Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
Your morning routine is not about what you think. Welcome to the Upside podcast, where we help you get unstuck in life and business by elevating your thinking and provoking meaningful change from the inside out. I'm your host, Teresa Flood. Thank you for joining me. And before you turn tune out, all of you not morning people, I hope to reframe this conversation for you in a way that feels non judgmental, that feels empowering, and helps you live a huge intentional life. So especially, especially if you're not a morning person, I'd love you to stay tuned in. And I get it. Because somewhere along the way, morning routines have become a competition. Who's going to get up the earliest? What time does your alarm go off? Well, mine goes off at X, y and Z time. We talk about who journals longer, who cold plunges the most, who has the most insane and intense morning routine, and we wear it like a badge of honor. And I think somewhere along the way we have probably missed the point and we haven't brought everybody along with us that aren't morning people. And I am by nature a morning person. I am. I pretty much like crawl and turn into a pumpkin after about 9 or 10 o' clock at night. So I do tend to enjoy the mornings. I love just being up before everybody else. I love the sunrise, all of the things. And yet morning routines are for everybody. And let me tell you what, all of you have a morning routine. Every single human being that wakes up in the morning has some type of routine. You may roll out of bed, you may cuss under your breath, you may, you know, drag yourself to the shower, just throw on wrinkled clothes on the floor. I mean, none of you listening to this podcast are doing those things. But you get my point, right? But we all have a morning routine. All of us, especially if you are in business in any kind of way. You have a personal hygiene morning routine. You shower, you do your hair, ladies, you do your makeup. We spend a fair amount of time making sure that we are externally ready for the day. Here's my challenge. How many of us make sure that we are preparing for the day internally to the same degree that we're preparing externally. And that is really how I want to reframe a morning routine. A morning routine is not about how early you get up. It's not about doing a thousand things before anybody else. It's about becoming intentional with your day and with your internal to external success. We talk on this podcast all the time. That true success happens internally to externally. If we want to See something happen in the natural, it happens first in the spiritual. If we want to see something happen externally, if we want to see something happen in public, it happens internally, in private first. A powerful morning routine, or even, let me just say, a simple intentional morning routine can start to create that internal growth and development before we see it happen externally. So, all right, y' all still with me? So point number one that I want you to grab about morning routines, it's not about time management. It's about energy management. It's not really, how can I get up so much earlier so that I can get more done in my day? Because what you're gonna find is if you get up earlier, you're also to make that happen, gonna have to go to bed earlier. So you're not necessarily cramming more hours into your day unless you're just sleeping in extremely late. Those of you listening to this podcast that care about personal growth and business leadership are not sleeping in late. I know this. So it's not about. An intentional morning routine is not about adding hours to your day. It's about managing your energy at a higher level. So when you get up in the morning, what is those first things that you're doing that you're investing in yourself so that you are at your optimal self when you hit your real world life. So what gives you energy? What drains you? You know, one of the things that I noticed for a while, and this is really kind of sad to say, but when my alarm would go off in the morning, my very first thought was, ugh, no, literally, I had just a negative thought of like, please, God, know. And I realized, okay, that's not a great way to start the day. Literally, my first thought was negative. And so I said, okay, I'm gonna intentionally change this. And I'm gonna intentionally, when my alarm goes off, instead of saying, ugh, God, no, I'm gonna change it. And I started saying, jesus, help me. Just Jesus, just a prayer. Jesus, help me. Like, help me get out of bed. Help me have a great day. And I shifted that thought. First thought in the morning. And now I don't actually say, jesus, help me. Or I mean, sometimes I might say, jesus, help me. But now I've shifted that thought to, thank you, Jesus. It's going to be a great day. One small, simple shift in my morning routine. So a morning routine is not about being impressive. It's about being intentional. And the goal is not perfection, right? The goal is, is how do I manage my energy in the morning and manage my emotional endurance Again, we spend all of this time on the physical. But when we spend time developing ourselves spiritually, spend time in prayer, spend time maybe journaling, spend time reading or learning, spend time working out or exercising, sweating a little bit, that manages our stress, all of those things, even in small amounts, invest in our energy to set us up for success for the rest of the day. All right, so the second thing I want to share with you on morning routines is that your morning routine does need to match your season of life. And I want to give some of you who maybe are listening, for instance, with small children or you have maybe a very long commute to the office and you're leaving the house at 6:30 or 7 in the morning and you're going, I don't know how to have a more intentional routine. I'm already getting up at the crack of dawn. Listen, I get all of those things. And so that is why it is incredibly important. Nobody's comparing morning routines to anybody else's. The question is, is are you being intentional with your mornings and are you investing in your internal health and wellbeing? So it's going to look different when you have tiny little kids at home, when you have newborn babies and you're getting up in the middle of the night? Yes, your morning routine is going to look very different than somebody like me who has 14 year olds who maybe I do a braid in the morning, they don't need me in the same way that they did when they were young. So don't compare your morning routine to anybody else's. Just be sure that your morning routine benefits you for the season that you're in. So my story with really getting intentional around my morning routine started when my girls were toddlers and I had taken the job as the assistant team leader at Dallas Preston Road. And I was starting to become more goal oriented, more intentional about my personal growth and development, really going on a true purposeful leadership journey. And, and I knew what is the one thing I need to do that will make everything else easier or unnecessary when it comes to accomplishing my goals? And I knew I had to get up earlier. And so I can't remember. My girls were probably one and a half or two at the time. So they were, they were essentially sleeping through the night, but they would still get up early. I mean, my kids have always been early risers until recently, not early risers anymore, but when they were young they were and I knew I had to beat them up and so to be able to work out. And the first thing that I wanted to accomplish was I wanted to work out and I knew I needed to do that in the morning. And so I didn't go to a gym. I did that at home. I did Jillian Michaels workout videos at home and Bob Harper workout videos and those were my bread and butter. And occasionally Jillian or Jet would get up and they would be sitting on the floor while I finished my, my workout at home. But that was really the first thing that I started in a morning routine. Well, now I have a much longer, more intentional routine. But it didn't start there. It started with kind of survival, to be honest. Like I've got to get back to a great workout routine. I need to do it to manage stress, to feel great about my health and all of that. And so that's where I started and it matched the season of life that I was in. So again, wherever you are at, let me just encourage you to make sure that it makes sense in your life. But just get intentional around it. And consistency will always matter more than complexity. So it doesn't have to be again an hour, two hour routine. It can be short and sweet, but get consistent with whatever it is that you know that you need to do to manage that physical or to manage that emotional and, and energy right throughout the day. And then the next thing I want to encourage you is to start small and build from there. So again, if you currently get up at 7 o' clock and you would say, I don't really do anything intentional besides my hygiene routine in the morning and I want to get more intentional. You don't have to start waking up at five o' clock and doing a two hour thing. Get up 15 minutes earlier and practice gratitude. I would say if you're gonna choose one thing to make a difference, choose gratitude, prayer, gratitude, reflection. Choose your peace for the day. Get just in a quiet place. That would be the one thing I would choose first, to be honest. But just start with 15 minutes earlier and master that. Get consistent with that. Start to see the results of how that plays out in your, in the rest of your day and then say, you know what, I'm going to start even 15 minutes before that. You don't have to go get a gym membership and go work out for an hour. Just say, you know what, I'm going to do 50 sit ups and 50 push ups every single morning. I'm going to do them in my living room and I'm going to start building on that consistently. And then over time you can start increasing the intensity to get where you really want to go. But don't feel like it has to be a two hour thing. Don't feel like it has to be the perfect thing. Again, you are not competing with anybody else. You are on a personal growth journey. It's called personal growth for a reason. The goal is to be better today than you were yesterday and in a week to be better than you were last week and a month to be better than you were last month. And over time you're going to look back and not even recognize the person that you were. But remember, the mornings are important because they're the start. It's the tithe of your day, it's the first fruits and it affects everything else that happened. Is a nighttime routine important to you? Yes, we can do that in another episode. But I would tell you your morning routine sets everything else in place for you to be able to go crush whatever you have on the docket. It is. It is your non reactive time. It is 100% the most control you're going to have over your day and is early in the morning after that. Who knows. We all know how crazy it can get. So encourage you. I know it's summer too. Summers get a little crazy. They get a little bit more unscripted if you will. Late nights are later. So decide what you're going to commit to. Commit to that and go on the journey. And remember, starting your day with what matters most is what matters most. So invest in your growth every single day. It will yield you great returns, especially if you invest in the morning. And as always, thank you for being an upsider. Be sure to subscribe@teresaflood.com Be sure to share this episode with a friend who might need some encouragement to be intentional about their growth and maybe to not feel beat up or competitive around the morning routine, but to just embrace a season of life where you're at. As always, thank you and we'll see you next week.