6 Practices to Include in Your Healthy Morning Routine!

Anyone who has seen Saturday Night Live is familiar with Stuart Smalley, a fictional character portrayed by comedian Al Franken. Smalley participates in many sketches but one of my favorites was a mock-self improvement show called “Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smalley”.  In the sketches, Smalley would stare into a mirror and say stuff like “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” As a result, I kind of always thought affirmations were a joke.

Well, that was until I really got into sports psychology as a college athlete and I found out that positive self-talk can have a huge influence on your level of success not only in athletics but also in many areas of your life as well.  In fact, it is so important that it is one of the practices that Hal Erlod recommends as part of a healthy morning routine in his great book, The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8 am) – which is the subject of today’s blog post!

What is the Size of Your Potential Gap?

In the book, Erlod refers to something he calls the potential gap which he defines as the gap between who we currently are and what we would like to become.

As he says:

“This potential gap varies in size from person to person. You may feel like you’re very near your current potential and that a few tweaks could make all the difference. Or you might feel the opposite—like your potential is so far away from who you’ve been that you don’t even know where to start. Whatever the case is for you, know that it is absolutely possible and attainable for you to live your life on the right side of your potential gap and become the person you are capable of becoming.” ¹

Dedicating Time Each Day to Your Personal Development

One way to start closing that potential gap is to create a healthy morning routine that uses the first hour of your day on personal development. This will allow you to focus on the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual parts of your life to continually become a better version of yourself.

Let’s now look at 6 of the practices Erlod recommends for a healthy morning routine.

Creating a Healthy Morning Routine with These 6 Life S.A.V.E.R.S.!

(1)  S = Silence

I am sure many of you were hoping that the first ‘S’ was “sex” or “sleep”, alas while they are both important, they are not part of this list!

The ‘S’ in this case is for Silence, or more specifically purposeful silence, where we engage in it with a very important benefit in mind.

As Erlod says:

“If you want to immediately reduce your stress levels, to begin each day with the kind of calm, clarity, and peace of mind that will allow you to stay focused on what’s most important in your life, and even dance on the edge of enlightenment—do the opposite of what most people do—start the morning with a period of purposeful silence.” ¹

Make it actionable:

There are several ways that you can practice purposeful silence and it is up to you to use the one that helps you practice purposeful silence:

  Meditation
  Praying
  Being grateful
  Reflecting

Personally, I like to practice simple meditation for 10 minutes as soon as I wake up. I find it gives me a calm start to the day and helps me focus on the goals and priorities I want to accomplish.

(2)  A = Affirmations

As boxing great Mohammed Ali once said: “It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. Once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.”

What’s true is that our brain will do anything we tell it to do. So, the key is to tell it good stuff frequently enough and strong enough.  Not only was Ali known to use affirmations, other well-known people who use affirmations include Suze Orman, Oprah, Will Smith, Michael Phelps, and Jim Carrey – to name just a few.

Much of it has to do with the power of our subconscious mind as we end up becoming whatever we have told our subconscious minds we are. The idea is to override the programs that work against us in our onboard computers with new and specific programming via affirmations or positive self-talk that works for us.

Make it actionable:

As we discussed in a previous post on positive self-talk, there are several techniques that can be used for positive self-talk. For the sake of brevity, Erlod sums it up nicely when he says:

“You can use affirmations to start programming yourself to be confident and successful in everything you do, simply by repeatedly telling yourself who you want to be, what you want to accomplish and how you are going to accomplish it.  With enough repetition, your sub-conscious mind will begin to believe what you tell it, act upon it, and eventually manifest it in your reality.” ¹

(3)  V = Visualization

The next step that Erlod recommends for a healthy morning routine is that of visualization:

“Visualization, also known as creative visualization or mental rehearsal, refers to the practice of seeking to generate positive results in your outer world by using your imagination to create a mental picture of specific behaviors and outcomes occurring in your life. Frequently used by athletes to enhance their performance, visualization is the process of imagining exactly what you want to achieve or attain, and then mentally rehearsing what you’ll need to do to achieve or attain it.” ¹

Make it actionable:

You can use visualization in many areas of your life to help increase your motivation, enhance your motor performance, prime your brain for achieving your goals, and boost your confidence and self-efficacy.

The steps I personally use for visualization are easy and as follows:

  Close your eyes.
  Get yourself in the situation you are going to be in by creating a mental picture of it.
  Engage as many of your senses as possible.
  Make it as realistic as possible. Who is there? How do you feel? What do you smell/hear/feel?
  Now keep replaying it over and over. Feel and experience yourself doing it correctly repeatedly.
  Perform this practice often. You can even perform it alongside meditation if you want.
  Put it into action in real life and experience the success you have already visualized!

(4)  E = Exercise

Being an exercise fanatic myself, this is one that I am a big proponent of including in your healthy morning routine. Personally, I save my full workout for either later in the morning after I have completed a few hours of work or in the evening, depending on my schedule.

However, I do include a quick little workout in my healthy morning routine by dropping down and doing 50 pushups and 50 sit-ups. It’s just enough to get my heart beating a little bit, give my upper body a bit of a pump and engage my core by doing some abs.

As Erlod says and I could not agree more:

“Morning exercise should be a staple in your daily rituals. When you exercise for even a few minutes every morning it significantly boosts your energy, enhances your health, improves self-confidence and emotional well-being, and enables you to think better and concentrate longer.” ¹

Make it actionable:

Whether it is yoga, pilates, going for a run or walk, hitting the gym – the idea is to get up and get moving which will reward you with a ton of benefits including enhanced mental clarity and sustained energy levels throughout the day!  One caveat is that you should always consult your physician before starting any type of exercise program.

(5)  R = Reading

The 5^th practice in a healthy morning routine is that of reading. It isn’t so important what you read than it is that you engage in some morning reading as it is a great way to gain the knowledge, ideas, and strategies necessary to live your best life.

Make it actionable:

A few tips for reading:

  Don’t read boring crap! Read stuff you are interested in, it will be more enjoyable, and you will retain more.
  Schedule your reading time and make time for it like you would anything else. Set out to read 10 pages a day and then increase from there if you have time. You will be surprised by how many books you can read if you just read 30 minutes a day.
  Increase your retention by taking notes and telling people about it (teaching others about something is one of the best ways to learn yourself!)

(6)  S = Scribe

The final practice in this list for a healthy morning routine also starts with ‘S’, but again I hate to be the bearer of bad news and say that it is neither “sex” nor “sleep’!

This time the “S” stands for “scribing” or writing.

Although both Erlod and yours truly practice it in the form of journaling as I discussed in a previous post, scribing can involve writing just about anything,

Typically, I take 15 minutes in my healthy morning routine to write 3 pages which depending on the day includes: my general thoughts on what is going on in my life, what I want to accomplish that day, what I accomplished the previous day, 3 things I am grateful for, my life objectives, as well as any other mind clutter I want to get out of my head.

Scribing may be the most important thing that I do during my healthy morning routine to really get my head right to have a productive day! If for whatever reason I don’t do it, which is rare, I feel ‘off’ during the day and something just doesn’t seem right.

Make it actionable:

I use a technique for journaling called Morning Pages, the steps involved are as follows:

  Write 3 pages first thing in the morning.

  Just write whatever comes to mind.

  Using a pen is preferable as it helps silence your inner critic (but if you would rather use a computer, it’s your journal, not mine!).

  Keep writing continuously until 3 pages are filled. If you are crunched for time you can also set a timer and write for a specific amount of time such as 20 minutes.

  Write what comes to your mind unfiltered, curse words and all!

  Don’t worry about grammar or spelling.

  Do not share it, these are supposed to be kept private!

  You can do it every day like me or whenever you think you need to get stuff out of your head.

Some Final Thoughts on Creating a Healthy Morning Routine

The practices that you include in your healthy morning routine are completely up to you, as is the order in which you perform them.  And if you want, you can even combine them.

Personally, I start with meditation/visualization, then move to my pushups and sit-ups, finally I conclude with 15 minutes of journaling. I save the bulk of my exercising for later as I said above, and I typically read in the evening or at lunch.

If you don’t have a healthy morning routine yet, I highly encourage you to start one, it is an amazing way to start the day and you will be happy that you did.  And remember, you don’t have to do all 6, start with one or two and then add and subtract practices until you come up with a healthy morning routine that you look forward to and that works for you!

You May Be Wondering Why I Don’t Have Any Affirmations in My Morning Routine!

For me, affirmations aren’t a part of my morning routine – they are a part of my life 24/7/365!

Yup, I am always talking to myself in the form of positive self-talk. If you recall from our previous post on positive self-talk, Shad Helmstetter, Ph.D., author of What to Say When You Talk to Yourself: “how successful you will be at anything is inexorably tied to the words and beliefs about yourself that you have stored in your subconscious mind.” ¹

If the skeptic in you is asking, “how it is possible that you talk to yourself 24/7/365 – don’t you sleep?”

Well, I do sleep…you see, I am just one of the 5% of people who talk in their sleep!

Until next time, get a healthy morning routine, keep talking to yourself, and as always PYMFP!!!
–Rick

Use It or Lose It

The 6 practices in a healthy morning routine that we discussed above are:

(1)  Silence
(2)  Affirmations
(3)  Visualization
(4)  Exercise
(5)  Reading
(6)  Scribing

When to Use It

Create a healthy morning routine that you can use every day to get your day off to a great start and reduce your potential gap!

What Do You Think?

Do you have a healthy morning routine?  What does it include?  Will you add any of the practices we discussed today? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

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References

¹ The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8 am) by Hal Erlod