Impact of a Morning Routine
I love mornings.
Each new day brings new opportunities, and it’s a chance to start fresh and do better. How you start your day, or more specifically, how you spend those first few morning hours, has a big impact on the rest of it. Think of it as setting the tone for your entire day. That’s why making your morning is so important. It’s about much more than those first few hours.
I’m sure you’ve experienced this yourself. Let’s use the snooze button as an example. You set an early alarm to make sure you have time for exercise, meditation, or simply some much-needed “me time.” You have every intention of getting up and doing whatever you’re setting out to do when you set the alarm in the first place. Some mornings — hopefully, most mornings — you get up when the alarm chimes and go for that walk, do your meditation exercise, or read a book for twenty minutes. Then there are those days when you can’t make yourself get up. You hit the snooze button multiple times or turn the alarm off altogether and go back to sleep.
Think about how the rest of those days went. Did you notice a difference in how you felt? How much did you get done in the mornings when you got up with your first alarm? Were you able to do all the things you set out to do? How did those days compare to the ones when you hit the snooze button over and over again?
If I had to take a guess, I’d say that the mornings when you got up as soon as the alarm went off went a lot smoother. I bet you accomplished what you have planned to do, too. The chances are that sleeping through the snooze button didn’t just affect your morning but the entire rest of your day. You set the tone for how your day is going to go first thing in the morning. That’s what the old saying about getting up on the wrong side of the bed is about. Make sure you get up on the right side and start your day off in a positive and productive way.
Mel Robbins is the author of a book called The 5 Second Rule. In her book, she says, “If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds, or your brain will kill it…When you feel yourself hesitate before doing something that you know you should do, count 5–4–3–2–1-GO and move towards action.” So for the next week, implement this rule when your alarm goes off each morning.
Over the course of the next seven days, I want to guide you through the process of making over your morning. This is an important task and a good thing to work on and pay attention to, as we've already established. Not only will you enjoy your mornings more even if the alarm goes off much earlier than you’d like, but it will also make the entire rest of your day go much smoother.
Tip of the Day: Morning Routine Step 1
Leave a water bottle filled with 12–24oz of water by your bed each night. When your alarm goes off, the first thing you should do is drink all of the water.
Your body and brain are more than 70% water. Drinking water first thing in the morning rehydrates your body which has not been hydrated all night. And it also creates alertness in your brain which means you will have an easier time waking up.
With Love,
Travis
