Early mornings don’t just help you in business but also improve your wellbeing.
Your morning, and evening routine can be a great place to start new habits and change your mindset and outlook.
I discuss quick tips on how to change things, easily and effectively.
Become more productive, content and relaxed.
Includes Weekly Book Recommendation
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Episode 6 – What exactly is a mid life crisis?
Episode 10 – Restoring Balance By Creating A New Routine
Book recommendation – The Miracle Morning, Hal Elrod
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Hi, Christie here. And I’m recording this on Monday the 16th ready for tomorrow.
And it’s episode 14. It’s going to be about a morning routine.
How setting a morning and evening routine can help set you up for a happy productive day and just get you in a better place.
A quick intro for me first, to update you on my week, it’s been quite busy.
I’ve been streamlining my business quite a lot.
Because I had so many things going on I’m just not getting any writing done. So I have been streamlining a lot and I’ve actually now merged my Patreon account to include my podcast as well as my books. If you’ve not heard of Patreon, it’s where you can support creatives. I support at least three other writers and you just pay just the price for coffee or more to get exclusive access.
What I’ll be doing each month is providing a monthly, special exclusive podcast just for my patrons.
It can include questions and answers, but it will be exclusive content. I’ll drop all the links to everything in my show notes. You don’t need to worry about it, but I just wanted to give you a heads up on that because it might be something that you’re interested in. I give away books that are published and things like that in Patreon, so it’s all exclusive.
I’m also writing for NaNoWriMo, it’s all of November and I’m writing a sci-fi. I think I mentioned this last week and the main character is called Walter. I’m beginning to like Walter and his friends quite a lot. They’re telling me loads of things. That’s the thing when you’re a writer, your character starts speaking to you.
It’s really exciting.
I’ve been going out walking, not today, been really heavy rain today, but I’m trying to get some more fresh air. I think a lot of us through lockdown put a bit of weight on, I’ve not put a lot on, but you just feel sluggish because you’re not getting out and about as much. So I’m trying to do a lot more walking as well.
What you’ll need to do before this episode is maybe go back to episode 6 about what a midlife crisis is or what I consider it is, also episode 10 about setting a new routine. They might help you recap. Also in episode 10 is a coaching discount that you might want to pick up.
A morning routine is where you set intentions or you do things differently. What I think you should do in a morning is set yourself up for a good day.
One of the ways that you can do that is to go to bed earlier, as daft as it sounds. Try and shift your sleep patterns to a different time zone, maybe go to bed an hour earlier, if you can. You might not be able to, but try.
Have a look at some apps, that you can get to monitor your sleep patterns. Think about going to bed earlier and getting up earlier, because it really does make a difference.
Don’t use your snooze button on your alarm clock, which you probably knew already. It’s really bad habit to get into because it just makes you more tired, so wake up with your alarm. I tend to find that I wake up 10 minutes before any alarm I set anyway, but it’s handy to have an alarm.
Get up at the same time each day, I’ve actually joined the 5:00 AM writer’s club on Twitter. And as you can guess, starting to write at 5:00 AM. I found that I’m really creative at that time in the morning. I think probably because I’m still half asleep and I’m in dreamworld a little bit, but that’s my most creative time. I get up, have a drink of water because you’ve got dehydrated overnight and have a bit of a stretch.
Don’t go into the five mile run straight away, but definitely do something physical to sort of wake your body up, stretching yoga, just something physical to wake your body up as well as your mind.
And have some me-time for 15 minutes. If you’ve got a busy household, there’s nothing worse than never feeling as if you’ve got a minute. Getting up 15 minutes early can really make a difference to having a me-time in that 15 minutes, having a bit of a stretch, sitting down with a glass of water with lemon juice in it. And just feeling that your body’s waking up.
Be thankful and just take a minute to just be you and just allow yourself that time. It really can affect your mental health.
What I would like you to try and do, I believe in something called Create Nourish Share, I’ve actually got that brand. It’s about each day. I don’t feel as if I’ve had a good day if I haven’t produced something.
I used to work in corporate and sometimes I’d come home really stressed and I couldn’t work out why. It was because I’d never managed to achieve anything. I’d always been up against it, and something had always stopped me getting to the end of a task.
I’m completer finisher or something they’re meant to be called aren’t they?
Set your intentions for the day around the Create Nourish Share.
Try every day to set an intention, to create something, to nourish yourself, whether that be your mental or your physical wellbeing and to share good intentions and good actions and kind actions.
It may be that if you’ve got ambitions, business-wise, you can link those to your business, but I’m thinking more for your personal life as well.
It might be that you create a podcast, it might be create some art. It might be that you create something for work, maybe do all your Instagram content for the week or something like that.
Set an intention at the beginning of the day of what you’re going to achieve in that day. I do the Create Nourish Share where I have three items that I promise I will finish, and do them first. So no matter what happens the rest of the day, I know that I’ve got those three done.
At the end of the day, I believe that you should have an evening routine as well.
Be thankful and just reassess what you’ve actually achieved that day.
What have you created? How have you nourished yourself and what have you shared with other people or with your family?
Maybe even a meal at the end of the day, you’ve cooked a meal and sat down eating it with your family, which at the moment is so important.
The morning routine is just shifting your mindset.
You get up early, you have a stretch, you drink some water. If you are eating your breakfast early, eat healthy, depending on what sort of dietary needs you’ve got.
Try and have something healthy, not something really chocolatey and stodgy.
Do your daily affirmations, it actually helps to say those out loud as well.
I’ve created an ebook that you can print out, it’s a daily affirmation ebook. It explains a little bit about setting intentions for the day. It’s got a printable worksheet at the back where you can actually write down…today I’m going to achieve this, this and this. You can take 10 minutes, 15 minutes at the most. It’s not hours to set intentions and yoga stretches in the morning. We’re talking 10, 15 minutes.
The end of the day might even be when you set the table, my Mum always used to set the table before she went to bed, so it was ready for breakfast.
How organised is that?
At the end of the day, you sit down for another 10 minutes and just look back over your day and think, ‘yeah, I achieved that’ and it’ll help you sleep better.
My book recommendation for you this week is:
The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.
I’m sure you may have already heard of it. The miracle morning is something that an awful lot of entrepreneurs swear by. It’s setting a morning intention and achieving things and planning for achieving things quickly. I think he does six intentions in six minutes, something like that.
I hope this has been helpful.
It’s been a bit of a whistle stop tour as usual. I might be speaking a little bit fast today, but I’ve had a really good day, so I’m quite excited.
Try and get intentions set. Be thankful. Be active, physically look after yourself as well as mentally.
Let me know if this has been any help. If it’s just prompted a reminder not to just lay in, snooze for half an hour, scroll through Instagram, not bother getting out about of bed but then rush around like a crazy thing to get ready for work.
I’d like to know what your morning routine is. Okay?
Drop it in the comments.
I’ll catch you again soon. Bye.