Your Gateway To Money, Happiness, Health & Impact – The Morning Ritual

What did you do this morning?

Did you wake up, get dressed and rush out the door to start your commute?

Did you unlock your iPhone 6s and scroll through your Instagram feed with the odd double tap?

Did you open your laptop and check your inbox and start responding to other people’s demands?

If so, I am here to tell you to be more selfish.

Yes, you heard, selfish.

“In order to reach the gateway to money, happiness, health and impact, I need to be more selfish?”

Yes.

The reason why is simple.

I agree, that to reach success in money, happiness, health and impact, you must help other people.

But in order to help other people effectively, you must first help yourself.

In this post, we will follow my journey into the world of the morning ritual after I read a number of books on the topic, most notably: The Slight Edge (Jeff Olson) and The Compound Effect (Darren Hardy).

The goal is to either inspire you to start your own morning ritual or if you already have one (please share it in the comments below!), to review and tweak slightly, if required.

But first…

Why Bother With A Morning Ritual?

The answer is summarized by this diagram from The Slight Edge:

(image cred)

Do you think that Michael Phelps rocked up to the Beijing Olympics to pick up his 8 gold medals after 5 years of scrolling his Twitter feed each morning?

OR

Do you think that he wakes up, swims, eats, swims then eats again.

Do you think that Mark Zuckerberg had the skillz to build Facebook after checking his inbox each morning up until he was 20 years old?

OR

Do you think he spent the majority of his morning fine tuning his CSS styling?

The point being, that if you are going to reach high levels of success in money, happiness, health & impact by providing value to other people, you must first work on developing yourself.

And luckily, if you start doing the right, small and seemingly menial tasks for yourself each day, over time, this can add up to MASSIVE progress:

Over the space of a year:

• 5 email subscribers can turn in 5,000
• 100 Twitter followers can turn into 10,000
• Your body fat % can reduce from 20-12%
• Your monthly recurring revenue could increase from $1,000 to $10,000

So let’s get started shall we?

Morning Routine v1.0

• Drink 500ml water
• Black coffee
• 30 minutes reading non-fiction book
• 20 minute run
• Shower
• Start day

Back in July of this year, v1.0 was actually conceived after reading the two aforementioned books and the information product Wake Up Productive by Eben Pagan.

I attempt to work on 2 of the 4 dimensions of life:

• Physical
• Emotional
• Intellectual
• Spiritual

Water to hydrate, coffee for focus and to burn fat, reading to improve intellectual capacity and creativity, running to reduce fat and improve fitness.

The simplest and greatest action you can add to your morning ritual (if you are not doing so already) is to drink 500ml of water immediately after you wake. The majority of you IS water, you lose water through sweat and breath overnight, this needs to be replenished.

The reading and black coffee soon became my favorite part of the day as it had a cleansing affect on my mind and provided a healthy filter for the rest of my thoughts during the day. You can read things that are going to enrich your life, for example, you can read about margin trading here or you can look into self-development books.

I always have my greatest ideas when in the shower or doing exercise. I had some of the best ideas for my various online businesses whilst running each morning after reading the nonfiction book.

Morning Routine v1.1

• Drink 500ml water
• 10-minute meditation
• 30 minutes reading non-fiction book
• Start day

Changes: Lost the coffee, lost the running, added meditation.

Due to running too much (7 days a week), I had to pause the running to allow a small niggle to heal, I stopped drinking coffee in the morning to try and reduce my three daily cups to one and after a recommendation from a friend… I added meditation (a Spiritual dimension).

Now I believe that the benefits of meditation are similar to that of travel: intangible. You don’t finish a 10-minute meditation session to a $100 boost in your bank account or an extra .5 of an inch on your bicep.

Though intangible, they are definitely not insignificant.

There is something about the ability to self generate positive emotions that immunizes you from many of the quick fix products and messages that we get bombarded with each day.

I highly recommend it, as do others. I am guided by Headspace.

Morning Routine v2.0

• Drink 500ml water
• 10 minutes stretching and body weight exercises
• 10 minute meditation
• Green smoothie
• Write down goals and visualize
• Start day

Changes: Added 10 minutes of stretching/body weight exercises, a green smoothie and writing down goals.

Missing that awesome chemical known as Endorphin, I re-introduced some bodyweight exercises (press ups, squats etc.) to the routine and definitely saw an increase in productivity for the first couple of hours of work in the morning.

The green smoothie was a monumental addition.

80% of the people I have shared part of my smoothie with say it takes like the garden, grass or mud… and I agree.

The taste cannot rival that of the sugar injected fake food you can buy from the supermarket. But as we have already established, we are looking for long-term success at the expense of short term “discomfort”.

Recipe:

• Handful of kale
• Handful of broccoli stalks
• Handful of almonds
• 1 apple
• 300ml water

And finally, after reading Think And Grow Rich for the third time, I finally admitted that it is probably of use to be aware of and visualize what you want each day. With the idea being that you will open your subconscious mind up to opportunities that will help you achieve said goals.

Morning Routine v2.1

• Drink 500ml water
• 10 minutes stretching and body weight exercises
• 20 minute run
• Shower
• 10 minute meditation
• Green smoothie (handful of kale, handful of broccoli stalks, 1 apple, handful of almonds and water)
• Write down goals and visualize
• 10 minutes reading non-fiction book
• Start day

Changes: Addition of run and shower

With my health back up and running I have re-integrated the run into the ritual (if you think it may be too much check out this theory by Casey Neistat) and it seems to be working fantastically for me.

You will noted that I work in each of the 4 dimensions of life:

• Physical (Stretching, body weight exercises, running and green smoothie)
• Emotional (Writing and visualising goals)
• Intellectual (Reading)
• Spiritual (Meditation)

Check in on Your Finances Regularly

Any strategy that helps you to achieve happiness and success in life needs to factor in the realities of money and security. That’s why each day you should check in with your finances and stay on top of your financial challenges and work towards any goals you have in your financial life. Maybe you could do a little trading each morning if you’re active on the stock market; metatrader 5 via Pepperstone UK makes that easy. Whatever it is, don’t make the mistake of ignoring your finances.

Conclusion

Introducing a morning ritual into my life has significantly increased both my happiness and productivity. And though each day these are just small actions, over the 5 months, I have seen drastic increases in enjoyment derived from working in my business, relationships to people close to me and my relationship with my body.

I’m going to be blunt: we will NEVER have the perfect morning ritual.

In fact, your morning ritual is a little like yourself, a work in progress.

Therefore, why not get started with one small positive habit tomorrow morning?

In fact, I am so keen on you doing this that I have made a little list of possibilities:

• Drink 500ml water
• Write down your goals
• Perform 5 minutes of body weight exercises
• 5 minutes of mindfulness meditation
• Read 10 minutes of an educational or inspiring book
• Make a low sugar, fresh breakfast

And if you are still not convinced, don’t listen to me, listen to these three vastly more successful people…

Darren Hardy, author of The Compound Effect:

Jeff Olson, author of The Slight Edge:

And perhaps most bluntly:

But I haven’t finished with you yet…

Oh no, I need a favor.

I need you to think of that one person in your life that could really do with making small incremental changes in their morning ritual to release MASSIVE results over time.

Got it?

Ok, now look to your right, you should see some lovely floating social icons, click on the necessary network and send this post over.

Who knows what this small action could lead to…

And finally, I LOVE reading other people’s morning rituals (purely because I’m nosey ;)), so it would be awesome if you could list yours down in the comments below…

So we have come the full circle:

What did you do this morning?

Tom is the Founder of Fame, a podcast agency that produces the most profitable B2B podcasts in the world. You can also follow him on LinkedIn here as he shares everything he learns as he grows Fame