“Ring Ring Ring” the alarm clock sounds. You roll over and hit the snooze button for the 3rd time, but you realize that if you do you are going to be late for an important meeting. So you hop out of bed, groggy and a little irate. You jump into the shower, get dressed, brush your teeth and quickly say goodbye to your family and head straight to work.
Does this sound anything like your mornings? I hope not… but it’s definitely not out of the realm of the reality.
Maybe there is a better way to start your day?
I now use my mornings to get me into the right state of mind for the rest of the day. I use this time to prepare myself, energize myself, and take care of myself.
The number one question I have received since releasing my blog on The Power of Solitude is “Where do you find the time to have some alone time to yourself?”
Well here is my secret, having a dependable, consistent and powerful morning routine. In fact, I credit my morning routine as being the biggest and most successful life change I have made in the past few years.
So what is included in my Morning Hour of Power?
I wake up at 4:55AM (virtually every day) and I jump right into an automated routine. My Morning Hour of Power is broken up into 20-minute segments.
4:55AM to 5:00AM
In order to make this work, as soon as your alarm clock rings, you need to force yourself to wake up. No rolling around or hitting snooze! The first thought that generally runs through my mind when I open my eyes is “It’s beautiful day, so let’s have an amazing day”. As soon as I roll off my bed and my feet hit the ground, I say a quick thank you. To me saying thank you first thing in the morning is my quick way of giving gratitude for being able to live another day.
I head straight downstairs where the first thing I will do is drink a big glass of water with a lime squeezed into it. This is a great practice as it gets your stomach acids flowing in preparation to digest breakfast. Also, after sleeping all night, my body feels dehydrated and having this big glass of water is a great way to replenish my fluids. Here is a quick tip for you, put a big glass of water on your night stand/kitchen counter the night before so the water is room temperature when you are ready to drink it in the morning.
5:00AM to 5:20AM
Right after I drink my water, I jump straight on to my exercise bike and ride for about 20 minutes each morning. I believe that there is no better way to wake yourself up then to work up a sweat first thing! This will completely wake you up and get your body ready to roar for the rest of the day.
If you don’t have an exercise bike, you could always go for a run, or skip or do any other type of exercise that gets your heart rate pumping.
There are a couple of great benefits to exercising first thing in the morning:
1. You have already accomplished something for the day. If you leave it up to will power to exercise later in the day, there is a good chance that you will not get to it
2. Your brain releases the feel good hormones in your body such as serotonin, dopamine and endorphins, so you start feeling great first thing in the morning!
5:20AM to 5:40AM
I jump straight into Meditation. I find that meditation first thing in the morning is too hard, because I tend to drift back off to sleep. But putting Meditation right after my exercise, allows me to stay fully awake and focused the entire time.
Another reason why I meditate in the morning is because it allows me to practice quieting my mind before my mind really starts to race due to the stresses at work.
5:40AM to 6:00AM
I spend the last 20 minutes of my morning making and drinking a green protein shake while reading a non-fiction book or journaling in my journal.
Here is my recipe for my protein shake in which I blend in a Magic Bullet.
1. Organic Spinach
1. Organic Kale
2. Coconut Milk
3. Half a banana
4. Some sort of berries
5. Cinnamon
6. Flax Seeds
7. Whey isolate – non GMO protein powder
In my journal, I usually plan the day ahead or I check in with myself to see if my life is on the right track. Here are a couple of questions that I recently used in my journal to check in with myself:
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
What is currently cluttering my mind and wasting valuable brain cycles?
What in your life, do you feel you have sufficient enough of?
If you are at all interested in the books that I read, here is the list I use to track it.
So there you have it, one of my biggest secrets to starting my day on the right foot. Like I said, this routine was a complete game changer for me in virtually all aspects of my life.
I understand that waking up early is hard for most people; believe me I hated it as well. However, the benefits to getting up early and accomplishing something is amazing. After this first hour, my mind and my body are ready for the long day ahead.
I hope that you do not dismiss this routine right away because you don’t think you can get up a 5 AM. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you have never been a morning person before so therefore you can never become one. It takes courage and will power to make life-altering changes, and the more you step into the zone of being uncomfortable, the more you will grow.
Please let me know how this all turns out for you and if you have any questions feel free to ask in the comment boxes below.
Good luck!
Special Note: I put all of my blogs into a downloadable pdf book and added a couple of extra unpublished blogs that I will release only to my newsletter subscribers.
The two extra blogs talk about the process I go through to build strong lasting routines and my final "secret" ingredient to my morning routine which energizes me and gets me ready to rock the day.
My newsletter subscribers will also get access to my Top 5 most recommended books to induce massive self-improvement. Click this link to subscribe.