In this solo episode of the Living Legacy Podcast, host Zaakirah Muhammad—a professional photographer, brand‑cultivating strategist, Muslim, and retinoblastoma cancer survivor—walks listeners through her morning routine and the mindset that underpins it. She opens with gratitude and prayer, describing how her eye condition and PCOS shape her wake‑up experience and the need for a natural alarm clock. She details her skincare (using Dr. Bronner’s), facial cleansing, and the importance of seeing the world each day. Nutrition habits follow: she never skips breakfast, opting for tea, bread, cereal, eggs, or smoothies while avoiding noisy appliances to respect her husband’s sleep. Zaakirah then outlines her work rhythm: a part‑time night job, entrepreneurial client work, a dedicated creative hour for podcast editing, book writing, or journaling, and how she adapts her schedule to her nocturnal tendencies. Productivity tools such as the Color Note to‑do list, limiting daily tasks to ten, and dream journaling are highlighted, as are tech aids (Slack, Google Docs, rideshare driving, live social media). She reflects on the role of music, hearing aids, and a vibrating alarm in her wake‑up process, and emphasizes gratitude, flexibility, and self‑compassion as core values for a consistent yet adaptable morning.
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My name is Zaakirah, and you are listening to the Living Legacy Podcast. I am a brand cultivating strategist, a cancer survivor, and a camera saved my life. In this podcast, we'll be sharing stories of the very connections that I have as a professional photographer, featuring women that I admire. And lo and behold, you never know, I may interview some of my favorite men. In this podcast, you will learn about professionalism, you learn about business, you learn about travel, not just to any of the popular I have traveled to 10 countries so far, and now it's my turn to teach you and inspire you to step outside of your comfort zone. Today's episode is all about my morning routine. They say the key to success is how you start your day. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm working on a consistency. So My day always starts off with prayer and gratitude. Some mornings I wake up, I know exactly where I am, and I'm glad to have been able to open my eyes and see. Because I know it's in the back of my mind that there will be a day where I will not be able to open my eyes and see. Sometimes it's scary if I happen to have— because I am a cancer survivor of retinoblastoma, which is a rare eye cancer. I may happen to wake up with too much mucus in my eyes, which will cause my eyelids to almost glue shut. So, it needs a little moisture from my eye or even water if I go wash my face in order to no longer glue shut. So, I'm always grateful to be able to see, to be able to have a sense of where I am. Of course, if I'm so tired, there will be days where I have no idea. I have to think, okay, what day is it? Where am I? Okay, I'm alive. As a Muslim, one of the most important things is praying. And there's actually a— we're supposed to pray 5 times a day, and it's literally almost the equivalent of your lunch schedule, your food eating schedule. So there's morning, technically right before sunset. There's one that you can do that's optional right after sunset. So No matter what time I wake up, because unfortunately it's not always consistent because I also have PCOS, which is an autoimmune disease, and sometimes it affects my sleep schedule. Sometimes I sleep harder than other days. Sometimes I sleep longer than other days. Um, but no matter what time I do wake up, I always pray. And the way that we pray almost similarly resembles yoga. So that's, you know, my meditation, my way of starting off with meditation in the morning. And I definitely at least try to wash my face. If I didn't do it the night before, I'll definitely do it in the morning. I know how sometimes pillowcases and hair oils and dust or whatever can just kind of get onto your face at night, especially the more fidgety you are at night. So I try to always wash my face. I wash my face with Dr. Bronner's because my skin is very sensitive. But for the most part, my body has a natural alarm clock. How are you liking the Living Legacy podcast so far? What has been your favorite episode? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher. You can also leave us a message at 615-475-5700. And your message just may be featured on the next episode. Unless I know it's a day that I do have to go to work during the day with my part-time job, because most of the time I work at night, but sometimes I will, I guess, fill in for someone and have to go, you know, during the day. So for the most part, I don't have an alarm that goes off. I let my body have a natural alarm clock, but sometimes My body knows if I plan my day out the night before, my body will know that I have an appointment, so I have to get up. I'm not as active, but what I do try to do is eat. I never skip breakfast. I never skip breakfast at all. If I'm really not in the mood for eating, I will at least try to have tea, heat up some tea in my electric kettle and have some kind of bread. I try to avoid eating white bread, but sometimes that's all we have in the household. So I'll have bread or I'll have cereal. Cold cereal, hot cereal. I love to have smoothies and like juice, but I also don't really like to have noise in the morning, you know. So if I wanted a smoothie but I didn't make it the night before, oh well, because I'm not trying to create noise. Well, one, for me, but two, for my husband if he's just about to go to sleep. Sometimes I do try to get up around the time that my husband finally settles in from work because he works at night. But even that varies. That depends on my bedtime. That depends on my stress levels. Also, I just can't necessarily stand the noise of a juicer or a blender in the morning. And I don't always have energy to cook either. Sometimes I will, you know, cut up my onions and my peppers for my eggs. But other times I'm just putting the eggs or the egg whites in the pan and eating it. So I like, I never skip breakfast, but sometimes I just don't want to do the whole shebang. When I'm not working my part-time job, the good thing about being an entrepreneur is I will spend the early morning to either do a, do some work for a social media client. Lately, I've also been using at least 1 hour to edit or plan or record a podcast episode. I've also committed to 1 hour a day toward a chapter in my book that I'm working on. This— how I— the 1 hour, that 1 creative hour that I have varies depending on my creative juices, if they're flowing, if I'm feeling creative, if I'm feeling good. And then if I'm not, sometimes I would just need to write out how I'm feeling. If I'm feeling anxious, if I'm feeling stressed or upset or mad, sometimes I'll just use that hour to just journal. But no matter what, at one point I was managing 5 social media clients at one time. So no matter what, there's always going to be at least one creative hour. I used to split it up. Between 1 hour per client, and that became the most efficient for me. But the thing is also, I've learned what my best times of days are. Normally, I am nocturnal. You know, my mom said she would have to basically take me to the beach just so I can fall asleep at night because I was just always alert at night. But I know that now as I get older, my best times of day are between 10 AM and 3 PM. If I did not— I don't necessarily need coffee. I sometimes have to have tea or have to have something in my system. I have to be able to eat or have a date or vagins or something before I address anything, right? Like they say, don't bother a sleeping woman, or some people are truly like that. Like, don't talk to me If I have not had my coffee yet. Mm-hmm. And I'm like that too. If I have not eaten something or drank my water or taken my vitamins lately, I've been taking vitamin Bs and vitamin D. D as in dog, because in the winter solstice, when there's less sunlight, that's the vitamin that we are lacking. So I've been taking vitamin D and then vitamin B. There's a B complex vitamin that I'm taking. Naturally, vitamins B12, if you're not getting that in your food, like your fish and your veggies, I'm taking that as a vitamin. So that too will help me stay focused, stay energized throughout the day. If I'm off that day and I happen to be awake early enough, I will sometimes do Lyft or Uber, you know, rideshare driving, or I would have planned ahead and been able to go live. on Instagram or Facebook to, you know, provide some value, promote a service of some kind. But if I am working, thank goodness for technology because I can use apps like Slack to communicate with my team or Google Docs to start working on my book or even use any of the ebook readers so I can, you know, at least read something during one of the slow times at work and still be productive. Before I got married and before I really had A lot of roommates. I enjoy being able to wake up to music. I love music with almost everything that I do. There's a song for everything, so I almost always have a song in my heart, as Mary J. Blige would say. But I just personally can't wait to be able to set music to my alarm clock. Nowadays it's hard because I used to have like a big speaker. My mom didn't care. Obviously, she knew this about me. She was used to it. But now it's just different because unless I'm waking up before my husband gets home from work, it's like hard to have music without my hearing aids in. So I won't be able to hear it, you know. So I actually had a— I used to growing up, I had an alarm clock that would vibrate. I still have an alarm clock that vibrates. It was back when iPods were very popular. So it had like— iPods. A place to place your iPod, as well as a radio clock, as well as an alarm, as well as a vibrator. But that's— it gets scary because, yeah, it just gets really scary. So I just stopped using it. Both my husband and I just stopped using it. But, you know, thankfully, the older I get, the more natural my alarm clock is. But when I was younger, it was so hard for me. for my mom to wake me up in time for school. And of course, I would be groggy, super duper groggy. But then that would attest to how I end my day as well. You know, I make sure not to eat too close to bedtime. I make sure not to do too much heavy thinking. Like, my mind is always going as a creative anyway, but I try not to start a new task or anything of that sort right before I'm going to bed. Because that too can shape how you wake up in the morning. My mornings always fluctuate depending on my schedule, depending on the needs of my husband, depending on the needs of my parents if I'm, you know, with them. But what I do try to do when it comes to setting my schedule, I have an app on my phone called Color Note, and I will make my to-do list most likely the night before. Or right when I wake up. I've gotten into the habit of if I did have a dream, I would also write down my dream because sometimes dreams are literally déjà vu moments. They are things that are coming into fruition for you before you even realize it. Sometimes they kind of are a little scary and require me to look it up, like why did I just have a dream about a A tiger, you know. So, but I do write down my dreams. One, especially if it was a bad dream, it helped me to kind of— writing is therapy for me, so it helped me to kind of clear that thought out. And if someone that I know was in my dream, sometimes that will require me, even though I try not to check my email or check any social media the first thing that I wake up, sometimes I can't help it. Maybe I was expecting something from a client who's in a different time zone and I'm wondering if they responded. Or if I did have a dream about someone, I've gotten out of the habit of letting it slide like, oh, so-and-so was in my dream. I hope he's okay. Or hope she is okay. Nowadays, if I still, if I have them on social media somewhere and I had them in my dream, I'm sending a message because life is too short. I mean, I would hate to have a dream about someone and then I couldn't tell them because they passed away, you know? So But the thing about my to-do list, aside from my tip earlier of dedicating 1 hour to each task, I also try not to put more than 10 things in a single to-do list for a day. I try to do it by day. Sometimes I do it by week, but most of the time I try to do it by day, but I also try not to have more than 10 things because it's so easy to get overwhelmed by your own to-do list. Nothing. has to be completed in that very morning, in that very day, right? I've also learned to not be so hard on myself if I don't get a task completed. I do need to be better because sometimes it does hold me accountable when it comes to procrastination. But I try not to give myself more than 10 things at a time, and that puts less stress on me. Think about those things that you can't go without. Is it your coffee? Is it a ritual? Is it looking at the holy book? I've adapted to, you know, not having a set schedule, but I love the flexibility of being an entrepreneur. I love the importance of at least the things that I'm most consistent with is waking up with gratitude, waking up without rushing out of bed. Like I've never— I have, I used to be the person to rush out of bed only because I was late for school. But once those days passed, I've stopped rushing out of bed because I'm just more antsy when I rush out of bed. So if I'm awake, I will lay in bed however long it takes until I'm actually awake. Of course, plans will go awry, but always have a plan for the day, but always have a sense of gratitude and a sense of where you are. I feel like that's for me until I can really become more consistent and have that set schedule. As a creative, it's— and as a Sagittarius, it's always going to change, but those are the most— the top 3 things. Thank you for listening to the Living Legacy Podcast. Any suggestions you have, any topics you want to discuss in this podcast, send me an email. You can visit zaakirahnayar.com. Leave a comment and also be sure to share and subscribe and download this podcast.
