Power Mornings – Wake Up to Your Full Potential

Posted in Self Improvement |  Email This Post | by James Rick

Wake up to your Full Potential. It’s the activities you do first thing in the morning that set the tone for the rest of your day.

I have started a morning routine that consists of:
* 1) Drinking water first thing in the morning (Because the body is dehydrated after sleep, instead of coffee reach for water!).
* 2) Eating a great early morning meal consisting of salad, vegetables and some protein
* 3) Working out to great music; something simple – jogging in place with high knees that’s the key to getting the heart rate up. If you get tired of high knees switch it up with dancing or whatever feels good but the main goal is to keep the heart rate up for around 20 minutes. I also do a few Yoga stretches as well.
4) Sitting down for a creative writing session; whatever comes to mind. (Like now)
5) Reading 50 pages in a pre-selected book – generally on personal development and spiritual growth, sometimes marketing / entrepreneurship related; but mostly non-fiction.
6) Meditating on the breath, then focusing ten breaths on sincerely appreciating whatever I truly am grateful for and then focusing ten breaths on creating whatever I truly wish to create in my life.
7) Planning the rest of my day. (Some experts recommend you do this the night before.)

• = Activities that I believe every person should add to their routine without exception.

Now I realize you might be wondering how in the world you’re going to fit all of these things into your busy morning. First of all let me just say that it doesn’t take as long as you think. When you ‘click’ over from one activity to the next the entire routine takes about an hour to an hour and a half. The key is moving quickly from one to the next without distraction.

For example when I first started developing a high power morning routine I would write down my dreams and then meditate – first thing in the morning. What’s wrong with this strategy? Well if I was laying down I’d still have so much sleep hormone (melatonin) floating around in my blood stream that I’d fall back to sleep.

Another thing I would do is plan my day first thing in the morning. While this might seem like a wise strategy what I found is that it’s just easier to begin with an automatic routine of action like drinking water, exercising and eating a healthy meal then plan the day after the morning routine is complete. The reason for this is because any time you sit down and plan you are interrupting autopilot, which is usually a good thing, unless your autopilot is set for a high powered morning. If the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is all very positive you don’t want to interrupt it, otherwise you might get tempted to do some urgent tasks before you start your morning routine. What I have found is that if I do anything like check email (even if I tell myself it will just take a few minutes) before I start my morning routine, I get off track and sometimes that one distraction leads to a series of distractions that can sometimes last an entire day. Has this ever happened to you?

DON’T JUST READ – TAKE ACTION:
1) Think about the activities you’d like to make apart of your MORNING routine.
2) Make a commitment to add one or two of them in to tomorrow morning’s routine. Do this now.
3) Imagine what it would be like tomorrow morning to wake up and perform at least one or two of these activities.

Remember, like eating a good meal when you first wake up in the morning, it’s your earliest activities that set the tone for the rest of your day. Wake up to your Full Potential.

Leave a Reply