What if you could do all those tasks you never seem to have time to do, change all those habits you want to change, and achieve your personal goals for the day?
I’m talking about changing the first two hours of your day before checking your email or Facebook.
Creating a sacred space for yourself at the beginning of your day will empower your entire life because it is nourishing to your mind, body, and spirit.
Now, changing what you do in the first two hours out of your day may not seem like that big a deal—and the good news is, it isn’t.
But you’re changing the two most important hours.
Think snowball at the top of a hill: It’s maybe about ten inches in diameter. Start rolling it down a snow-covered hill and it picks up more and more snow, growing larger and larger.
By the time your snowball reaches the bottom of the hill, depending on the type of snow and the depth of the hill, it could easily be three or four times the diameter you started with.
You didn’t spend any more time or energy packing it up with snow. You just started it off in the right spot and momentum took over. It tripled or quadrupled your efforts and grew all by itself.
That’s what changing the first two hours of the day can do for you. It makes you achieve better results and be left with better energy (and less stress) than if you forced yourself to rearrange every single work hour—and its effect is exponential.
The reason is that because all these things at their core level are connecting you with God (or your higher power whatever that is for you). You are beginning your day with what truly matters most to achieve your highest levels of health and wellness in all areas of your life.
There are six essential elements to an energizing morning flow.
Nourish Your Body
Based on your goals and lifestyle this will look different for everyone. Some people swear by juicing, others by protein shakes. Some eat a low-carb breakfast and others skip breakfast altogether to practice Intermittent fasting. The point is that it’s a healthy, nourishing choice that supports your current eating goals.
Potential Small Wins:
- Drink a glass or cup of warm water with lemon
- Make coffee at home
- Eat a Healthy Breakfast
- Drink a green juice or smoothie
Feed Your Intellect
If you read 30 minutes every morning, that will add up to about 24 books in a year on average, which would put you in the top 1% of Americans.
Potential Small Wins:
- Read a book for 10 minutes
- Read an article or blog post
- Write down 10 ideas – the point is to flex your ideas muscle.
- Listen to a Book or Podcast
Move Your Body
The amount of exercise you need to achieve benefits is astonishingly small. It actually breaks down to less than one hour per day. Even a few minutes of training at high intensity at your maximum capacity produces molecular changes within muscles comparable to several hours of running or bike riding.
Potential Small Wins:
- Stretching Routine
- Morning Yoga
- Weight Training
- Running / Biking
Feed Your Soul
This can be prayer time, meditation, a gratitude practice, simple stillness and mindfulness. The practice of mindfulness changes brain function and rewires your brain in the same way lifting weights or exercising rebuilds your muscles.
Potential Small Wins:
If you’re just getting started, I strongly recommend using guided meditation. There are two easy-to-use apps that I recommend using to get started on building this habit.
- Meditate on Christ with Dean Davis
- Guided Meditation: Headspace / Insight Timer
- 10 Minute Silence
- Visualization Meditation
- Gratitude practice
Align with your purpose and goals
Each morning, it helps to sit down and review some of your more foundational thinking and goals. By doing this, you are able to start your day focused on your core beliefs so that everything you do will align to serve them.
Vertical coherence is a huge predictor of motivation. If I can see a clear line between the tasks I am working on today and a bigger future that aligns with my values, I find it much easier to get to work on the truly important things.
Potential Small Wins:
- Create/ Review/Tweak your 25-Year Vision
- Script out and Review Your Ideal Day
- Consider your core values/beliefs and how you can align more with them
Journal
Journaling has been shown to reduce stress, clarify your thoughts and priorities and increase physical well-being. Regular journaling goes beyond mental benefits to physical benefits. University of Texas psychologist James Pennebaker has research indicating that journaling actually strengthens your immune system. Your mind is freshest in the morning more than at any other time of the day so it is perfect for getting your creative ideas on paper.
Potential Small Wins:
- Show Gratitude
- Prioritize your Day
- Affirmations ‘I believe…’
These are the six essential elements that make up the basics of my morning routine. What they look like in action for me on my typical day goes something like this-I wake-up and hit the coffee maker. While my coffee is brewing, I drink a glass of lemon water. I give myself 30 minutes to read my daily devotional and Bible verses while drinking my coffee. I go to the gym, come home and have a green smoothie. I pull out my Bible to finish my reading and journal. I watch a sermon and/or training and journal through what I learn there. The last thing I do before I begin my workday is to meditate.
These practices allow me to go into my day with energy, clarity on what I am doing and why and a positive mindset that empowers me to achieve the goals I have for that day.
It sounds simple and it really is. It took me some trial and error to see how things fit together for me. It takes some planning and tweaking to find exactly what practices will work for you too, but the payoff is worth it, and the rewards are transformative and long-lasting.
This is how we begin to live our lives full of power and passion. This is what creates the foundation from which anything is possible!
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