Kickass your Mornings ☕️
How you start out in mornings is so so crucial for taking charge of your entire day. The tone set in the first few hours decides the productivity of the remaining 22 hrs ahead.
You can wake up groggy, drag yourself sloppily, just barely push yourself to do what needs to be done and take 4–5 hrs to get the day going. Most do that. Nothing wrong, but nothing productive about it either.
For your energy levels to spike up from the word go, so that you get going about your day upbeat and high on life you may need a few tweaks to your routine.
PHYSICAL
A 5 min work out or a few mins of playful jumping on the trampoline or a short run though it may require you to step out or 10 reps of pull ups or push ups ; any of these could do the trick. It would enhance your metabolism, wake up your brain, consume more calories throughout the day compared to days when you did not work out and more so will build consistency and discipline in you from the word go. It’s got more mental benefits than the visible physical ones. And best part is, a minimum dose of 5 mins is good enough.
MENTAL
Post your work outs, you can take 15 mins out to do what I call TVAG.
T — Things to do (4 mins)
V — Visualisation (3 mins)
A — Affirmations (3 mins)
G — Gratitude (3 mins)
T — Things to do list is a simple hack to kick ass your day. Writing down actionable items for the day and marking the Most important ones with a marker or a Asterix allows you to get your day in control. Your clarity around your day itself puts you in drivers seat. Where ever focus goes, energy flows. Just the intent and the act of thinking through your next 24 hrs is powerful enough to get you in the right state. Alternately, you could be left at the mercy of randomness in your environment and workplace but that won’t be powerful way to go about your day. This would take max 4 mins to think through and jot it very systematically on the diary so that one glance at it is enough for you to take the necessary actions at that particular time.
V — Visualisation. Call it Mind movie, call it Living the Dream Now or by any other word. But to spend 3 mins or so conciously thinking about 3 or 5 short term goals (to be achieved in 1 month to 12 months) goes a long way to kicking ass that day. It gives a purpose , a direction to where your heading and all the work that you are gonna put in today will seem so right . When the context is created powerfully, the content flows. So when the future is created vividly in 3D in your mind day in day out, the work you need to put in flows through you effortlessly.
A — Affirmations. These are empowering statements that supersede the automatic self limiting beliefs playing out in your mind. For eg., you may have been running the story in your mind called “I am not enough” , “ I am not that lucky” , “I cant talk like that” and so many more that doesn’t allow you to achieve peak performance in many things or rather in any thing. Your body follows your mind, always. And because it does, you tend to give up when it starts getting tough or painful.So to alter the mental programming, doing affirmations is key. Doing it daily, with focus and energy (both takes practice) could reprogram you to being a 10X version of you .
Few of my favourite affirmations are “Whenever I talk people listen to me as I have something of value to say” and “I enjoy every aspect of my life as I gracefully create joy fun and adventure in everything I do”. Having said these and few more has programmed me to make the most of every challenge, situation, opportunity and relationships. Ultimately, that’s what we all want and if it takes only 3 mins, then it is absolutely worth it.
G — Gratitude. It is so easy to compare yourself to others and get caught in this trap of feeling miserable because others may have so much more compared to you. Ironically, this race will never get over as there will always be someone better bigger stronger richer than you.
It is so tempting and juicy to feel angry and upset when things do not go your way, and most times they don’t. It is human to start finding faults in people or situations and wishing it was another way. Your mind is on constant chatter mode, filling junk in you and you cannot shut it. No matter how successful you become, the mind will keep chatting non-stop and the only way to quiten it or let it be, is to become someone who is grateful all the time.
Its been years that I start my day counting my blessings and sincerely feeling blessed for having been gifted with the life I have. I express my gratitude for the family I have, the house I live in, the money I make, the people I have, the books I have read. Its always been 3 to 10 things that I express my gratitude for everyday and it goes this way “I am grateful to be married to Usha. Thank You Thank You Thank You” (from the book Magic). “I am grateful to be alive. Thank You Thank You Thank You” .
This habit , over the years, has made me calmer, happier and more at peace with what is going in my life. This calm within and happiness within allows me to give 100% to all I do, all the time. And the process takes merely 3 mins. Mind you, its not about the future. This habit is about being at peace with the past and the present. That’s the only way to making an ambitious future come true.
So all put together is approx 18–20 mins. ONLY 18–20 mins of taking charge of your mind and body, taking charge of the energy you carrying to punch your day in the face, taking charge of your life to extract the most out of it today !!! If one can take control of these 18–20 mins in the morning, one can literally take control of the future and steer your life through the bumps ahead in an optimal manner. You can’t alter what has happened , but you can alter your response to it. And your response will always be better if your energy is better .
So go and Kick Ass Today !!!!