I didn’t know how powerful morning routines were until I started practicing morning routines. Before I had a conscious morning routine, I would wake up and immediately go straight to my phone. I didn’t just check the time or turn off my alarm clock, I would go right to my notifications answer them and then go right to social media. This was my unconscious morning routine.
Every successful person has some type of morning routine. Do you think Bill Gates just rolls out of bed whenever he feels like it, and checks his phone, scroll through social media, and the internet? I can almost guarantee he doesn’t do that. Bill more than likely has a morning routine put into place.
What’s Your Morning Routine?
Often times, I get a lot of people telling me that they don’t have any morning routine, because they like to be “spontaneous.” Here’s the thing, if you try and say you don’t have a morning routine, your brain creates one for you. We are habitual beings, we like habit and so does your brain. Even if you think you have no morning routine, your mind will unconsciously develop one for you. Even if you go on a business trip or family vacation, your mind tries to do the same thing you were doing at your house.
How You Start Your Day Is How You End Your Day.
What you do in the morning will shape how your entire day will pan out. If you wake up and immediately continue an argument with a spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend then you are going to be more angry through out the day. You will probably end up being more like to get angry in traffic, at your coworkers, and family, just because you started your day with anger.
So you need to win the morning and the rest of the day will go more smoothly. I did an article on morning rituals and the 7 I do every day. Out of the 7 morning rituals, only 2 are a must for me to master my day. There hasn’t been a day that went by in the last 2 years, that I didn’t wake up and do these 2 morning rituals.
The 2 Morning Routines That Changed My Life:
1. Journaling Gratitude.
Every morning when I get out of bed, I go right to journaling gratitude. I don’t check my phone, notifications, and scroll through the internet. I take my journal and go into another room and write down 10 things I am grateful for. I try to keep the list of only things that don’t have price tag on it.
I don’t write down that I’m thankful for my car, I write down things like the sun, the trees, my health, my mental health, my calmness, my family, the birds, the air, things like that. It’s more powerful to be grateful for things that aren’t materialistic.
Then after each things on the list, I say out loud that I’m grateful for it and then I say “thank you.” Thank you is the 2 most magical words. When you are thankful for things, you tend to get what you are thankful back tenfolds.
My Life Before Gratitude:
Before practicing gratitude I would often times wake up and dread the day. I would just lay in bed for over an hour after waking up, scrolling through my social media feed and waiting for this spark of motivation to get out of bed. The reason for the lack of motivation was the fact that didn’t appreciate my life and the things in it. On the surface I acted positive and everyone looked at me as the most positive person but under the surface, deep down I didn’t appreciate the life I had. Or at least I thought I didn’t. I wasn’t depressed or anything like that, I just wasn’t grateful and it showed.
Then I started practicing gratitude and everything changed it. It was like someone just waved a magical wand over my entire life. Gratitude gave me the spark and change I needed. I wrote in my book The Paradise Within that when I started to commit to gratitude as a daily practice, the universe started to give more of things that I was grateful for. It was so magical.
Then this gratitude bled into the entire day and things just started working out for me. It will work out for you too, if you can just become grateful for your life and the people and things in it.
Even if I woke up in a dark mood, the gratitude would just flip it like a light switch. Gratitude for sure changed my life, because if it didn’t I would not still be practicing gratitude every morning, 2 years later.
2. Silence For The 1st Hour Of The Morning/Meditation
Starting your morning in completely silence is powerful for calming your mind and clearing your thoughts.
People tend to wake up and immediately throw on some music, podcast, or a YouTube video. This takes you away from your thoughts and then your mind starts to wander. You don’t want you mind to wander in the morning, because then your mind will continue to wander throughout the day. This causes you to lose focus and clarity.
The most powerful part of my day is the morning, I can think so clear that I get so many ideas and creativity. I thought of the title: Don’t Start Your Day Until You Do These 2 Things, and not to blow my own horn but that’s good copywriting to capture someone’s attention. If you would of just started your morning by playing music, then your mind would will cluttered. The less clutter and things to distract the mind, the clear and easier it is to think.
The First 2 Hours
So the first 2 hours of the morning is in silence. Well, at least they should be in silence. During this 2 hours, I practice meditation. This is the icing on the cake for my morning. After I do the meditation, everything can go wrong and it won’t effect me because I won my morning.
Meditation will help you get more in tuned with your body and mind. People don’t spend enough time with themselves alone. Now I don’t mean sitting on your couch and watching tv alone, or surfing the internet at your house alone. I mean sitting with yourself in silence, no reading, no scrolling, no watching, no talking, no doing, just alone with yourself. This is life changing to me. How can you get to know yourself and know what you like, if you haven’t truly spent any time with yourself without distractions.
Everyday I spend the first 2 hours of the morning in silence, and in meditation, This will help you figure out more and more things that you didn’t know before. You tend to become more of an observer of things. Observer of how you feel, think, act, and also why people act the way that do, and how the world actually is in real form. Not through the media’s eyes and opinions but through your own eyes.
Benefits Of Meditating In The Morning
Meditation enhances activity in the brain that associates with positive emotions. Meditation will set a calm tone for an entire day. Have you ever been overwhelmed and unease that you feel like your life is crumbing in front of you? Meditation will help you remain calm in the storm.
Focus is the rarest things a human being can have especially in this day in age. Focus is so rare because everyone is so distraction by everything, that focusing on what you have to do can seem merely impossible. I was never diagnosed with ADHD, despite being a very unfocused individual. I believe every single one of us could be diagnosed with ADHD because I would rather do something that simulates my brain like video games than reading or writing. I’m not a good writer, I’m a focused writer, that can articulate words good because I have focus. All this focus was acquired from meditation. Meditation will give you insane focus throughout the entire day.
Your life may not change much at all on the day to day basis but meditation will give you an overall great sense of well-being. This alone can make you feel like you have your own life in order.
The best part about meditating in the morning is it will help you remain stress free throughout the entire day, even in the times of stress provoking situations. Meditation is the kryptonite to stress.
Meditation and journaling gratitude is something I will probably practice every morning for the rest of my life because of how much of an impact it had me. Also because of how much of an impact it has every day.
Thank you for reading 🙂
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