I grew up in a warm climate, so when I moved to Chicago for a job six winters ago, I was completely unprepared for what a real winter feels like. My first January there, I spent most mornings huddled under blankets, hitting snooze five times, and arriving at work already miserable. My colleague Sarah noticed my red nose and constant shivering and pulled me aside one day. She said something that stuck with me: “You are fighting the cold instead of working with it. Change your morning, change your winter.”

That conversation sparked a complete overhaul of how I approach winter mornings. The routine I developed over the following weeks has made the difference between dreading the season and actually enjoying parts of it.

The night before is where it starts. I set my coffee maker on a timer so the kitchen smells like fresh coffee when my alarm goes off. More importantly, I lay out my clothes for the next day — including socks, gloves, and scarf — and place them near the heating vent in my bedroom. In the morning, the clothes are warm when I put them on. This one habit eliminated the worst part of my old routine: standing half-asleep on a cold floor deciding what to wear.

When the alarm goes off at 6:30, I do not give myself the option to negotiate. I sit up immediately and swing my feet onto a small rug I keep right next to the bed. The rug seems trivial, but stepping onto warm fabric instead of a cold hardwood floor changes the entire psychology of getting up. I then do two minutes of simple stretches right there in the bedroom — just enough to get my blood moving. Nothing elaborate, just reaching up, touching my toes, rolling my shoulders. My body warms up from the inside, and the room temperature stops mattering as much.

The next piece was the hardest for me to adopt but has yielded the biggest benefit: I drink a full glass of warm water with lemon before I touch any caffeine. I used to grab coffee the second I walked into the kitchen, but warm water hydrates me after eight hours of sleep and kickstarts my metabolism without the jolt that cold water gives on a winter morning. The lemon adds just enough flavor to make it pleasant. After that, I let myself have the coffee that has been waiting for me.

I also started taking a slightly cooler shower than I used to. This sounds counterintuitive for winter, but blasting hot water actually dries out your skin and makes you feel colder when you step out. I take a warm shower — not hot — and end with thirty seconds of cool water. It sounds like torture, I know, but it wakes me up better than any amount of coffee and somehow makes the bathroom feel warmer by comparison when I step out.

The final piece of my morning is a five-minute walk outside. Yes, outside. Even when it is twenty degrees. I bundle up in the warm clothes I set out the night before and walk to the end of my block and back. The cold air on my face is invigorating, and it resets my body’s thermostat so that the indoor temperature feels perfectly comfortable for the rest of the day. The people who see me doing this probably think I am crazy, but I have not gotten seriously sick in three winters, and I used to catch every bug that went around the office.

These changes took about two weeks to feel natural. Now they are automatic, and winter mornings have gone from something I dreaded to a quiet, almost meditative part of my day.