The 4 morning routines for winning the day

Establishing a systematic and productive set of habits and routines has been the lead anchor to sustained high quality output for life and work. Be it in your business, health or finances, I think we can all agree that random and chaotic behaviour hardly does us any good! Any area of expertise and competence lends itself to a specific set of principles that cannot be violated. If you study the world's top performing athletes, leaders, or innovators you will find that a majority of them share a common trait for developing and sticking to powerful habits that allow them to consistently win.

Success is any endvour is highly achievable if you if you can collect and apply the a set of field tested habits and beliefs. Most high performers have figured out how to produce their desired outcomes and have since kept to that same formula to keep reproducing successful results. That's the power of routines and how they can be modelled to duplicate similar results. Any of us can find someone who has stepped up to do great things that we're deemed impossible at some point in time. If you look into the lives of these these successful people you will find that nearly all of them are flawed but they have maximised two or three lead leverage habits on constant basis.

For example a study has found that the Super Rich are more likely to wake up before 6am, read, get in a full workout and plan their day before they get to the office.

So it's important to understand that these habitual routines and behaviours can determine your long term trajectory to a large extent. So we need to be strategic about the environmental influences and habitual patterns of behaviour we allow on a consistent basis. Setting up new habits really has to do with small things done consistently over time having the greatest impact on your results.

With the web having made information so widely available we have the advantage of learning from the best in the world. We don't have to reinvent these success formulas, as we can standing on the shoulder of giants and learn and apply their time tested principle.

Now, the set of habit and routines, common among high performers, are based on key morning activities to as they help predispose you to productive thoughts, feelings and actions throughout the day.

We have habits that empower us and those that weaken us, and I would like to invite you as you reading this to take a quick personal inventory of how you can make new decisions to deliberately starve the bad habits and focus on nourishing those empowering habits and routines.

So here are a few pre-game morning routines and habits I have found to help me make small wins early in the day so I am primed for mental resilience and emotional resourcefulness throughout the day. These serve as my lead anchors and help establish a sense of focus and momentum for the day.

1. Mindfulness

Create order out chaos in your mental state must be the first action item of the day. And doing this means developing a consistent practice of mindfulness or meditation. Often adrenaline and anxiety are the first things we anchor into our nervous systems when we begin the day, and then we wonder why we get caught up in the noise of the environment more often than we would care to admit. Confusing the noise, for signals demanding our urgent attention. But I have found that learning to control my mind and responses to the environment allows me a much broader sphere of influence through my day. The practice of meditation offers better clarity of mind since it allows you to set your goals, prioritise your values and anchor attention to whats good in your life. A minimum investment of 5 to 10min spent in some form of mindfulness can have exponential benefits to your productivity and cognitive endurance. Living in an increasingly complex environment as we all do now, having the capacity to be clear minded about who you are and what you want will distinguish you from the algorithm zombies being influence by social media. Apps such as Clam and Headspace have a verity of instructional resources that you can invest in today and start rehabilitating your attention span.

1. Plan your work, then work your plan Take the time to review your goals and make a list of 3-5 action items you can take that day to take you a step closer to your overall vision for the week, month or year. Keep these action items in mind throughout the day and commit to doing the difficult things first. Remember, you do not have to do things perfectly, the goal is to get into the habit of taking action that are congruent with your desired outcomes. So block off the times between 9am and 11am for you to focus on your lead actions and take even the smallest steps to achieving them. Doing this is very importent as it will give you the confidance to go after the items lower down on your list as the day progresses. With the focus and clarity that your mindfulness practice provides you'll find it easier to zero in on the actions necessary to materialise your dreams with less distractions and frustrations.

2. Fuel your mind with quality you want to produce Consume high quality, educational and positive content early in the morning will give you the fuel to be creative, resilient and resourceful throughout the day. Unlike starting the day with whatever the environmental influences present, take charge of your mental diet and choose to consume powerful and intelligent content so you are primed for high quality and quantity output through the day. Remember, garbage in, garbage out. You get out what you put in, so give yourself a fighting chance before exposing yourself to the whatever the news and social media cycle has to offer that day. So much in our day will require that we show up strong, vigilant and prepared, so reading or listing to resouces that put you in the right frame of mind is invaluable. These positive resources could take the form of a an audiobook, podcast or energising music playlist that you listen to on your morning commute can have a profound impact on the quality of your day.

3. Emotion is influenced by motion Movement can have a profound effect on how we feel, process information and take action. There have been a number of studies that prove that even 5 min of vigorous exercise can have significent cognitive enhancing effects. Not only dose working out help you become smarter, but adopting a morning exercise ritual can impact your emotions as stimulating the blood and lymphatic systems has been linked to the production of the neurotransmitters such as endorphins that are found to reduce depression, ward off anxiety and boost self easteem among other benefits. Early morning workouts can prime you for optimism, better self control and improve your mental output. So take advantage of this natural anti depressant by scheduling and sticking to a morning workout program that serve your physical performance needs. You don't need a gym membership to get going, unless you already have one, but instead work with what you have, go for a run, use your body weight to perform compound exercises. There are several references available online for any beginner to start working out from almost anywhere.

Something as seemingly small as how we start our day can have a great impact on the tone we set for the day, and that influences to the way we treat others, communicate events and situations to our selves and subsiquently how we enjoy the a quality of life we deserve. A lot for what we experience stem from habitual or behavioural patterns we've either consciously or unconsciously choosen. Habits often go in pairs, and any habits that weakens your willpower will cause casualties in almost all areas of your life. So choose your habits carefully, and remain vigilante of any unwanted traits through controlling who and what you allow into your environment.

The best formula to a great life, is enjoy more great days than you do bad days. Now, to a large extent we cannot control what happens, but we can control how we use what happens.

To do this on consistent basis, we need to create routines that anchor our thoughts, feelings and actions toward begin more emotionally resourceful and psychologically strong everyday.

- WN