The Importance of a Morning Routine

Since beginning 75 Hard, I've become more aware of the importance of creating good habits. When things start getting difficult, or we become unsure, we revert to our habits. Aristotle said it best, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit."

During my time throughout 75 Hard, the core components of the challenge were non-negotiable. Then, as I started to incorporate these core habits on a daily basis, I began adding even more empowering habits to my routine. First, I started meditating, then I decided that I was tired of waiting until the last minute to complete my non-negotiables, so I decided to begin waking up earlier.

This was a big deal for me. I have always been the kind of person that would go to bed late and wake up late. The way I rationalized this to myself was that it didn't matter, as long as I got enough sleep. There's something peaceful about being awake when the rest of the world is asleep, whether late at night or early in the morning. This all made sense to me at the time, but I was starting to notice something about my morning business calls. If I had a meeting or was teaching a class in the morning, say 9:00 am, I would wake up 15-20 minutes prior and stroll into the meeting half asleep. The way I saw it, what did it matter as long as I was on time. Then, as I was doing 75 Hard and was enjoying the version of myself that was coming through, I realized that I wanted to show up better for all of the people in my life.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wanted to be in a peak state when people encountered me, regardless of what time it was. This was when I started to wake up earlier. I began with 9:00 am even on my days off and then progressively brought the time back. I started researching the best ways to wake up earlier and came across the book, The Miracle Morning. This book really broke down the ways to effectively wake up earlier, consistently, with a systematic approach. The book resonated with me when it talked about why it was important to wake up earlier, it talks about waking up earlier and getting core tasks done before the main portion of your day begins. The book mentions the mnemonic device SAVERS. These SAVERS are the points to take care of before the day officially starts:

• S—ilence or meditation
• A—ffirmations
• V—isualization
• E—xercise
• R—eading
• S—cribing or writing

These make up the primary parts of your morning to get your mind and body functioning at their best. I would use my early time in the morning to knock out some of the main parts of my 75 Hard before continuing with my day. I started waking up earlier every week by half an hour and would prolong my time on all of the above SAVERS. The book explains how you can do some portion of all of these things for 10 minutes at a time, creating an hour where you have already meditated, given yourself positive affirmations, visualized a better future for yourself, exercised, read, and wrote something.

Imagine the energetic difference you'd create by doing these things or any activity getting the creative juices flowing, as opposed to simply waking up and doing the regular portion of your day-to-day activities.  

Get your copy of Miracle Morning here: https://amzn.to/3MEIKwV.

With gratitude,

Joey Hauss
joeyhauss.com

PS: If you prefer watching over reading, you can watch this video where I talk about this experience here.