Morning Routine

Hello and welcome to episode number 11 of the Strategy Corner where our goal is to get you to take action. I’m your host, Michelle Zink, the owner of Intentional Solutions Corp.

Today’s strategy is a morning routine and how you can utilize it to jumpstart your day. For me, a morning routine is essential and the reason for that is because I see it as the best strategy to use to get you and in this example, myself in the right mindset to start my day off on the right foot and to really get my mind around what I want to accomplish for the day. I looked on Google and found these other reasons for creating a morning routine. They had, having a morning routine helps you to set the stage for better prioritizing, more effective time management and greater productivity. They also had creating a morning routine for yourself as essential to a successful life. Waking up early than usual will give you ample time to focus on your goals and conquer the day with more energy, mindfulness and strength. They also had the morning routine is your time to start anew and to start fresh.

When the morning goes right, it gives the rest of your day momentum and energy. Inc., the magazine says, “There is a reason that most successful people have routines. It’s not because they’re OCD or eccentric. Successful people develop routines for a simple reason. They want to reduce friction in their lives so they can focus on what they do best.” I’m going to say that one more time. They want to reduce friction in their lives so they can focus on what they do best. They also said, “As you become successful, whether it’s financially or in mastering a craft, you realize that time is your most precious commodity. There is simply never enough time. There’s always too much to think about, so you come up with routines, rituals, and habits that simplify your life and save you time.”

For me, it gives me me time to recharge before having to be all things to all people. It helps me to become clear on how I want my day to go and who I need to be. Why did I start a morning routine years ago? Honestly, because I’ve always studied highly successful people and as you read, you’re always hearing about successful people having morning routine. I thought, well, I want to be successful so I need to create a morning routine. I had created my own morning routine to begin with and couldn’t remember exactly what I did, but I do remember starting the Miracle Morning Routine probably 10 years back. It’s a famous book by Hal Elrod. Elrod abbreviates his morning routine as SAVERS, S-A-V-E-R-S, and says they’re guaranteed to save you from a life of unfulfilled potential.

I’m going to go through and tell you what the SAVERS stands for. Letter S stands for a silence, so getting still and silent when you wake up, like meditation helps reduce stress and anxiety to creating more creativity and clarity. A is for affirmations and affirmation is a sentence or two in alignment with what you want to accomplish and who you need to be to accomplish it. Elrod suggests repeating your affirmation daily, ideally out loud. V stands for visualization. Elrod says that for five minutes you should visualize living your ideal day, performing all tasks with ease, confidence and enjoyment. E is for exercise, could be as simple as a 10 minute routine or an hour long workout. R is for reading. He recommends a minimum of 10 pages. And S is for scribing and that’s journaling and writing down what you’re grateful for. I did this routine for a while, but after a while I needed to mix it up.
Like everything, a morning routine is only as good as it is working for you. As you do these morning routines, there’s a lot of times where you need to pivot and make some changes to it to keep you energized and focused so that your morning routine doesn’t become stale. I started by stopping reading in the morning and started to just focus on meditation and would do a guided meditation by Dr. Romy. I’ll give you her link below. She’s actually a local Orlando business owner who has a meditation on iTunes that you can download. Her meditations are amazing for beginner people because they are guided. She’s talking to you and you could do one for five minutes and I believe they go up to 15 minutes. I’m going to go ahead and create the link down below so you can purchase that if you’d like.

Then that evolved again just this past year where I have gotten a little more specific about my morning routine because I set goals to finish a book once a month. Reading in the morning it became a priority again. I also realized I needed a break from guided meditation, so decided to take time to just sit in silence. Just being with myself for five to 10 minutes right now. And this is again right now. For right now I’m only sitting with myself for five to 10 minutes and most likely in a few months I might go back to guided meditation. In a year I might go back to guided meditation. The goal and the purpose of a morning routine is to energize you, so you have to be able to listen to yourself and see what works and what doesn’t work.

I’m going to share my morning routine with you as it consists of right now. I start off with that five to 10-minute meditation and it all depends on my timeframe. If I’ve got a full hour to do my morning routine, I’ll take 10 minutes and again just sitting in silence, setting my clock alarm. Then I’ll get up and I’ll make coffee because I like to get energized in the morning. Then I’ll set my alarm for 15 minutes and I’ll do 15 minutes of reading. Then I’ll move to 15 minutes of thought downloads and writing. When Hal said scribing, that’s exactly what I do. I just write down what I’m thinking. Write down maybe what happened the day before. I just really just take what I’m thinking inside and writing it down to get it on paper. Then I do five minutes of practicing new thoughts. There are things that I need to work on for myself that I’ve noticed are holding me back from achieving new success. I write down some new thoughts that I want to practice and I read them out loud every day.

And then I go ahead and write down my protocol for five minutes. This is my food protocol. I personally am trying to make sure that I’m eating very clean on a day to day basis. I decide ahead of time when I’m going to eat for the day. And so I write that down. And then finally, most recently, as of today actually, I’ve added a technique that I learned about years ago and I actually utilized for a while and then kind of dropped it off and kind of getting back into it. And James Altucher is a author who talks about taking time in the morning to think of 10 ideas. Now I say morning, you could do it in the evening as well. But I’m most productive in my morning and since I set this time aside, usually an hour, I’m able to take the time and attention that’s needed to create an come up with these ideas.

I just added today back into my morning routine, taking time, five to 10 minutes to think of 10 new ideas. His thought is, is you can come up with four to five ideas pretty quickly, but by doing 10 each day, you’re starting to build that muscle. Just like working out, you have to work out for a certain amount of time to build your muscles. He talks about building your brain muscle to come up with ideas. Doing 10 ideas a day and it could be 10 ideas about anything, about your business, about how to become more happy, about how to make more money. It could be anything. I’m actually just going to add that one in to my morning routine tomorrow.

To do this, I get up one hour before I need to to start my day. I also do exercise, but after my morning routine. It serves me for where I am in life. I need the morning to get a jumpstart on me and how I’m doing. By focusing on me in the morning, I start my day with my cup overflowing. There’s a quote that states, “Your job is to fill your own cup so it overflows. Then you can serve others joyfully from your saucer.” I’m going to repeat that one more time. Your job is to fill your own cup so it overflows. Then you can serve others joyfully from your saucer.

By doing this, it allows me to be all in on my day, producing work from a place of abundance because I’ve completed my morning routine. It’s also made me a better mom and a better wife because I know that I need some alone time to get my thoughts in order and to do something for myself to produce in the morning. If for me, producing by writing things down, by coming up with 10 ideas, by getting some reading in, helps me grow and develop myself. And so when my family wakes up, I’m just much, a much better and lighter person and I’m able to serve them because I’ve filled my cup first.

Now it’s your turn. Here’s some call to actions for you this week. Number one, decide if you could be someone who does a morning routine. If we go back to last week’s episode, it was all about owner victim. Do you want to be the owner of your morning? If so, say, “Yes, I’m a person who has a morning routine.” If it’s yes, decide what you’d like your morning routine to look like. Remember you get to play with this. Maybe start with how Elrod’s SAVERS, to begin with and then see what you like and what you don’t like.

Set a time you want to get up in the morning and set your alarm for tomorrow morning. Number one, decide what you want to do and then number two, decide how much time you need and then just go ahead and set your alarm for earlier. If you usually get up at 7:00 AM, maybe you get up at 6:00 AM now and do your morning routine. And then your next job is to get up excited to play with and be with yourself in the morning.

If you already have a morning routine, ask yourself, is there something that I want to change? Get rid of or add? What are some of my goals right now? And how could I add something to my morning routine to help move these goals and objectives forward? And then finally have fun. I know for me; I feel amazing and refreshed when I do my morning routine. Just do it. Just set something up. It could be even just a 10-minute routine where you’re just reading for five minutes, sitting yourself, sitting with yourself for five minutes. Just do something and see if you feel any change in your attitude or momentum for the day.

Please go to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and subscribe to the Strategy Corner. Also, go to my website, intentionalsolutionscorp.com and sign up to get my weekly blog post, which also has a link to the latest podcast. I will also include a link below to Hal Elrod’s book in the show notes along with Dr. Romy’s iTunes link to buy and download her guided meditations. They are wonderful and like I said, I’ve used them in the past and I probably will use them again sometime. Until next time remember, through action and growth progression happens. Let’s take action together. Thank you and create an amazing day.