5 Key Steps to a Morning Routine – Why You Should Have One

 

I love mornings! It is something in the feeling of getting things done as soon as I wake up and before everyone else. Morning routine transformed me from a grumpy guy who needs a couple of hours to connect his brain with a body, into an energetic and proactive morning person.

I am telling you!

You should create a morning routine ASAP! It is not hard. It is easy and rewarding. The hardest part is to make a decision and start.

Many people wake up and start their morning in a reactive state. To begin your morning in the reactive state means that your routine looks something like this.

Reactive people will feel stressed just because of the sound of the alarm clock, causing immediate nervous tension over a simple fact like getting up. Of course, instead of getting up and going, that reaction will cause our imaginary morning person to hit the snooze button, and take another round.

That small amount of stress will cause a chain reaction in the next few hours of the morning, a reaction fatal for success.

After skipping the alarm, this person will jump out of bed in a hurry. Instead of a mellow and relaxed start, this guy rushes around the house trying to get one hour of work done in 15 minutes. The breakfast will be probably quick and unhealthy if there will be breakfast at all. Coffee will be fast and To Go. The phone will be in or by the hand most of the time. He will manage to get things done in 15 minutes because he is unaware that this is his morning routine, this is how he starts his day every single day, this is his HABIT.

What a destructive way to start a day!

I was of similar behavior as our imaginary friend, so I will talk from experience when I say that this ritual, this unhealthy morning routine welcomes everything that’s wrong in your life.

Morning ritual has changed my life like night and day!

There is no freaking way that I would ever go back to my old ways of the morning! Just thought of those days makes me enjoy my morning rituals even more.

When I was reactive in the morning, it took me at least 2-3 hours to mentally wake up. My body was up and about, but my brain was sleeping while I walk. Imagine a morning zombie, that was me!

However, now I proactively wake up my mind from the first moment of awareness. This shift in behavior brought me so many positive changes that I cannot even begin to express my gratitude.

I guarantee you that you can completely reshape your life, every aspect of it, just by starting your day proactively instead of reactively.

I will share with you my top reasons why you should have a morning routine, how to start so you can get an idea for your own.

 

 

Why You Should Have a Morning Routine

Proactive morning routine opens many doors to success in life.

People who are in the habit of waking up before everyone else generally get things done way better than our guy from the example above. Waking up on time and with a good plan in hand is a way to start a successful day.

 

1.) Better time management

So the first reason should be your time.

If the rest of the world wakes up at 7 am, and you get up at 6 am, you are already one hour ahead of everyone. If there is something important you have to accomplish but you can’t find the time and peace to do the thing, this one hour can be your time. One hour is a lot of time to get things done.

Always remember that a king and a beggar both have 24 hours. But what is the difference between the two of them? Well, you guess right, it is how they use their time.

 

2.) Less stress, more success

One of the reasons why you should start with a morning routine is the stress. Rather than building up the stress levels in the morning you can decrease it, or even eliminate the stress from your life completely.

You see, a proactive morning routine creates a feeling of success instead of feelings of stress.

Even doing a small thing like making your bed first thing in the morning can make you feel like a successful person. Later at night when you will go to sleep, a look on that bed will remind you of that small, yet colossal step you made earlier.

This small piece of action will get you into a positive cycle for the rest of your day, and it can continue from day to day like that. Just imagine how it would be to live life without stress.

 

3.) Hello, my name is Discipline

Getting things done even if you don’t want to will lead to conquering your biggest enemy in life, your laziness. There is nothing sweeter than victory over your bad habits.

Therefore, this is one more reason why you should have a morning routine. You can develop a great personal quality which only a few people in the world possess. Self-disciple will become your first name.

Everyone lacks this personal quality, and very few manage to develop self-discipline.

So, how do you discipline your self? By getting up at the first sound of the alarm and by making your bed! If you can conquer yourself in the first few minutes of your day, I bet that you can beat anything that comes in your way later in the day.

 

4.) My second name is, Reliance

Your ability to accomplish things without thought given is going to increase over time.

Your mind will remember all those victories because the mind is most relaxed, and therefore, most submissive in the morning. Later in your day, and in your life, your mind will remind you of those victories whenever you find yourself in doubt, or you lack the motivation to do something or to complete the task.

Self-reliance will become your second name!

It is a well-known fact that the highest achievers in the world are doing things without self-questioning their abilities. They know they can do it, and even if they make a mistake, their self-reliance will push them to try again until they make it.

The sky is not raining with this kind of personal quality, it must be created.

 

5.) Early morning is time for self-care

Your mind is not the only one in question. You should take good care of your body as well. Like the mind, the body remembers everything. Therefore, the body will, like the mind, return you in health if you put it in the first place early in your day.

A healthy breakfast in peace and without hurry will fuel you up with energy early in the morning.

Workout routine can eliminate so many issues that you may be having right now.

I have a mild form of arthritis in my joints. I even operated my left knee just because of this sickness. However, a healthy diet and exercise made my problems almost disappear. Only 50 squats every morning made a huge difference in my pain levels and knee discomfort. Those 50 that I perform every morning when multiplied with 365 equals 18 250 squats!

I can hear my knee clapping: “Bravo! My man..”

 

 

5 Key Steps to Start a Morning Routine

Now, hopefully, you understand all the benefits that are waiting for you once you made up your mind and wake up early and with a plan.

However, there are many more reasons why, but you cannot discover them unless you start a morning routine.

Next five steps are also based on my experience. I was beating my head against the wall for months until I got it all right. Every one of the steps is equally important, therefore, if you don’t want a bumpy head like mine, apply them by the letter.

 

1.) Go to bed on time every time

First and foremost, your morning routine will be unsuccessful unless you go to bed on time every night. The first and critical step to starting your morning routine lies in your evening routine. This was the reason I was beating my head against the wall. I found the first key the last.

So again, to save yourself from a headache, make sure you set a fixed bedtime for every one of the seven days in a week. Adequate sleep is a critical factor in the success of your morning routine.

The weekend can be a tough one so listen carefully!

If this is something you want, you will have to adapt your weekends to it as well. Understand that you are trying to create a new habit, and new habits are not easily formed. They need time to root in. Therefore, if you are going to break the root every five days, you might as well give up right now because that plant will never grow. Sacrifice your weekends for the first month, after that you will understand what I meant, I promise.

Also, go to bed relaxed and not excited, stressed, tensed.

What I mean to say is, spend the last hour before bedtime relaxing your mind and body. In other words, prepare yourself for good night sleep.

By all means, avoid TV and screens one hour before bed. As much as they are relaxing, they are not healthy, and they tire your brain so it will be harder to wake up in the morning.

Spend that last hour in peace as much as you can.

 

2.) Create a plan for the morning

During that one hour of peace make a crucial next step in creating your morning routine. Take a pad and pen and write down at least five things you will start to do as soon as you wake up. In other words, create a morning to-do list.

I gave you a clue in the first half of the post about what is the best thing you can do when you wake up. If you will remember it was:

Make your bed!

Therefore, write down four more things to do after you make your bed. It can be anything, all count as proactive if you are going to do it one after another. Those could be tasks like, wash your self, drink water, eat breakfast, exercise, etc. There you go, I gave you all five.

Create a morning plan and stick to it. Make changes to your morning routine plan as much as you need until you get it right. Moreover, by mixing things up every once in a while, it will be more interesting, and it will not become boring after some time.

Once those five actions become a habit, they will represent your proactive morning ritual. In other words, they will be something you do without conscious thought -you get up and start doing them.

 

==>SEE MY TOP 5 MORNING RITUALS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE<==

 

3.) Wake up at the same time every morning

If you go to bed at 11 pm every night, then wake up at 7 am every day, no exceptions.

I think that 8 hours is more than enough. However, if you want to accomplish more in your life imagine how much more you can get done if you will cut one hour of sleep every day. Instead of 8 hours you go for 7 hours and take that extra hour to, I don’t know, exercise and get in shape, or read and invest in your mind, or work on a business project, or spend an extra hour with your kids, or meditate and think…

When you multiply that one hour with every day in a year, you will get an extra 365 hours every year! A lot of extra time to be more successful in life.

Therefore, set some smooth melody to carefully wake you up from your slumber, get up and get going with your plan straight away!

 

4.) Begin slow then gradually speed up

Morning is a tough time for almost everyone, so don’t make it even tougher. Shut off the sweet melody of the alarm then slowly and gently get out of bed. Don’t cause any unnecessary stress to your mind and your body.

The best thing you can do when you get up, even before you get up, is to raise your arms, put your back straight, chest out, legs together, and give yourself a nice long morning stretch. The blood will start to flow immediately, and you will feel better already.

You know what you have to do because the night before you made a plan for the morning. Therefore, begin to do those things one by one without rush. Again, to avoid unnecessary stress give yourself enough time (by getting up on time) to do all those things.

 

5.) Remove ALL distractions

This is the final step. This is also golden advice.

One of the worst things you can do in the morning is to reach out for your phone and start clicking. I am not against technology. Moreover, I think it is one of the highest accomplishments of humankind, but we should have time and place for smartphones. Morning is not the time neither the place.

So no emails, chats, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube!

The morning is about you, and you only. You should use the morning to mentally and physically prepare yourself for the following day. Think about yourself, about your life, about the next morning, about your goals.

We all have families, children, job, school. However, all those can also be a distraction to your morning routine. By getting up an hour before everyone, you can enjoy some time alone to take care of yourself first.

So there you go, I wrote you down five main reasons why you should have a morning routine, as well, I went a step further and gave you five simple steps you can make to create your own. I hope you will apply the second five to experience the first five.

I have learned so far that before we start anything in life, we should have a form of a plan. Any strategy will work. On the other hand, if you don’t make a plan, you can experience a lot of failures, and therefore, many people will give up before they even begin. Or if you are a persistent individual, you will reach your goal eventually, however, the cost will be a lot of damaged nerves and a head full of bumps, like mine.

 

 

My Morning Routine

Alright! Since I managed to write all these stuff for you, I might as well give you a quick example of what I do every morning and how I made considerable benefits in many different aspects.

 

Evening before

I am not early to bed type of person, so I go to bed at 11 pm every night except on rare occasions. The last hour before I go to bed ready to sleep I do a few things which help me to fall asleep like a baby. So first I will take a warm shower. I don’t like it in the morning, so I shower every evening. It also puts me in a relaxed state of mind.

Next, I take a book in my hands. Always some personal development, or business material to feed my mind with good stuff before sleep. Reading helps me to move to the relaxation levels closer to the max.

One of the last things I do is take the pad and pen, and I make a checklist of seven things I ritually do every morning. While I write them down one by one, I like to imagine myself doing them as well. It helps to get up and going when my alarm starts to play.

The very last thing is I review my Goals list, and I read them out loud so I can hear my words (powerful stuff). I have learned that our subconscious mind is controlling our life. The results are the mirror to what we continuously feed our subconscious. The subconscious mind is most receptive in the first five minutes after waking up and the last five minutes before sleep. So I use those ten minutes to read my goals and visualize success.

 

The morning

The alarm starts to play at 6 am every morning. So, the first thing I do is I review my Goals list again. It helps to stay focused on what is important to me all day long by removing everything which is not in harmony with my goals.

I will get up and stretch to wake up the body. Next thing is a bathroom routine.

When I come back to my room, I will first pray. It is not a classic, church kind of prayer. I believe that if I send out expressions of gratitude, happiness, and forgiveness, I will receive the same type of energy back. So I thank for everything I have, and I forgive myself and others any wrongdoing, then I ask for help and strength in the day that is coming.

After I wake up my spirit, I will wake up my body some more. During my morning routine, I perform a mild exercise. Every morning I do 50 pushups, 50 squats, 50 back compressions and I stretch my body for 10 minutes. This way I stay in shape, and I feel energetic straight away.

The next thing in my morning plan is meditation. I do different kinds of meditation, but they all go down on one thing, relaxation. For 20 minutes I will sit and concentrate on my breath, sometimes I intentionally try to visualize my goals and success, the next time I just put on some relaxing music “massage” my brain.

I like to read so during my morning routine as one of the last things I will take a book and continue where I left off last night. I  read for at least 30 minutes every morning. The brain is like a muscle. And to work correctly, it has to be exercised as well.

The last thing I do before I begin with my daily activities is breakfast. Nothing special, just an everyday, healthy meal in the form of 3 eggs, cheese, mushrooms, tomatoes and two slices of multigrain bread followed by a cup of coffee or a green tea and apple or banana.

Now I am wide awake! My body, mind, and spirit are in perfect alignment, and I am ready for my day.

I hope this gives you an idea of how it works and why this is much, much better than waiting for the last moment to get up. Since I started with my morning routine I do so much more; I have more energy during the day, I am more calm and relaxed, I am healthier, and I can say that I evolved as a human.

I wish the same success for you!

If you ever need a hand or have any questions, feel free to leave them below, and I will be more than happy to help you out.

All the best,

Ivan

yourpersonaldevelopment.org

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