LBD 36 | Start Your Day Well

 

How do you start your day? Have you ever felt drained or burned out at the end of your day even when you haven’t exerted yourself physically? Over the past few years, research has emerged stating that the simple act of making decisions greatly affects our daily energy levels. Listen to this episode and learn how to start your day the right way so you can lighten your load, save your energy, and make each day worth living.

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Three Habits To Start Your Day Well

 

Over the past few years, more and more research has emerged related to the simple act of making decisions and how it affects our daily energy levels. How do you start your day? Do you ever feel spent, finished, drained or burned out at the end of your day even when you haven’t exerted yourself physically? Scientists have discovered that every time we make a decision, your energy is slowly being depleted leading to a lack of willpower. If you only had a few decisions to make every day, this never seems a big deal. More resources report that we make about 35,000 decisions every day. All successful or productive people use rituals or habits. There are tiny invisible routines and collections of habits that these people do every single day to make sure that they get the things done. To make sure that they don’t get interrupted and they can sustainably move towards their goal one day at a time.

Waking Up Early

Let’s get right into what the two or three habits are to start your day. The first one is waking up early. One of the key traits of these successful people is their morning hours. They wake up early sometimes as the sun comes up at 6:00 AM or as early as 4:00 AM in some cases. There have been endless arguments about whether people wake up early or people with more hours are more productive or successful and there are always exceptions to the rule. While we need to wake up early, the best way to find out for yourself is to test it. Try a month of early starts and a month of late starts and see which gives you the best results. To be perfectly fair and honest, I used to be on late hour and I have problems sleeping. I mastered that and when I did that, I started sleeping early. When I started sleeping more, I started waking up earlier and I got so incredibly productive. Now, I’m hooked on getting up earlier rather than later. By the time I get up early, I practically finished the equivalent of what I used to do in the whole morning within the first 45 minutes.

To get you started, here’s how these highly successful people wake up early every single day. They set up the night before, they optimize their sleeping conditions and they implement the morning habit. When you knew these three things and getting up at 4:00 AM, 5:00 AM or 6:00 AM, it’s no challenge at all. As a result, you have more time in the morning to exercise, do other key rituals to spend time with your family or even to get to work early. In fact, the key benefit that we commonly hear from readers and customers who have implemented our ritual habits is they can get everything they need to get done before noon.

When you get up earlier, you finish in 45 minutes of what you used to do in a whole morning. Click To Tweet

The reason for this is simple. In the morning, others are usually weak. There are no phone calls, emails and interruptions to sidetrack you from getting your key things done. This allows you to start your day extremely strong. The momentum will carry you through almost any challenge that comes up. The collective consciousness of late-starters is while they are still dragging themselves out of bed and towards the door, you’re already out in the fresh air and sprinting ahead. Would you prefer struggling to get into work by 9:00 AM and not waking up until 10:00 AM and feeling lethargic after lunch? Would you prefer getting through the three power hours before 9:00 AM and continuing to noon and being able to take it easy in the afternoon? I’ve done it both ways and now I love it. By 10:00 AM or 10:30 AM, I’ve done all the important things that I have to do in the day. The rest of the time, I’m just seeing my clients and doing daily activities with no issue.

The Morning Ritual

The morning ritual or morning routine is another staple of productive people. It describes the default set of actions that you take from the time you up in the morning to the time that you’re ready to start your day. The benefits of morning rituals are many. It guarantees that you will go from groggy to awake by the end of it. Even if you wake up still half asleep when your alarm rings up, you slightly hit the world for having you wake up before the sun is up. By the time you are through the six steps of the morning ritual, you’ll be happy, cheerful and feeling productive. You can take on anything even that most important task of your day. The morning ritual also gives you the perfect start your day and this creates powerful momentum in your life. Don’t underestimate the impact that this can have when you’re consistently productive, you’ll have successful mornings and start to have consistently productive and successful days, weeks, months, and years. Before you know it, you’ll become the better version of yourself that you want to be.

The morning ritual lets you start your day with a focus instead of arriving with your morning coffee with no idea of what will happen next. It also streamlines your morning process and turns away anything unnecessarily. This means that no more two to three hours of fussing your clothes, your phone, your email and everything else only to find that you’re still late for work. With properly structured morning rituals in place, you can be ready to go in one to 1.5 hours every morning and know you have the best possible advantage for beginning your days.

As a result of having a structured morning ritual, I can get up, exercise, wash up, get ready and be ready to leave for work in 45 minutes. Decision fatigue is why sensible people get angry for no reason. They spend too much money on stuff they don’t need and buy junk food at the supermarket checkout. The food industry knows that shoppers are depleted of mental energy from all the decisions they just make. When willpower is gone, temptation rears its ugly head and you’re more vulnerable to the quick fix of a sugar high.

LBD 36 | Start Your Day Well

Start Your Day Well: The act of making decisions affect our daily energy.

 

Planning And Scripting Your Next Day

Every time you look at your smartphone, laptop or tablet, you’re draining your mental energy. The problem is we are not even consciously aware that this is happening to us. If you ever find yourself exhausted with no energy to exercise, or you spend quality time with your family at the end of the day, this podcast will give you a remarkably easy solution. The simple act of planning and scripting your next day ahead of time can dramatically limit the number of decisions you have to make on a daily basis. I may have mentioned in the past episode about how I have different days for different things. My work days, time with family days and my off days. For each one, because of the script, very little time is wasted. When you wake up without having your day planned and scripted, you’ll feel that you’re playing catch up the whole day, leading to feelings of overwhelm, emotional instability, lack of willpower and lower energy levels.

When you take fifteen to 30 minutes every night to map out your diet, your exercise routine and your to-do list for the next day, you eliminate half of the decision you normally make in a day. In my case, I have a stable routine for all my working days and my off days and my training days. I spend fifteen to 30 minutes planning for all the extra things that I have to do on the following day. Those things are normally done within the first 45 minutes to an hour, leaving the rest of the day free and easy. Think about how the simple act of making a protein shake for each morning and eating healthy leftovers every day for lunch can save you from having to make more decisions. Then, match your time. Instead of checking your smartphone and email dozens of times each day, just block time and do it two or three times per day instead. The world is not going to end if you miss a Facebook comment and you didn’t answer a phone call or a text message. These two simple habits will cut your decision-making in half and improve your quality of life in a big way. When you cut your decision in half, you dramatically increase your daily energy level for exercise and have the willpower to make intelligent and easy choices. Not to mention being there for your family and loved ones to give them your best.

The world is not going to end when you missed a Facebook comment or didn't answer a phone call or text. Click To Tweet

One lucky audience that posts a review on iTunes will win a private confidential consultation and coaching with me on discovering your soul’s purpose. I will lead you on a personal journey to discover the unique mind-body psychosomatic map of your life. You will get a detailed report and a personal 45-minute consultation with me that is worth thousands. I’m going to help you design a life that works so you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The clearer you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you step into your true potential, stay on track and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen? Feel free to reach out for me to ask questions at AskDrSun.com. Your life is a gift, design it. Do what matters. Join me each week as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams. I’m Dr. Sun, join me next time on Your Life by Design.

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