5 Ways to Supercharge Your Morning Habits, by Joel Brown

5 Ways to Supercharge Your Morning Habits

There are a million and one articles out there about the top habits and the best morning rituals to follow. And that’s awesome, because habits are great. I believe habits are one of the cornerstone key elements for achieving success.
But once you have your habits down and you’ve decided to commit to them, you’ll discover that it’s not as easy as it sounds to just slot a long list of new habits into your new morning routine.
So I’ve decided to share with you some nice and easy techniques that I shared with My Morning Motivation Call – Elite Members so you to can implement them along side your new morning habits for better success.

1 - Know The True Value of Each Habit

A great way to work out if you’re wasting way too much time on menial day to day task’s is to sit back and ask yourself:

“If I was running a billion dollar company. Would I be doing …. (fill in the blank) or, If my life will be ending in the next few months, would this task of…… be important to me”

And if the answer is “No”, then find someone you can delegate the task to, or cut back on that specific task. You should always be thinking… What is the value in doing this task?
A great way to get clear on the value of your habits is to write down a list of the habits you practice daily, good and bad. And, remember, you want to get familiar with them all.
I call this “The Habit Value Exercise”
Then next to each habit write the benefit of sticking to it. If it’s a negative habit, you will know straight away whether it serves you or not.
After you have written out each habit, write a number next to each habit in the order of importance.
1 being the most important of course.
This will highlight for you, what the most important habits are you should be sticking to each day so you can live a more fulfilling and successful life.

2 - Take Advantage of Your Will Power

Your will power is at it’s strongest first thing in the morning and it’s just like a muscle, it fatigues when it’s over exerted. So the first thing you want to do is tackle your biggest and heftiest tasks as soon as you get into the day.
Plus, if you knock out your biggest task first thing in the morning, you’ll breeze through your list of to-do’s with style and grace!

 

3 - Practice Gratitudes to Strengthen Your Habits

Practice being grateful for the positive habits you have implemented. Gratitudes serve as great reminders of what you have accomplished. So when you focus on appreciating the positive habits you’ve been able commit to this will reinforce them and make them easier for you to stick to.
Focus is another key to success. Gratitudes are a great way to stay focused on the positive.
When you say your gratitudes ie.. “I am grateful for the fact that I can stick to pushups/skipping/running every morning”, then make sure you justify why.
For example; “Because, this will keep my body in top form, the exercise will improve my brain performance and I will feel a lot happier from the endorphins released by doing this.”
This is a powerful technique to use while practicing any gratitude in your life because it encourages you to dig deeper to really feel why you’re doing it and it links you to a positive thought about that habit.
And pleasure is a great motivator!

4 - Know That Energy is The Most Important Commodity

Here’s a question for you: For you to achieve more and be more in life, what would you need more of?
Time or Energy?
Hold that thought…..
Now Let’s say the average age expectancy is around 79 years old. So If you spent most of your life sitting around on a couch but you lived for 100 years, would you be able to achieve more in life than someone who lived for only 79 years?
If that person who lived to 79 years old was someone who had an abundance of energy, who maximised their days by waking up at a reasonable time and made the effort on a daily basis to fulfil their life; physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally who would you say truly lived to the fullest?
As you can see, from this example, Energy shows up as the top priority. Not time. Time is only good if you know what to do with it.
So if the key to living with higher impacting habits is to stick to them on a consistent basis wouldn’t it make sense to focus your day, and your habits around maximising your energy?

Here are some Energy Increasing actions you can add into your morning routine to work alongside your habits:

Take a 10 minute walk around the block – Studies show that a brisk 10 minute walk can bring a long lasting energy boost for up to 2 hours. Exercise also fires up the (prefrontal cortex) a.k.a “the executive part of your brain” for better focus, analysing and decision making. If walkings not your thing, pump iron, run, skip, swim or spin. Whatever gets your heart rate up and your body moving.

Stay away from Sugars and Heavy foods – Sugar may give you a temporary buzz but the crash is not worth it. If you’re looking for a long lasting energy, keep your diet light and healthy.
Hydrate – When you hydrate your body is no longer overheated, your body can function fluently, revitalising your muscles, digestion and brain function for you to knock out your daily habits.

Have a Cold Shower – Cold showers, or James Bond Showers as they call them have also proven to increase Alertness, Immunity, Circulation, Weight Loss, Stress Relief and Muscle Recovery. Everything that works hand in hand with daily energy.
I made it a habit to have a cold shower for 31 days in March. It’s been 49 days now and It feels like something is wrong if I don’t have the shower chilled. So yes! It get’s easier. You adjust and it’s well worth the benefits.
Meditate – Your Brain uses around 20% of your bodies energy to operate throughout the day so why not recharge it with a meditation or two.
Meditation is different to sleep, Deepak Chopra recently told me during my podcast interview with him that meditation is nearly 2 times more powerful than sleep. How amazing is that?

Cut back on distractions – Some e-mails, Facebook messages, Twitter replies and other notifications can stress you out or leave a lot more unnecessary things on your plate. So switch off or disable any distractions until the end of the day so you can be more effective with your more important tasks when your energy and will power is high and when it counts.

5 - Get the gloves ready for your “Tomorrow PUNCH LIST!”

That’s right! The most successful achievers stick to their lists and make it a daily habit to craft it the night before.
You should write out a list of things you need to do tomorrow, before you get there. A lot of the super successful I have interviewed over the last few years shared with me that they list the actions they need to take the following day so they can get a good nights rest, knowing they will have direction and structure to work with when they wake up the next day.
This is a great way to put your mind at rest so you can be present at dinner and with your family and friends outside of work hours.
More at: http://addicted2success.com/motivation/5-ways-to-supercharge-your-morning-habits/