How You Start Your Day Will Determine Your Day

“A year from now, you may wish you had started today.”-Karen Lamb

Hal Elrod , author of Miracle Morning, said, “How you wake up each day and your morning routine (or lack thereof) dramatically affects your levels of success in every single area of your life. Focused, productive, successful mornings generate focused, productive successful days — which inevitably create a successful life — in the same way that unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre mornings generate unfocused, unproductive and mediocre days, and ultimately a mediocre quality of life. By simply changing the way you wake up in the morning, you can transform any area of your life, faster than you ever thought possible.”

How do you view each morning? Does the thought of getting out of bed and preparing for each day fill you with dread? Do you hit the snooze button or scroll social media, check WhatsApp, or read emails? Do you turn on the news first thing? Are you letting the negativity of the outside world in before you have set yourself up for the day? Whatever is your mood at the start of your day is likely to carry throughout the rest of your day, leaving you in a perpetual state of immobility.

This influences the stories you tell yourself about who you are, what you are capable of and what is achievable or not. This becomes a powerful filter that will determine whether you find the strategies necessary to succeed with joy and whether you will come up with an empowering or disempowering story that impacts your choices, decisions, and actions. Change for a better outlook is always possible, but you must change by putting yourself in a positive, empowering mindset that carries throughout your day.

A morning ritual, habit, or routine used properly with the right actions practiced with consistency can have a major impact on your life. Scientific research has proven that a morning success ritual can increase your happiness, reduce procrastination, boost confidence, and improve overall performance. No matter where you are in life, there are always improvements to be made, problems to be solved and things to be fixed. You tend to use the words “habit”, “routine” and “ritual” interchangeably, they are distinct.

The differences are how aware, intentional, and present you are when completing the task.

• Habits are your automatic urges to do something, and often triggered. The stronger the connection between the trigger and the habit, the more ingrained the habit requiring little or no conscious thought, like, waking up and drinking coffee.

• Routines require deliberate practice like exercising or meditating. These are routines that require you to consciously practice them, or you will eventually stop doing them. Your routines will require a higher degree of intention and effort.

• Rituals require you to have the right attitude, meaning, and purpose behind your practice with full engagement and focus on the experience rather than its completion. You will never fully experience anything when living on autopilot. When eating, reading, working, learning, or interacting be fully engaged experiencing the joy and fulfillment of it.

You must always know the reason for doing what you are doing. Determine your reason for what I call your “morning success ritual” experiencing each thing you choose to do. Align your rituals with why you get up every morning linking it to your specific long term goals (health, wealth, and relationships). Aiming for something that matters to you will help you stay motivated, follow-through, bring you close to your goals, and create within you a greater sense of control and purpose over your life. You will feel more joy, happiness, and satisfaction with your life while also increasing your productivity and results at work.

Hal Elrod says your morning should consist of six variables called SAVERS. He has based these on analyzing the advice and routines of top productivity experts and elements that the most successful people in the world include in their morning. My morning success ritual consists of all six variables.

See my examples below:

1. Silence - Prayer and gratitude.

2. Affirmations - All things work together for my good.

3. Visualization - Daily viewing of my Vision board collage

on my phone.

4. Exercise - YOGA.

5. Reading - “Feelings Buried Alive Never Die” by Karol

K. Truman,

6. Scribing - What my life looks like now and in the future.

Make the change in how you start your day. Feel and experience

the difference. Make it your own and do it consistently!

Start small building upon your success. You will feel more

energetic, confident, and be committed to what you desire

and deserve!

“You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” John C. Maxwell

Article Written By Gladys Agwai:

As Featured In: