Want to know the secret to getting the most out of your days and really setting the path for an amazing life? Well, it all starts with what you do first thing in the morning.

What I want to share is something very, very simple that if you get this right, everything else in your life becomes a whole lot easier.

 

The struggle of waking up early

This is something that I’ve struggled with for a long time in my life until I realized how important and powerful it was, and that all comes down to the fact that what you do first thing in the morning sets the table for everything else in your day. And if you don’t start your day right, the rest of the day simply follows suit.

So what I want to share with you is pretty much my morning routine, that really sets me up and paves the way for an amazing day. You don’t have to copy mine, but I’m hoping this will serve as inspiration for really helping you create some magic in your life and in your business.

So a quick little story before I share my morning ritual with you.

For the longest time, one of my challenges was getting up early.   I wrote a book called The All-Day Energy Diet, because when I was growing up. I had such a tough time getting out of bed, that I’d sleep 10 to 12 hours a night.

When I began to recognize the joy I was getting waking up first thing in the morning, I was like, “I want to do this more often.” But the problem was that I was having a tough time doing that.

Now, was that physically or mentally? I’m going to tell you something that in most cases it’s a mental challenge.

What I did not recognize at the time was that the pain of discipline is far more fulfilling than the pain of regret. So what I went through was a period of back and forth of waking up at 5:30 in the morning or 5:00 in the morning.

I’d do that for a little while, and then I’d kind of get comfortable and I’d stop doing it, and then I started sleeping in again and then I had that pain again to be like, “I’ve got to get up early in the morning again.”

 

The commitment that set me up for success

Here’s what I did.  I committed to getting up at 5:00 in the morning every single day of the week.

I had to write a published book, well, actually I had to write three of them.  It was then that I decided, “You know what, why don’t I just make my morning time my writing time?”

So between 5:00 and 7:00 AM I would spend two hours writing. That was it. I did that because I didn’t want to let my writing get in the way of the rest of my business and the rest of my life, so I decided to do that first thing in the morning.

That really carved a beautiful routine that I maintained for quite a long period of time and I was able to write three published books, over 350 pages each, in five months, simply because I was waking up two hours earlier than normal every single day.

 

The secret to adding hours to your day

If you think about that, if you add two hours to your day every day, that’s 60 extra hours per month. That is more than a full-time work week for most people. Do that five times, that’s 300 extra hours over five months. What could you do with that amount of time in your life?

The epiphany for me was,  if I could create a way to not only create my best work first thing in the morning, but also set my day up to win, I’m going to commit to that.

 

My morning ritual

So I want to share my morning routine with you right now.  Typically what I do in the morning is, I don’t just jump right into work. I think it’s actually helpful to kind of set the mind properly.

First thing in the morning, I get up and I actually follow a little acronym that I learned called RPM, which is: rise, pee, meditate.

I get up at about 5:30, I go to the bathroom, then I go downstairs, I drink about half a liter of water with apple cider vinegar or lemon, and then I sit on the couch and I do a 20-minute meditation.

Now, the 20-minute meditation is extremely important for me.  I think it’s helpful for any high level thinker, entrepreneur, human being,  to just quiet the mind, to help you focus on nothing, to focus on your breath, to be able to just quiet things down and again set the tone for the day ahead. So I do that 20 minutes.

By 6:00 in the morning I leave my house, because I’ve got three young boys, and sometimes they get up pretty early and it can be distracting to work at home.

Once I’ve done my meditation, I head over to Starbucks which is about two minutes from my house and do my most important work from 6:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m..

Now, I want to say something about this, because your most important work does not entail answering emails.  It does not entail checking social media, nor does it entail any responsive type of work.

What you want to do first thing in the morning is focus on the most important thing for you to do, the thing you’re kind of dreading, the thing you would put off, the thing that requires the most mental energy, that writing, that creative thinking, the strategizing, whatever it is for you, that’s the first thing you need to do in the morning, okay?

If it’s the thing you’re going to put off, that’s the thing you need to be doing first thing in the morning because that is the most proactive thing you can do in your business, in your life, that is going to move the needle forward in a big way for you.

So for me, a lot of that’s going to revolve around some type of communication, so maybe writing, might be strategizing, might be building out some type of stuff for our team. So those are the things that I’m going to do first thing in that 6:00 to 8:00 time block for me.

Now, you might get up at 4:00 in the morning and you have a different time block, whatever works for you. But the key is that it’s the most important thing, it’s not menial work.

 

Cool productivity app

To help you with this, there’s a really great app, I think it’s like $10, it’s on Mac, because I only use apple products. I’m not a snob, I just don’t like PC.  It’s called Self Control.

It actually looks like a skeleton. You can download it from the app store, and what it’ll do is, you can block specific websites.

So what I’ll do is I’ll actually set Self Control the night before for like 14 hours, so that when I get up in the morning and for several hours later, I can’t access Gmail, I can’t access Facebook, I can’t access any of those tempting social media sites.

So that’s a little trick that you can download and deploy. It makes a huge difference in terms of your productivity, and you can focus on the most important things at hand.

So that is the key lesson, guys, is, if you want to be a very productive person, entrepreneur, if you want to get the success you want in your business, you have to focus on the most important things, and the number one most important thing is your mind, and getting that centered.

If you want to focus on exercise first thing in the morning, that’s cool as well. Then whatever the first thing you do work-wise in the morning, it’s got to be the most important thing that will move your business forward.

It’s not going to be checking Facebook messages. You can do that later in the day when you have a little bit less mental energy, because we only have so much, right? It’s like a battery. The more we use, the less we have. So we need to use that mental energy first thing in the morning. Okay, does that make sense?

 

Here’s a way to take your business to the next level

Now, if you guys have enjoyed this, obviously give it a thumbs up, share it with your friends when you see this.

If you want to take your health coaching business to the next level, if you want to attract more clients more predictably, if you want a better strategy to help you build a business, with a lot less confusion, a lot more clarity, then I invite you to join our free training, called The 7- Figure Health Business Blueprint.

I guarantee it’ll be the best 75 minutes you’ve spent on your business maybe forever, at least in a very long time. You’ll get some really big insights and a-has that I think will make a big difference in your business and obviously in your life as well.

So that’s all from me this morning. Thank you very much for joining me from beautiful Ixtapa, Mexico. Talking to you about morning routines, I get to enjoy the morning sun, the morning sunrise, it’s absolutely beautiful. Hope you have an amazing day, and I’ll talk to you soon.


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