One of the core reasons successful people are able to produce extraordinary results in their career, business, and life is because they have a set of powerful morning routine to help them kick-start a great day.
There is a saying:
“One small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.”
Dalai Lama
We all know that having a productive morning routine is important because our morning sets the pace of our day.
Having a Productive Morning Routine VS No Routine
Imagine you have a productive morning routine. So, every day, you wake up knowing what to do. You spend the first 15 minutes of exercise. And because you exercise, your brain releases endorphin, a hormone that makes you feel happy.
After your exercise session, you take a shower. You’re happy because you have moved your body and you feel energetic.
And then you make yourself a good breakfast. You healthily and you also drink a glass of orange juice.
Before you go to out to work, you read the best-selling book, The Compound Effect for 15 minutes. You feel inspired and are totally motivated to achieve your goals.
And then you review your goals and you plan your day. You write down what you want to do throughout the day and you become proactive.
And off you go. You go to your office feeling inspired, motivated, energetic, and ready to take on the world.
This is what happen when you have a productive morning routine.
But, what if you don’t have a good morning routine? How will your day be?
Now, imagine what will you do if you don’t have a morning routine…
You hear the alarm ring, but because you sleep late the day before, you feel tired and so hit the snooze button. 30 minutes later, you jump out of your bed because you’re going to be late for work.
And so, you quickly brush your teeth and discover that it is 8:30 AM and you don’t have time for breakfast any because you need to be in the office by 9 AM.
Guess what, you quickly put on your usual work attire, run to your car and drive off, only to find out you forget to take an important document you left on the table. So go back to your house for the document.
Now you’re late. And you didn’t even take your breakfast. You’re hungry and you find it difficult to focus on your work.
The entire day, your productivity suffers and because you don’t have a plan, you don’t know what to do. You become reactive.
You do whatever things that come to you. Guess what, the first thing you do once your each the office is to check updates on Facebook. After wasting 15 minutes on Facebook, you read the news for another 15 minutes and join your colleagues and complain about the how tough the economy is going to be.
And the story continues…
Can you see how having a productive morning routine can shape your life?
Successful people are able to achieve outstanding results in life because they learn to master their mornings.
And here are 7 best morning routine you should develop to make your day productive and to change your life for the better:
1. Drink Plenty of Water
Once you wake up, you have to drink a lot of water. This is what I did every morning upon waking up.
After I brush my teeth, I will walk straight into my kitchen and drink plenty of water.
So how much of water should you be drinking? Research has shown that it is ideal to drink 16oz or 500ml of water after you wake up.
You want to start your day with hydrating your body because it is a great and healthy way to refresh your body and your mind.
When you sleep, you are not taking in any water into your body. That makes you wake up dehydrated. This is why you need to drink a lot of water to hydrate your body functions.
Do you know that at least half of your body is made up of water?
According to this article, up to 60% of our human body is water. And your brain composed of 73% water, lungs are about 83% water, and even bones are watery, consist of 31% water.
Apart from that, drinking water upon waking up helps cleanse your body as well. Water goes into your body is able to boost your metabolism and clean away all the toxic within.
If you want to learn more about how drinking water can make your day great, read this article.
You can’t “over-drink” water, especially in the morning. Make it your routine to drink at least a full glass of water upon waking up.
It refreshes you, wakes you up, and gives you the energy you need to kick-start a productive day.
2. Exercise and Stretching
You often heard that exercise is important to your health, but how many successful people exercise in the morning? Here’s a list…
- Anna Wintour, Editor-in-chief for Vogue, has a morning routine of playing tennis starts at 5.45am that last for about an hour.
- Michelle Obama said during an interview that she wakes up at 4.30am and exercise. She said she would feel depressed and won’t feel good if she did not exercise in the morning.
- Jennifer Aniston, the famous actor, wakes up early, does her spin-yoga for about half an hour, and then go to the gym to workout for an hour.
- Michelle Gass, the Chief-Customer-Officer at Kohl’s, wakes up at 4.30am and go for running every day, for 15 years.
- Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, one my favorite movie stars, wakes as early as 4am each day and exercise. He jogs, runs and hit the gym for a heavy workout every morning. This is how he built his muscle and he dedicated his success to his powerful morning routine.
- Steve Reinemund, former Chairman and CEO of Pepsi, does 4 miles run at 5am every morning. He will then pray, read the news and taking breakfast with his family.
Let’s face it, exercise is important to both our physical and mental health. Productive people are busy people, but still, they make time to exercise. And that means exercise must be something important to their productivity, don’t you think so?
There are plenty of benefits to exercise. Check out the list here.
For instance, exercises help you control your weight, reduce your risk of heart diseases, boost your thinking power, relief your stress, improve your mental health and mood, increase your longevity, and makes you more productive.
There are so many benefits of exercise and I don’t see why you shouldn’t make it your habit.
And the best time to exercise in the morning. Why? Because there are no distractions in the morning. And it is a great way to jump-start your day because it fully awakes you.
Hence, make it your morning routine to exercise.
You do not have to spend an hour exercising if you feel like you do not have the time. Check out this 15-minute full-body workout that you can do even in your home, without any equipment.
You don’t need to make it complicated. Just develop the habit to exercise for 15 minutes every morning will be good enough. And don’t make any excuses why you can’t do it.
3. Review Goals and Planning
The secret to productivity is to plan your day, identify your priority, and then act on it.
Most people are not productive because they go through their day/life without knowing what to do.
They follow the crowd and they do whatever that comes to them. Instead of being proactive, they are reactive to their surroundings.
This is why it is important to have goals. You want to know what you out of your life so that you create plans and get there.
Here’s my favorite quote about having goals and plans:
You can’t leave things up to chances, you need to be proactive and plan for what you want.
Regardless of whether it is your job, career, business, or life, you need to find out what you want to achieve, and then make plans for them.
Guess what will happen when you don’t have a plan? Well, when you have nothing to do and you have no goal/plan, you will waste your time mindlessly on things that don’t matter.
For instance, you will check Facebook every 10 minutes, you will play games, watch funny videos on YouTube, swipe Instagram, and do anything but nothing that will move you forward in life.
This is why you need to have goals and plans.
Successful people know what they want out of their lives. They know what kind of results they want to create and they understand what they need to do to get there.
Therefore, make it your morning routine to set goals, review them, and plan your day so that you know your direction throughout the day.
I strongly recommend you take my course: Goal Setting Formula. You will learn how to find out what you want to achieve, take charge of your life, and achieve real success through setting empowering goals.
4. Meditation
Meditation is another powerful method to kick-start your day.
These extraordinary people below have something in common…
- Marc Benioff of salesforce.com
- Padmasree Warrior, the Chief Technology and Strategy Officer of Cisco Systems
- Jeff Weiner, the LinkedIn CEO
- Ray Dalio, the founder of the largest hedge fund management firm in the US
- Oprah Winfrey, the billionaire media mogul
They meditate every morning.
If you want to go far, you need to have a clear mind. And meditation can help you with that.
You need food to nourish your body, and meditation is a great ‘mind food’ to nourish your mental health.
Meditation has been proven to lower your stress and improves your optimism. Not only that, but it also boosts your concentration and increases your creative thinking skills.
We’re living in a world full of distractions and stress. People are constantly being bombarded and distracted by their phones, social media, advertisements, and unproductive work.
And you can get rid of stress and put yourself in calm state through meditation.
When you make it a habit to meditate in the morning before you start your day, you center your mind and sets a tone of calm for the entire day.
Besides making you feel calm, meditation also increases your ability to focus and gives you more energy to tackle whatever tasks that come to you later the day. This is why so many extraordinary people meditate every morning.
I do practice meditation every day, but I’m no expert in this. If you want to master this powerful skill, watch this video.
5. Read and Learn
This is my favorite.
I read a lot of books and I still do. On average I read about 2 to 3 books a month. And that does not include the PDFs or articles I read online.
Every time I read, it makes me feel motivated and wanted to do more. Reading and learning give me hope and boost my confidence.
More importantly, I believe that reading makes me a better writer and it improves my ability to focus on my task.
What about you? Do you read? And what books have you read?
Read: 10 Best Success Books to Create Real Results in Life
There are so many benefits to reading. Of course, not all books are written the same. Some books will make you feel powerful and motivated. While some books will make you feel sleepy after you read it.
So choose the one that can connect with you the most. And remember that at different times of your life, reading the same books may give you different ideas.
This is why I also reread most of my books. For instance, one of my highly recommended book, The ONE Thing, I reread it countless times. And every time I reread it, I still learn something new.
Thus, make it your morning routine to read. I read for about 20 to 30 minutes every morning. And I can tell you that this habit has changed my life.
6. Get a Healthy Breakfast
You cannot kick-start a great day without having a healthy breakfast. Having breakfast each morning before you start your work is the best morning routine one can ever have.
Can you imagine going through your hectic day without eating anything in the morning? How would you feel?
I can’t stress how important it is to eat healthily. Most people know that it is important to take breakfast in the morning, but they often get it wrong by taking in junk food as breakfast.
Don’t skip your breakfast. As the word suggests, “break-fast”. You want to break the fasting you have gone through overnight. When you sleep at night, you don’t take in any food. And after you wake up, you need to consume healthy food to recharge and replenish your physical and mental energy.
Here are some great articles you should refer…
- 18 Fast, Healthy Breakfast Ideas
- 45 Delicious, Kid-Friendly Breakfast Recipes
- 27 Healthy Breakfast Ideas You Can Use Today
- Breakfast: Is It the Most Important Meal?
7. Create Your First Win
One of the most powerful things you can do in the morning is to create your first win. No matter how big or how small it is, you just need to create your first win.
The purpose is simple, when you create your first win, it encourages you to go on and create more wins throughout the day. It gives you confidence and boosts your pride.
You will put yourself into the winning cycle and keep doing other great things the entire day.
So what are the things that you can do to create your first win? It can be as simple as making your bed…
Watch the short video above. It will change how you think about making your bed and creating your first win in the morning.
Of course, winning is not all about making the bed, but it is about making your life works, one at a time.
When you promised yourself that you are going to wake up at 5 AM and exercise, and if you did it, you will feel great, you will feel proud, you will feel accomplished, you will feel satisfied and you will want to do more great things.
The same principle applies when it comes to making your bed.
And if you say that you are going to review your goals and do your first task before 8 AM, and if you did it, you will kick-start your morning with a great sense of accomplishment.
This is why it is important to create your first win in the morning.
You first win will lead you to create another small win, and another, and another.
That’s how extraordinary people achieve outstanding success in life. They do it one at a time.
And it all starts with a simple and easy win in the morning.
Read: Why Start Small? The 5 Important Benefits of Starting Small
This is how building a good morning routine can make you more successful in life.
So, start your day by creating your first win in the morning. Make it your ritual and make it your best morning routine.
Remember, all big successes start small.
You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.
Zig Ziglar
Conclusion
How you start your morning says a lot about how you go through your day. When you start great, you tend to be more productive and able to accomplish more. And when you have a lousy start, your day will follow suit.
Therefore, develop productive morning routine and kick-start your day with confident, passion, and success.
Make it your morning habit according to the 7 tips above.
How do you start your morning? Do you find these 7 habits worth to develop?
Nice. I wish I can get a waking up early routine. Although I tried a lot, but until now I always wake up late. But after reading your post, I think I should try one more time. Thank you a lot
Hi Laurie, yeah, it was very difficult and challenging to get up the morning and feel energetic, especially in the early stage.
I’m able to wake up early, but I feel very sleepy. I guess my body wasn’t used to it.
However, after a few weeks gone, I started to feel superb early in the morning. Right now my most productive hours are in the morning.
Great article post indeed. I always wake up at 4:00 am. I drink 2 glasses of water and after that I go for a walk. I also give 30 minutes to meditation. All these things keep my health fit.
Thanks for sharing useful tips with people like me.
~Ray
Hey Ray, thanks for visiting. Wow, 4am? I’m impressed. 🙂 Keep it up
We should try these 7 best morning routine to have a more stronger self to ace your day.