All Wellness Plan
Here’s something most “wellness hacks” don’t mention in their shiny sales pitch: they assume you’re a blank slate. An operating system that can just be updated, rather than a human with history, preferences, lived experience, and a complicated nervous system doing background work 24/7.
But you’re not a blank slate.
You have energy rhythms that ebb and flow through the week. You experience moments of stress shaped by years of learning what feels safe and what doesn’t.
You have identity stories, values, and emotions that guide how you move through the world. You have relationships, responsibilities, cultural layers, and the whole “being a person” thing going on.
That’s a lot.
If you’re like most of us mere mortals, some mornings your brain is basically oatmeal, and other days you’re shockingly productive before noon. Sometimes your day hums along smoothly, and other times the slightest disruption sends everything hurtling off a cliff.
It’s important to recognize that none of that is a flaw—it’s just part of being human.
The key takeaway here is that when a strategy demands that you override all of that complexity… your body’s systems absolutely feel the cost, even if you don’t consciously register it.
And that cost usually shows up as subtle signals—the early warning signs of The Trap of Fitting In:
A slight dissatisfaction you can’t explain (“Why doesn’t this feel good? Aren’t I supposed to love this?”)
Creeping frustration every time the plan feels harder than it “should”
Guilt whispering that other people manage this… so maybe you’re the weak link
A hint of resentment toward the routine you were so sure would change everything
The slow drip of self-doubt convincing you that your life, your wiring, or your discipline must be the real problem
And here’s the heartbreaking part: Most people never question the plan.
They question themselves.
They assume that it’s a personal failure. So, they tighten the rules, push harder, white-knuckle the routine… and unintentionally drain themselves even faster.
Or sometimes, they just give in to the inner demons that say they don't have what it takes.
Ouch.
When all along, the real truth was that the plan was never designed for their reality in the first place.
Start Designing Health and Wellness Plans for Your Reality by Paying Attention to Resistance
Let’s take a moment to look at a word that gets dragged through the mud during some productivity conversations: Resistance.
Most people hear that word and immediately translate it to “lazy,” “undisciplined,” or “I’m just not trying hard enough.” But encountering resistance rarely says something about your character.
Resistance is feedback, nothing more.
It’s a treasure trove of information—your nervous system is raising a tiny red flag and saying, “Hey… this doesn’t match our life as we’ve been living it. Something is wrong here.”
Because your nervous system doesn’t recognize the imaginary, optimized life you’ll get “once you get the hang of it.” It also doesn’t recognize the fantasy version of you living on a beach in Bali with endless time, piles of cash, the perfect body, and zero responsibilities.
Your nervous system recognizes your life.
Your bandwidth. Your brain with its incredibly unique wiring.
Wondering how to tell if resistance is happening?
This is how resistance often manifests in your biology: Your shoulders tense, your thoughts get foggy, your energy drops at the mere thought of doing the next step in the routine.
Remember that biological feedback is data. It gives you information about misalignment, sustainability, and what your system can actually support day after day without burning you out.
And once you start treating resistance like a compass instead of an accusation, the conversation opens up.
When you design your health and wellness habits and routines around:
Your values—what actually matters, not what sounds virtuous
Your bandwidth—your real capacity, not your idealized one
Your responsibilities—the non-negotiables that shape your daysYour emotional seasons—the natural cycles of ebb and flow
Your personality—how you’re wired to operate, not how you think you “should”
Your neurobiology—the patterns your nervous system uses to protect you
…Change stops feeling like an uphill climb and starts feeling really good.
The crazy part is that, sometimes, it feels like lowering the bar. But it’s really just aligning the bar with the foundation you actually have, so you’re not relying on brute force or a last-minute surge of motivation to keep everything going.
When the plan fits the person, the process becomes sustainable. And sustainable change is the only kind that truly sticks.
How to Align Your Plan With Your Identity to Create Lasting Change
Every high-achiever I work with has one thing in common: they’re not short on motivation—they’re short on plans that match them, their identity, their internal beliefs, and their external circumstances.
If you’re done trying to knot yourself into routines that don’t fit your reality, that’s exactly what my course Identity Lab was designed for.
Inside, you’ll learn how to design a wellness plan that sticks because it’s tailored to you—your identity, your energy, your patterns, your nervous system.
No more friction. No more guilt. No more feeling like you’re broken because you just cannot force yourself to stick to the 5 a.m. club.
Just an understanding of where and who you are, and a clear vision of how to get to where you want to be.
Enrollment for Identity Lab is typically $97, but I’m currently offering it FREE for 26 people in 2026.
To get 100% off your enrollment, click here and use the code change100in26 at checkout.
If you’re ready to build a life that supports you instead of drains you, I’d love to help you start.
Until next time,
Brandon Jennings, CWC, CPT, WLS
