#bestyear101

Well, we are already three weeks into the New Year!  How's it going?  No, really, how is it going?  

If you are like a lot of us, life came back and slapped us back into reality the last couple of weeks.  Life existed before the New Year, and the same life existed afterwards.  Changing in order to reach our goals in the midst of all this chaos is hard!  This is why so many people don't find the success they want in life.

But, there's hope!

To really change and to reach your goals, you must create habits.  Here is an article by Scott Steinberg that can be found here.  One of them is a suggestions from our last post and email on developing a morning routine.  

Here is the article reprinted for your convenience:

6 Daily Habits of Hugely Successful People

BY SCOTT STEINBERG | YAHOO SMALL BUSINESS

The most successful people share a striking number of similar habits. Regardless of whether they’re the CEO of a technology startup, or manage a popular local neighborhood retail outlet, their reoccurring patterns of behavior often pave the way to ongoing levels of achievement.  Below are six habits that hugely successful people use to maximize productivity, effectiveness and success – by following them, you can also catapult yourself further and faster towards achieving your own personal or professional goals.

Minimize Distractions

According to Basex, a management science company, it’s estimated that distractions cost U.S. businesses $588 billion per year, a number that continues to grow. Besides costing businesses billions in resources, these sneaky time consumers undermine concentration and can make it hard to stay focused on a task or consistently follow important train of thought. Learning to ignore these nuisances can help you create less stress, improve productivity on the job, and enjoy a happier workday, so put your phone away, log out of your social media accounts, and close your office door during your most productive hours. If you’re not quite sure which distractions eating up your day, try tracking your schedule by creating a running diary for two to three weeks to find out.

Get Enough Rest

Productivity can suffer if you don’t feel your best, and one of the most important factors of feeling up to par is maintaining a consistent sleep schedule. Getting enough rest is one of the easiest things you can do to revitalize your mental clarity, passion and energy. The National Sleep Foundation states that there’s no magic number when determining the right amount of sleep needed, but studies show that those who get 7 hours of sleep a night are far more productive. Research dating back decades also shows a marked decline in productivity after a typical 40-hour workweek – anything more produces diminishing returns. So be sure to take breaks, rest, and recharge: It may vastly improve your creativity, productivity and output.

Follow a Morning Ritual

By doing the same things every day when you wake up, you’re letting your mind focus on the bigger tasks at hand. Plus, establishing a routine of getting up and getting active first thing in the morning is a great way to start the day with a blast of energy – energy you can immediately begin spending on professional and personal development. (Hint: The smartest investment you can ever make is in yourself.) For example, many hugely successful people don’t just wake up earlier and spend time working out to improve fitness, start the day strong, and reduce stress. They also read business books, catch up on the news, get up-to-date on emails, or listen to podcasts while exercising, starting the day off strong by accomplishing multiple goals in one fell swoop.

Prioritize Your Day

Hugely successful people have a daily agenda that helps visualize what they would like to accomplish that day. It’s an easy way to give them a sense of work balance since they can see exactly what’s on their plate, as well as help them focus and mentally prepare for the challenges that they’ll be facing. Mimic their behavior by creating a daily “to-do list” of your own the evening before each workday, and prioritize tasks by importance. That way, you immediately know where to begin your work the next morning, and can tackle the most difficult challenges first, improving productivity and making the rest of your workday look like a breeze by comparison.

Take Care of Yourself

You may have heard successful men and women say, “I work hard but I also play hard.” These folks are well aware that it simply isn’t possible to operate at full speed every waking hour. They know that taking time for yourself is one of the biggest steps in avoiding work burnout. Try relaxing a little each day and use your free time to indulge in something you truly enjoy. Taking care of yourself also means eating a healthy diet, which includes breakfast, to fuel your body and mind for the challenges ahead. Staying organized both in the office and at home eliminates stress and is another way to take care of yourself.

Put First Things First

Not every task is equal, and successful people account for this when they budget their time. Whether you function best in the early morning hours or late in the afternoon, use your peak performance hours to knock out harder tasks and bring you closer to your goals. Save less-pressing tasks such as skimming through interoffice memos or submitting speaking proposals to annual industry conference organizers for a time when you’re not exactly ready to move mountains. Get the most important tasks done first – the rest will seem trivial by comparison. These important tasks should be tackled while you’re at your freshest, most awake, and best.

If you're anything like me, or at least how many of my mornings were for years, you wake up with just enough time to shower, get dressed (with your best pair of Sock 101's of course), and get to work.  You may scarf down a breakfast or pick something up like a coffee, donut or McMuffin on the way to work.  You run into work and your day starts.  You check your email and your voicemail and you start responding to everyone else's demands.  Soon it's time for lunch, and soon the day is over and you feel like you haven't done anything super meaningful with your day.

Others of you wake up early and get straight to work.  You check your email, respond, and get moving.  You are super productive in the morning and are ready to get going.  This was me in 2014.  I was super productive in the morning, but my motivation and productivity waned in the afternoon.  I was also subjecting myself to everyone else's agenda but my own.  I left time for me in the afternoon when I was mentally and physically exhausted.

Deep down, I knew there had to be a better way than either of these two options!

I started seeing articles about the importance of having a morning routine when it comes to being productive.  Of course, I thought, who has time for that?!

Then, I heard a podcast by Pat Flynn talking to Hal Elrod about his new book, The Miracle Morning.  After seeing articles in my Facebook feed and reading them, and now hearing a podcast on the topic, I started taking notice.

Well, it turns out that some really successful billionaires claim that their morning routine helped get them where they are.

Some of you may already have a morning routine, but most of us do not, or at least did not.

The simple truth is that we often focus on doing more than we focus on who we are, or more importantly who we are becoming.

Our mind is like a computer.  It is programmed.  It can be programmed or reprogrammed to constantly be negative, or to be positive.  What we think determines what we do.  What we think and what we do ultimately determines who we become.

In order to attract the type of success we want, we have to first BECOME the person that attracts that type of success.  The focus is on being, not doing.  We have to program our minds.

And that's where the morning routine comes in.

So, I read The Miracle Morning (it's even free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers) and started implementing it in my own life.  It is truly amazing the difference a morning routine can make.  As Elrod says, many people go from dreading the morning to actually enjoying it!  I do enjoy my morning routine, but, most importantly, I enjoy the benefits that come from following his process.

In his book, he suggests a formula for the morning that includes roughly an hour of silence, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading, and writing (he actually uses the term scribing to create the acronym SAVERS).

I sit in silence for about 5 minutes, which helps me quiet my thoughts.  Reading my affirmations daily has engrained in my mind the things that are important to me and who I am trying to become.  My affirmations become a filter for everything I do during the day.  Visualization helps me create a picture of how I want my day to look and how I will feel once I accomplish my top goals.  I love reading in the morning, and sometimes its hard to stop.  It gets my brain going and helps spark creativity.  I've gone from writing emails to writing between 500 and 5,000 words a day of personal journaling, posts, marketing emails, ad copy, and more.  I usually walk in the morning as my exercise and do a more intense strength training or CrossFit workout in the evenings.  Walking just a mile in the quiet of the morning while listening to podcasts or music produces some of my best ideas and helps me clarify priorities for the day and beyond. 

My morning routine has completely changed, and this is something I will stick with because of how good I feel, how clear my mind is, and how productive my days have been.

I highly suggest that you read this book and consider implementing these ideas in your own life.