My morning routine has been helping a lot. I’ve been feeling good, getting a lot done, and actively improving my life.
Since my start of it I’ve managed to move to a paid position at the start-up company I am working for and am now the Operations Manager. It feels good to have a title!
I’ve only missed my morning routine one day, Sunday I went golfing at 5am and wasn’t able to getup at 4 to complete it, but one day missed isn’t bad. I still feel good about it because I was doing something active.
At this point I would already recommend the morning routine to anyone. I’m already thinking about bumping up my cardio time and I’ve already starting making my 20 minutes a bit more difficult.
I was worried because I have a long day, starting very early, that I wouldn’t be able to complete my morning ritual, but instead I shortened some of it and still got it all done in an hour! Very proud to still find the drive to do it even though today is going to be long, tiring and very active the entire day.
I’m only on the second day of implementing my morning routine, But I am really enjoying it. I don’t have any real time constraints this morning and today I decided to see how I felt if I took my time going through all of the steps instead of following the time schedule. If found myself meditating longer and using this time to think about myself and who I am today. I also spent a bit more time on cardio and reading meaning that I’m already at about an hour and a half where I would normally be at an hour.
I liked this change of pace and the ability to spend more time in each section of the routine but I believe I may save these slower days for weekends. It just may take up too much of my morning not getting other things done. More to come on this as I go through more days.
About yesterday, I got so much done and felt great the entire day, I was truly surprised with the results. I am thoroughly impressed and look forward to continuing my morning routine.
I’ve already made a mistake with my morning routine, but I’ve been able to ask myself questions of what went wrong and such, and I now know a solution.
I stayed up very late last night watching the movie “Peaceful Warrior.” I saw some suggestions to watch it online and thought after I finished planning my morning routine, why not watch it. I ended up staying up very late because I felt driven last night and didn’t feel accomplished with my day. Basically, this resulted in my waking up later than desired to start my morning ritual. This is resulting in me shortening the routine in 2 places for today that I will makeup later: Reading was cut short and the end workout was cut out.
Overall, I feel good this morning though, very tired but I feel like that helped me get meditative in my 3rd step. I was surprised with how quick my light cardio went by when reading and thinking about my affirmations and questions.
It is important for me to remember that while a successful day needs preparation, a successful morning needs preparation as well and I need to prepare by sleeping earlier.
I plan on blogging in order to keep my thoughts in one place and hold myself accountable for the future I create. Overall, this is going to be a record of my path towards happiness and what I find that helped me along the way. I believe I am truly starting from having been at the low point of my life and have a clean slate to work with.
Some background to who I am and where my life is right now:
I recently graduated with a science related degree from a university.
I’ve worked in IT consulting for a few years and many items computer-related.
I’m recently single.
I moved from the city where I went to school back home to live with my father. In his large house I’ve created a new office. I’m excited for this because this is the first time in 3 years I’ve been able to separate my work from my bedroom, which has shown to be counter-productive and stress inducing.
I have a dog that is a major part of my life and my main companion.
My friendships basically consist of a few people that are truly brothers to me, but are very busy with their own lives.
I’ve had to resort to working a low-paying job over the past few months (pre-graduation) in order to pay bills because my consulting work slowed.
I received generous gifts for my graduation so I get to start my life fairly debt-free (credit cards have kept me alive over the past year or so).
I’ve started working for free with 2 others on a startup business that has what I believe to be major potential, but I am unpaid until we are profitable (fairly major gamble).
I’ve been looking towards medical school for most of my life but am unsure right now and plan on revisiting the idea in a couple years.
I consider myself a sort of “Jack of all trades but master of none” meaning I’ve done many things and can do a lot, but am not the expert in any of them.
I’m not the average hobbyist, I usually take my hobbies to the point of obsession.
I find things that are not intellectually stimulating compare to complete boredom and can lose interest in people or activities very easily.
I am looking to improve who I am and what I am doing.
I’ve looked recently into some “self-help” crap that I’ve always written off completely my whole life as information for those who do not possess drive. In doing so, I realized I used to have drive, but I’ve lost it and need to reorganize what I’m doing with my life a bit.
Some of the information I found truly gave me a sort of revelation when I started being honest with myself and comparing it to my own life. One of the biggest things being that I am just waiting for happiness, hoping that it will come someday and life will provide me the opportunity to find it. This is completely backwards of what I should be doing. I should be creating my own future and instead of waiting for what I want, find it and make it reality.
Those who are successful in creating a truly happy life do not just wait for life to give it to them, they work for it. They make it themselves. They create happiness, not wait for it.
So I realized my entire life practice must be off: I’ve been stagnant at my consulting work and haven’t created opportunity there, I’ve been stagnant at school and barely surviving my classes instead of tackling the difficult material like I used to, I’ve been stagnant with each day and its tasks by only allowing myself to do the things I’m required to do and what comes to me, I’ve been living unhealthy and justifying it by the other difficulties I’ve been struggling in, and I’ve looked at material things as providers of happiness. I’ve been wrong with my whole outlook at life and I’m now going to change that.
I followed a youtube add link and watched some video by Tai Lopez, and while it may be a “get quick rich” scheme (I didn’t pay into it, just the preview video), I realized a few bits of information from that were useful, especially his talk about mentors. I reached out to a person that I’ve been working with on his startup and asked him if he had any general advice for me as I start to look towards a successful life and happiness to promote a better future. He has started companies, made large amounts of money, and in my belief was a good person to ask where to start, and I was right.
Here is a bit of what he told me:
Happiness and success can often contradict each other. He even showed that he was humble by stating that he is not the best example of a “balanced person” within this because he often values success over happiness.
Mentally eliminate any barriers that you believe exist – there is always a way to do what you want to do in some fashion. It may take some hard work and making the right connections, but you can always get it done.
Don’t be constrained by the limits of your degree or your current skill set
Balance is important in life, but from what I can see you need to have a rather unhealthy obsession with what you value in order to be best of class at it.
Basically you can strive to be well-rounded or you can focus your efforts in certain domains for certain periods of time.
You can hack your happiness, you can’t hack your success.
With this information I started thinking about what I value and I need to put effort into right now. Before it had been school, relationships, friendships, or other areas of life, but I realized I had never put any focus on myself. I had always focused on what others had told me would be good for me or what would help my future but I never truly invested any time in who I was, my mental well-being, and my health. Sure I’ve done little diets or worked out and such but I was doing things on the advice of others, not what I needed to create my own happiness.
He also gave me a few links that I have found to be very helpful defining what I want to do with my life and visualize what is important to me.
It is fairly lengthy, but worth listening to in order to realize wealth isn’t just money. There is a lot in life that can be improved to achieve overall happiness. Very eye-opening.
This article brought a realization to me that sure I wake up every morning early and go start my day, but I’m dragging and just preparing for what other have for me, not preparing myself to create my own day. It also led me to this video that I found even more useful:
In this video I realized that I haven’t empowered myself to do anything each day, instead I was waking up and taking the blows that life “provided me” and just tried to survive each day. Taking on a battle with life each day with no preparation is basically like walking into the ring with Muhammad Ali having never put boxing gloves on before. I need to prepare myself each day to accomplish what I need to do. I need to stop letting life come to me without any defense or plan and train myself to become a worthy advisory to life’s challenges. This comparison to boxing may not be the best because I’m not going to create my life into a battle, just trying to show that I need to prepare myself and start investing time into myself instead of just preparing to invest my time into others. I’ve looked at a couple of these “Morning Routines” and created what I believe to be a good morning routine for me pre-showering and “starting the day.”
Here is what I am going to start doing as soon as I wake:
Pre-Routine Wakeup (5 min)
Smile (prepare myself for a positive outlook on the day)
Stretch (prepare my body for other steps of my routine)
Water (Drink 1-2 glasses of water)
Light cardio (20 min) (go for a walk or elliptical, sub-categories are done during this)
Affirmations- go over note cards with phrases, beliefs, mental ideas in order to create the right state of mind.
Empowering questions- self answer different questions to look deeper at myself and what I am doing. Examples: What am I… happy about in life? Excited about? Passionate about? Proud of? Enjoying most? Grateful for? Committed to?
Meditation & Drive (5 min)
Rest and focus on my purpose. Envision how I want my life to be and who I want to be.
Let my mind wander.
Read (30 min)
A minimum of 20 pages each morning.
Journal (10 min) (I started a video journal as well) and/or Blog
Plan (5-10 min)
Plan the day not by hours but instead by desired results, personal purpose, and actions. There should be results planned for each piece of life whether it is work, friends, personal life, etc.
Accountability (2 min)
Each day I will text my friend 3 goals I have for the day and he is going to hold me accountable for them each day.
Preparation (10 min)
Clean & organize my environment for me to be successful throughout the day.
Work out (30 min) (I may move this to an evening workout depending on how the length of my morning is)
This means I can complete this all in 2 hours before each day an I’ll be in much better shape to mold my day every morning and accomplish what I set out to do. I’ll be posting follow-up and changes that I find help my personal routine. This is going to be the first implementation of what I find and utilize in order to help my personal well-being and I will let you know how it goes. Tomorrow morning will be the start of my new outlook on life and creating the future that I am seeking.
robin of reality 