Yo Red Pill, let's talk mornings.

Having a positive morning routine is one of the most crucial steps towards a successful body, mind, and spirit.

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Close your eyes and try to visualize a successful person that you know. Imagine what they do every morning, it’s probably done in a productive way, right?

Your visualization of the successful person probably didn’t smack the snooze button a few times. Rather, their morning probably consisted of exercise, healthy food, meditation or yoga.

The point I’m trying to make is that successful people are generally going to have some type of structure to their mornings, they will have certain habits that they are consistent with which overall add and emphasize the level of their productivity and success throughout the day. If you’re reading this post, then I’m guessing you have some type of ambition to better yourself. If so then you must understand the way you start your morning will generally dictate thew rest of your day.

It’s crucial to start off with a great morning routine.

Why Bother With A Morning Routine?

I’m young, but in my years on this earth, one crucial lesson I have learned is that the way you start your morning is generally going to define how you live your life, think about that for a second. How can you go about creating the ideal morning routine for your lifestyle?

I’m going to show you some simple habits you can incorporate into your life and overall point you in the right direction to improving the first part of your day.

8 Habits For A Good Morning Routine

Below is a list of habits you can use to create a good morning routine. Try some out, and pick a few that you enjoy and create your own custom routine. You don’t have to use all of them, but if you can that’s fantastic.

  • Count Your Blessings *

Being thankful is a very easy and powerful thought to focus on.

Think about this for a second. You, yes you, reading this very article have time out of your day to ponder on how you can improve your life, if you’re reading this I’m guessing that you have the ability to feed yourself every day, you have a roof over your head. If you vocalize this and genuinely thank your situation for what you have, not what you don’t have, every single morning. This will have a powerful ripple effect on how you perceive certain problems throughout the day, which may otherwise be stressing you out.

The little things, the things which you have no business worrying about can then be spent being productive and concentration on being a better human, and contributing to the world, introspecting about pointless worries.

Be grateful for what you have!

Try to cultivate an abundance for every situation around you. Try it out. Through your morning routine write down or just think about certain things you are grateful to have. This may seem pointless, because it doesn’t directly change your situation, but you must understand that it changes your mindset, and generally your mindset is what will manifest as your physical reality. Mindset can be changed for the better in the morning, so by waking up and vocalizing the qualities that you have in life right now will benefit your spirit, soul and even those around you.

Find a sense of urgency in your ability to find abundance and appreciate the blessings you experience every single day.

  • Exercise

Exercise is good for you, I know this, you know this, everybody knows this.

Even if you work out later in the day, some type of movement in your morning routine is going to allow your body to wake up as well as your mind. It shifts your mind in the right direction allows the feel good endorphins to flood your system. Since your morning routine dictates how your day starts a quick workout will have you feeling good from the get to go.

Research actually shows us that exercise has benefits on our focus and concentration, even in our short term memory. Along with this exercising in your morning routine will help boost your metabolism for the day. As I said the workout doesn’t have to be intensive, but something like a short jog, or even yoga is going to make the transition from bed to crushing the day a lot easier.

  • Visualize Success

To visualize a certain reality is one which will probably come to fruition. Think about it, if you visualize a happy and productive day, chances are likely going to head in progression rather than degeneration. If you visualize yourself at the gym, my bet is chances are, you’ll end up going.

If you visualize yourself at the gym, my bet is chances are, you’ll end up going.

Successful people always preach this, my mentors and successful figures I follow tend to say this same thing over and over. Visualization, especially upon waking up in the morning. Visualization is planting a seed for what you wish to grow in the future. You can’t grow a plant, or success in other words without planting the seed nothing will grow.

How do you practice visualization?

You can do this through meditation.

  • Meditation

Successful entrepreneurs, Olympic athletes, scholars preach meditation. Meditation has been around for thousands of years, an ancient practice which harnesses our spiritual connection to the universe. yeah, this sounds like some woo-woo type stuff if you’re not the spiritual type. But you must understand that in a world full of so many distractions, it’s good to take the time to relax, focus on your breathing and think about who you are and your purpose in the world.

From a scientific standpoint, meditation has even been shown to physically change the matter in your brain, besides these benefits, which of course are great for our cognition, memory, meditation will just allow you to relax and as I’ve said before, your morning ‘vibe’ will echo into your day. So by meditating, grounding yourself, relaxing and focusing on having very present energy your flow throughout the day will mimic this state of mind.

All you need is 10 minutes, that’s it and you will be able to harness the profound benefits meditation can give you. This one is probably the most important.

No matter what, I always make time for my daily meditation.

  • Hydrate

Just like eating healthy and exercising, everybody knows that water is good for you. Drinking ample quantities of water is crucial to your vitality. You’ve heard this before, but our bodies are mostly made out of the water, think about that. Now think about how much you really drink a day. After waking up your body has been in a restful state, and you haven’t had the chance to hydrate. The morning is when you need water most. Fuel your body and your mind and nourish yourself with water the moment you wake up.

Cold water is preferable, to really wake you up and kick-start your energy.

  • Reading

When was the last time you completely finished reading a book from front to back? A full book, a novel, whatever it may be; any substantial piece of literature.

If you are thinking, “hey I do read, I read all the time!” I don’t mean Tweets and social media posts or the back of the air freshener when you forgot to bring your phone into the toilet.

Reading will improve your memory, cognitive ability, you will learn about the world, it’s stress relieving and once you find the right genre, it’s free entertainment. Reading can provoke incredible ideas, theories, perspectives. By beginning your day through another person’s perspective you can better make use of your own. What I mean is that exposing yourself to knowledge in the morning will help you cultivate a desire to gain more throughout the day.

Also, you take in a lot more information when you wake up, while you’re fresh. So while you’re sipping on a coffee in the early hours, instead of scrolling through emails, read a book.

10 pages a day will add up to 3650 pages a year, that’s 10-20 full books!

My favorite book is called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

All you need is yourself and a book to read.

Why Reading Is Key To A Strong Mind.

  • Take A Cold Shower

It really isn’t as bad as it sounds.

It has been proven that having cold showers really does have a significant impact on how you feel and your overall health. As simple as it sounds, the temperature in the shower makes a big difference.

Notable Benefits:

  • Reduce stress

  • Fat loss

  • Increased testosterone

  • Improved immunity

  • Relieved depression

  • Increased willpower

Let me be clear. I’m not saying you have to have cold showers to have a good morning routine. What I am saying is they wake you the hell up. Humans have two types of energy. Low vibration, lazy, energy and high vibration, productive, positive, ambitious energy. I want to balance this out towards the latter as much as possible, especially in the morning.

Do you have the guts to try this out? Give it a go and let me know how it goes in the comment section.

You don’t have to start out cold, just switch it to cold at the end of the shower. You’ll experience the effects the very first time. Some even claim slight euphoria.

  • Set Goals

Businessman painting abstract colorful design on gray background concept for business creativity, imagination and inspiration

Set goals for what you want to accomplish for the day and remind yourself what you want you to accomplish in your life. A great book I’d recommend for this concept is called The Slight Edge, an incredible book which will allow you to turn small disciplines into big rewards, highly recommend this.

Write a to-do list for the day, however, don’t obsess over it. Write down, in order, the most annoying, difficult tasks, do them first, be realistic and make sure to complete the list you set out for yourself to ingrain self-confidence, knowing that you can repeat this process over and over.

Don’t set yourself up for failure by thinking about the future too much, it’s good to set goals but try to remain as present to the now as possible.

Setting goals and visualization becomes a piece of cake once you understand your own psychology. Consider reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

2 Habits To Avoid At All Costs

  • Do Not Check Your Emails

This one may surprise you but think about this for a second. You are expecting an email that you are uneasy about and may provoke you to get a little bit stressed. If you check your email in the morning, you’re going to overthink about things which can be dealt later once you are in a more logic head space. When you are waking up, it’s better to spend time on refreshing yourself and preparing your body, mind, and spirit to conquer the day. Rather than spending wasted time pondering on emails.

Rather I suggest as Tim Ferris and other entrepreneurs do is to set a time of the day where you check your emails, maybe with lunch. Or before bed. Don’t stress yourself in the morning, relax. Emails aren’t that important, for the most part.

  • Snoozing

I hope this one is obvious for you. If you are snoozing chances are you’re not sleeping early enough. So rather than continuously hitting the snooze button try to manage your time and get to bed a bit earlier. For example, you could read a book before bed rather than watch TV. You know why you aren’t sleeping, so make the changes to correct this./

If you’re snoozing in the morning you’re giving yourself less time to do the above and making it harder to get the most out of the early hours.

Your Motivation Is At An All Time High In The Morning

Think about self-control and discipline as an energy source, it’s full in the morning and the more time that passes, the more of the battery which is drained, similar to how a muscle would work in getting fatigued at the gym.

There was a study done at the University of Nottingham and the national institute of Singapore, these concluded that

Results revealed a significant effect of ego depletion on self-control task performance. Significant effect sizes were found for ego depletion on effort, perceived difficulty, negative affect, subjective fatigue, and blood glucose levels.

The more you wait from the moment you wake up, you experience greater loss of the discipline and motivating feelings you are recharged with during the early hours.

Take Away Message

It may seem like something insignificant to have a morning routine, maybe it is. But the benefits you reap are significant. If you didn’t read the entire article, just think about it like this. If successful entrepreneurs and athletes have a structured morning routine which helps them achieve their goals and helps they live a more effective and efficient life, then if you do the same you will experience some benefit.

When your morning routine is top notch the rest of your day is going to tend to mimic that vibe.

For the next few days, I challenge you to use the above tips and form some type of structure to your early hours.