Accomplish More and Feel Happier with this Morning Routine
This is the morning routine that will create peace, happiness and success in your life.
It’s important to take time each day for intentional thought practice. This is time alone and quiet without disturbances. This practice will create peace, calm and success in your life.
Meditation as part 1 of your morning practice
Meditating can be intimidating for a lot of people. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me that “I can’t meditate” or “I’m not good at meditating”.
Anyone can meditate. Here’s the only thing you have to do while meditating: bring your attention back to your breath.
SO here’s a very simple how to:
Sit in a comfortable spot. In a chair or on the floor or lying down if you want. As long as you don’t start falling asleep, lying down is fine. Now close your eyes and focus your attention on your breath. Focus on wherever you feel the breath most, whether that’s on your nostrils when the air moves in and out or in your chest and shoulders when they rise and fall or in your belly when it expands with each inhale. Just focus. And then your mind will wander and start thinking about all sorts of stuff. Your job is to just “bring it back” to the breath. Without judgement. When you notice yourself thinking, just label it by saying “thinking” softly to yourself and then refocus your mind on your breath.
If you’re brand new to this, do this meditation exercise for 5 minutes every day. If every day is too much, just do it for 3 days per week. Set yourself up for success by setting a low bar and growing from there.
Each week you can either add one session OR add one minute to each meditation session. Keep doing this until you’re up to 5 days per week and 10 - 20 minutes per day. You can go more, but keep it realistic. Adherence and regularity is most important. But if you find that as life happens, you haven’t meditated for 2 weeks, don’t beat yourself up, just start now.
We all can find 5 minutes to just sit and breath.
breathing add one minute each week till your up to your desired amount. That may be 10 - 20. Studies show that quieting the mind (meditating) can have profound effects on our health and well-being.
Anecdotally, so many of my business mentors and people I look up to in the business community have this one thing in common: they all have a designated time each day to quiet their minds, in meditation or contemplation.
Cultivating boredom as part 2 of your morning practice.
After meditation I sit down with my coffee. I intentionally do nothing for some time. I aim for 10 minutes of pure boredom. Boredom is the mother of creativity. When our brains are filled with distraction there is very little space for new ideas oR creative solutions that we are capable of generating from within. Allow yourself to stop looking outside for answers and just let the mind wander.
Journaling as part 3 of your morning practice.
My journaling always starts with writing down or reading over my 10 dreams and 10 goals. I’ll be blogging about this later but for now I’m just going to mention this as part of my routine.
Studies show that people who physically write down their goals are way more likely to reach those goals that those that don’t. Depending on what I’m working on at the moment my journaling morphs into a brainstorming session or a problem solving/self-coaching session.
Brainstorming.
Brainstorming is transformative and energizing. I use brainstorming whenever I’m working on an idea or wanting to quicken the pace of reaching a goal.
First you’ll need a topic or question for yourself to focus on. For instance: How will I reach my October income goals? Or, who would be valuable to network with in relation to building my business?
Then just let yourself write down everything that comes to mind. Aim for a list 20+ ideas. Really push yourself to think deep and hard on this. If 20 ideas come easy, push yourself to come up with 30 to 40.
Next, take action. Pick your top 3 ideas from your brainstorm and schedule them into your calendar.
If each idea is broken down into multiple tasks, make sure to break down what those tasks are and when you will do them. I love to use the project planner Asana for this. It helps you break down and plan longer term projects so they don’t get neglected.
Problem Solving/self coaching:
If I’m looping on a thought or feeling negative about any situation, I’ll write down all those negative thoughts. I teach my clients the exact method I use to self coach themselves through anything.
For you, right now in this blog, I offer this one life-changing nugget: for each negative thought you write down ask yourself, “what if the opposite is true”.
Questioning truth in your thinking is key to moving on to a more helpful outlook.
Thought practice.
As you develop more positive thoughts in your life, you’ll want to go back and practice them each morning. You are rewiring your brain when you do this. Years of negative thought habits create neural pathways.
It is through this intentional thought practice that is part of your morning routine where you can start to change your brain's default thinking.
I call these thoughts I’m working on my power thoughts.
You can go here to read more about cultivating positive thoughts.
Practice 5 to 10 each day. Any more than that I find as too much for my brain to integrate.
Remember, these are not affirmations. These are thoughts you think that create a tangible emotion. It’s the emotion that is key here in your growth. So read them or write them out and then stop to acknowledge how they make you feel.
When to do your morning routine.
When my kids were younger and sleep was a precious and unpredictable thing, I would do some version of this morning routine in the evening. Now that everyone is sleeping through the night, I get up at 5:30 am and either do this exact morning routine or head to the gym for my strength workout.
If you only have time in the afternoon once the little one has laid down for a nap or after the kids go to bed, do it whenever works for you.
Just make sure you have no distractions and a quiet space.