One of my mentors told me this.
“Imran, the way you start your day is very important. It will set a course for everything that follows. If you start your day the wrong way, it will be very hard to change course later. So invest the first 30 – 60 minutes when you wake up making yourself strong – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually”.
This stuck with me.
And he’s right.
In days where I wake up tired, I check my email first thing; I eat a lousy breakfast; I end up getting nothing of consequence done. It’s like I enter this cycle of bad decisions that’s getting worse and worse through the day.
Or I end up stressed and out of my mind.
In the days where I prepare myself and I build positive momentum, I achieve great things. I am more creative. I am more persuasive. I can focus on what is important and needs to get done without distracting myself with 100 other things.
In those days I get more done before noon than I’d normally get done in a single day.
Yes, it’s that strong.
And no matter what’s your story… no matter if you don’t have time or the energy, you should allocate a period at the beginning of each day to make yourself strong.
It’s an exercise that will impact your day.
A good start of the day leads to a good day.
Good days lead to a good week.
Good weeks lead to a good month.
And good months lead to a good year and a lifetime of success and happiness.
It’s one of those small things that if done right or if you do it (even a broken morning ritual is better than no ritual), you’ll benefit.
So how does this look like?
I won’t ask you to follow mine because this works for me. But I think you should have these five elements in your morning routine.
Ritual #1 – No Email / No Phone When You Wake Up
Your day should be about creation.
About taking the tools you have, money, time, intelligence, skills and building yourself a better life.
And an artist always starts with a blank canvas. A painter doesn’t buy another painting and paints over it. No, a canvas is white.
Well, when you check your email first in the morning, your day becomes not your day but what others want from you. The first conscious thoughts you have are other people’s requests and concerns and needs. You’re putting yourself in problem-solving mode right away.
There is nothing bad with this but solving problems it not the same as creating value. And you should first create and then if you have time remaining, go fire-fighting, not the other way around.
So make a rule to wait for a while until you get to your email. Two hours is perfect. By that time you have a clear image of what you want out of your day and your Inbox won’t throw you off course.
Ritual #2 – Exercise
Nobody wants to exercise in the morning.
That’s a given.
All you want in the morning is to go back to sleep. However, there are two big reasons to exercise.
First, it’s likely the only time in the day when you will. Let’s be honest, you won’t exercise after a long day of work. You won’t exercise at noon. You won’t do it before you go to sleep.
Exercising is hard already. You’ll find 1000 reasons to leave it for tomorrow and that tomorrow is always pushed forward.
The morning for most people is likely the only time when it makes sense.
The second reason is that you’ll benefit more if you exercise in the morning.
All exercise is good but if you do it before sleep, you will have trouble falling asleep. If you do it in the noon, you may feel hurried to get back to work so you’ll just go through the motions.
So if you do it early, on an empty stomach, you’ll train your heart, you’ll have more energy and you release endorphins into your bloodstream. This will make you happy and focused.
Now you need not run 10 kilometers.
What good exercising means is up to you. For some people it’s aerobics, for 10 – 15 minutes. For others it is lifting weights. For others yoga. I’ve learned that any exercise is better than no exercise so do what makes you happy here.
I also suggest exercising apps like FitStar (now known as FitBit Coach) as having someone telling you what to do next makes it far easier to follow.
Ritual #3 – Read Something
And when I mean something, I don’t mean your Facebook feed.
Train your mind with some good non-fiction. Read from a business book. Or a self-improvement book. Or watch a TED talk. Ten – fifteen minutes of this is enough and in time it will add to huge benefits. If you read just ten pages in the morning that’s about a book every three weeks. It adds up.
This is the same as exercising. It’s likely the only time you can do it and ideas compound. You will not change your life from reading once for ten minutes but if you do it every day, you’ll be way ahead of the competition.
Or as Brian Tracy says, the more you learn, the more you earn.
Building wealth was never about hard work. It was about knowing what to do, having the skills and the mental tools to make things happen. And these don’t come out of nowhere. They come from courses and books and audiobooks.
Alternatively, if you commute, you can do it during that. Play an audiobook while driving to work. Read a book while you’re in the taxi or bus or subway or whatever you’re taking to work. Put that time to good use instead of checking Instagram and Facebook.
Ritual #4 – Offer Gratitude
You attract what you think about.
This is not LoA but common sense. Our thoughts determine our behavior. Our behavior determine our results. Our results determine our life.
So if we focus on the negative, we have the behavior that gets more of that. It’s like our thoughts are the steering wheel of our life.
So when you focus on what’s right, what do you get? More of what’s right. It’s no secret, no magic trick. Positivity leads to behavior that builds more things to be positive about.
You can be grateful in writing or you can talk about it or you can visualize. Some people like to make lists about all that is good and works in their life. Others like to repeat this in the mirror.
As long as you recognize what’s working, everything will do.
Ritual #5 – Plan Your Day
It is freaking incredible how many people start their day without knowing what they want to accomplish.
This is like going on a vacation without even knowing what country you want to visit. Yes, it can make for some nice adventure but most of the time, you’ll end up lost and confused.
Set your goals.
Decide on three things you want to accomplish today. This doesn’t mean that this is all you’ll do but these will be your MVPs aka most vital priorities.
If you do these, you can call your day a victory.
Get clear on what you want to achieve or you’ll spend all your day in reaction mode and that’s a wonderful way to get nothing done.
So How Should Your Day Look Like?
This is up to you.
Some people like steaming (inhaling the steam from essential oils). Others like running and others journal in the morning. Some rituals take as little as 20 minutes while others take 90 – 120 minutes. The important thing is that you do something that works for you and you stick with it.
Are you using a specific morning ritual right now?
How does it look?
Best regards,
Imran
