Visualize being less stressed, more focused, and lighter every day gently walking towards your goals.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle
Set the tone of your day by practicing simple habits. Your mornings are your foundation. Make it a point that you establish and tackle your non negotiable commitments first before the urgencies take over and get the best of you.
The key here is to be intentional. Once you establish the importance of certain things, it will be easy for you to commit and follow through.
Present moment awareness before you touch your phone
Set a time for waking the night before. Spend first couple of hours of waking in silence. Observe your urges of checking your emails and notifications. This is because you are addicted to cheap dopamine. You get rewards for looking at updates because your brain constantly want something new. Low effort high reward but damaging in the long term and leaves you feeling empty when the scrolling stops. Try engaging in a more enriching and engaging activity; maybe non activity will give your brain a much needed reset.
“You may not be tired after all; you might just be exhausted from playing dopamine tennis with your brain.”
– Naval
Clear the mind of loop traps
Before engaging in any activity. Clear the head of loop traps. Observe your triggers, will you allow something that bothered you yesterday bother you today? Most of us hit the replay button of the same story. This is because the mind likes patterns and sticks to what it knows. With intention clear all caches and histories. Start on a new white smooth clear white canvas. Notice hunches and new possibilities. Don’t get trapped in cycles of nonsense. Take a deep breath, embody your truth and head on out with a new story to write.
“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.”
– Eduard De Bono
Luke warm water + Lemon
Skip the coffee, wait till after a couple of hours to optimize benefits of caffeine. Let your natural hormone cortisol spike up and level out first before adding caffeine to your system, this I learned from Andrew Huberman. Lemon water will alkalize your system, remove toxins that might have built up, vitamin c and it’s just refreshing and will give your day a zesty start.
“After you put your feet on the floor in the morning, immediately say this phrase, “It’s going to be a great day.” As you say these seven words, try to feel optimistic and positive.”
– Bj Fogg
Make your bed and tidy up your room
Pretend the person you are trying to impress is going to enter your room in 10 minutes. Watch how beautiful your room will get no time. Completing a task like this sets you up to take on more tasks with confidence. There’s a book called make your bed. Tidying up your room gives respect and reverence to your dwelling. It gives respect and reverence to your self. It is where you sleep and heal and it should be orderly and dandy like a modern zen retreat center. This will free up a lot of space in your mind. Your stuff and Knick knacks around you don’t only take up space in your room, they take up space in your head too. So tidy up, organize and put things away. This will help you a whole lot.
“That obstacle course is going to beat you every time unless you start taking some risks.”
– William McRaven Quotes from Make Your Bed
Gratitude
Cultivate a calm smile as you enumerate things you are grateful for. Gratitude relieves tension, induces serotonin, dopamine and endorphins. Focus on the fullness of life rather than what is lacking. Carry this mindset all throughout the day. This can even be done in 1 minute before getting up. Think of one person and one opportunity you are thankful for.
“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
– Melodie Beattie
3 key actions of the day
Turn your 10 to dos to 3 musts. These are important specific actions you need to accomplish to make the day a success. What 3 key actions do you need to do that will help you get closer to your long term goal.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
– H G Jackson
Make undistracted time and place
Our best focused work can be done in the morning. One study shows that we are distracted every 6 – 8 minutes and it takes another 22 minutes for a “task residue” to be fully dissolved. A little bit of intentionality and being specific with your undistracted time and place will be beneficial.
“ten-minute rule.” If I find myself wanting to check my phone as a pacification device when I can’t think of anything better to do, I tell myself it’s fine to give in, but not right now. I have to wait just ten minutes.”
– Nir Eyal
Prime for positivity
Set some time to commit to positivity. That today you will focus on solutions. That you will see the good side of things. You will focus on how you are learning and not how you are correct. Create this state that is above circumstances and be ready to tackle on the variables of the day.
“Once you start making the effort to “wake yourself up” – that is, be more mindful in your activities – you suddenly start appreciating
– Robert Biswas-yDiener
life a lot more.”
Conclusion
Our mindsets can make or break our day which makes up our week, months and years. A little effort and consistency goes a long way. We know so much information on how to become the best but the real game lies in the application of what we know.
More of my work here. MAKE PURE THY HEART ❤️🔥
Namaste 🙏