How Your Morning Routine Can Ensure You Have A Great Day, Every Single Day

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Listen to your body and take it easy when it’s telling you need a break.
• Set your alarm as early as you can. Use Mel Robins five-second rule and as soon as you get down to zero on your five-second countdown, get out of bed. If you struggle, put your phone in a different part of your room so you have to get up to turn your alarm off.
• Once you’re awake, leave your bedroom as soon as you possibly can. Whether this is heading to the bathroom to splash water on your face or going downstairs for your morning coffee, make sure you’re staying away from your bedroom.
• The next thing you need to do is journal. Write down ANYTHING that comes to your head, whether it’s your goals, what ideas you’re thinking or your to-do list for the day. You could also use it to write down an issue you’re having, writing down as many possible solutions as you can around it.
• If you enjoy journaling, you may find it helps to journal at the end of the day too. It’s a great way to pour out all of your thoughts from the day, as well as set goals for the day ahead.
• There are so many benefits to meditating in the morning. Whether it’s closing your eyes and focussing on your breathing or using a guided meditation, meditation can lower your blood pressure, promote sleep and improve your mindset. Depending on how you’re feeling, you may want to do different routines.
• As you start your morning, think about these three things:

What can you be excited about today?

What might trip me up and cause stress? How can I respond to that?

Who can I surprise today with a thank-you, a gift or a moment of appreciation?

Although it doesn’t have to be much, spending some time reading each morning can be incredibly beneficial.

Try and stay away from social media and emails until you have completed all of your morning routine.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

When it comes to mindset, you need to think about what you’re grateful for and what you have achieved. If you’re thinking about negative things, this is what you will bring to yourself. If you think you’re going to fail, the chances are you will. Being positive and trying to bring more joy into your life can only be a positive thing.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Set Your Alarm Early – 06:09
• Leave Your Bedroom – 09:20
• Spend Time Journaling – 09:53
• Meditation – 14:00
• Finding Your Joy - 17:00
• Using Your Mornings to Exercise 22:20
• Reading - 24:15
• Planning Your Day and Setting Your Intentions – 26:28

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE

• Episode 47 James Wedmore
• Mel Robins Five Second Rule
• Shawn Stevenson Sleep Smarter
• Brooke Castillo Life School Podcast
• Tony Robbins Mediation
• Deepak Meditation
• Headspace App
• Brendon Burchard Meditation
• Hal Elrod Miracle Morning

Transcript below

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. And as always I am your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. How are you doing this week? Okay so straight off the bat, I’m going to tell you that this week’s episode is gonna be a little bit different. First off, I’m not doing an interview and I know that previously I’ve been doing one week me one week interview which I still intend doing but I’ve just come to a point where I had a few episodes that I wanted to do so I thought I’d mix it up a little bit. So hopefully you don’t mind that but today’s gonna be a little bit different. But I don’t want you to tune out or switch off and think, ‘I don’t want to hear about this’ because I really think it’s going to help and I think you’re going to like this episode.

So today we’re going to be focusing on how you make sure you have a great day every day which sounds a little bit cliche and a little bit woo woo. But I promise you it’s not. It’s all about how do you set up your mornings to make sure that you’re productive. And we’re going to touch on mindset and I’m going to talk you through some of the books that I’ve read that have really had an impact on me and how I manage myself and the business and the reason this is so important and the reason I wanted to do this episode today was because and I have mentioned this before when I interviewed James Wedmore which I will put a link to in the show notes. But the fact is, when I started my business I honestly stupidly thought ‘How hard could it be?’ Like what an idiot.

But honestly I sat there thinking ‘I know what to do. I know marketing I’ve worked in marketing 15 years. I am good at what I do. This is gonna be a breeze’, and I didn’t stop and think about actually running the business and I don’t just mean doing the finance bit. Sorting the tax bit out, making sure you get your insurance and all that kind of fairly dull stuff. I mean my mindset what happens on the days where I get up and go ‘I don’t know work today, I want to sit on the sofa and binge watch Netflix and eat popcorn’ or ‘I’ve got something emotional going on at home or with the children or family and my head ivs not in the right space’ so I’m not gonna get too deep on that don’t worry, not too emotional but I just want to address the fact of as an entrepreneur when you work for yourself and especially if you work from home or you don’t work in an office full of people sometimes getting motivated in the morning or getting going or being productive can be a super difficult thing to do. So in today’s episode I’m going to be covering off my morning routine. Now, there’s going to be a huge caveat: I do not do this every single day. I try really hard to do this every day. Some days I succeed beautifully and other days I fail dismally. But the point is, I try and I do have to try at it. This is not natural to me and therefore I am hoping you will be able to listen to this and think, ‘you know what Teresa? I’m going to give it a go because you obviously struggle with this too’.

Also there’s some things that I’m going to suggest go in your morning routine but I outright don’t do and I’ll talk about that and explain why I don’t do it. But I want to go through some of the things that I’ve learned that I’ve actually made a big difference to me in my business so hopefully like I said you’re going to enjoy this episode as much as I enjoy talking about this stuff and I’m going to give you some really nice tips and tricks that you can use in terms of getting yourself ready for your day and making sure it’s as positive and productive. And you finished the end of the day thinking, ‘Awesome’ rather than finishing the end of day which I do sometimes thinking, ‘What on earth have I done today?’ And I feel like I’ve wasted so much time because I’ve just tried to force myself into doing some work when maybe my head wasn’t in it. Now before I dive into the routine there’s a couple of things that I want to just tell you first.

The first thing is I never used to do this. This is not something that I’ve done forever. This is not something I ever thought about. And this is definitely something that I have done since having my own business. Now I’ve joked before that the woo stuff like you know some of the stuff I have things I like now. I never even thought about it didn’t cross my mind. I worked in a corporate world for 10 years and quite honestly if you even mentioned anything about what your morning routine I think they would have laughed you at the office. So for me this is not something that I’ve been doing a long time which is why I find it really interesting and I want to talk about it. The second thing I also want to let you know is I’ve got a lot of these new ideas and tips and tools from books that I’ve read. Again I’ve talked before about the fact that I love books. I love learning. I love podcasts. I listen to a lot of books and therefore I’m going to mention a couple of books during this podcast that I’ve kind of steered my way in terms of the morning routine that I try and have now. But also I’ve decided to put together a free download for you alongside this podcast with the recommendations of some of the books that I absolutely love and my very honest opinion about them because some of them, I adore. But I find really difficult to read or I struggled with or whatever so actually you know if you are into reading if you like reading and you want some good recommendations, then head over to teresaheathwareing.com/61 the number and you’ll be able to download that list of all the good books I read including the ones I’m going to mention on that that you can then take a look at and maybe put onto your reading list, if you like reading or if you like listening to audible. Okay so let’s go. Let’s start with my morning routine.

So the first thing is I try and set the alarm fairly early. Oh I also need to tell you quickly that obviously I have a daughter now my daughter spends one week with me and then one week with her dad. So my morning routine obviously differs depending on whether I have her or not but I do try and follow the same path, just so you know. So I’m not sitting here doing this amazing morning routine without having to run around make breakfast do school run and all that as well. It just makes a difference to the time I wake up normally. So yes the first thing is I do try and set my alarm fairly early. Now I used to be amazing at this. I used to be like a 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. riser. Craziness because honestly if I’m up before 6:00 nowadays that is a miracle in itself to be quite honest. So I do try and get up quite early because the problem is if I don’t, I literally waste away my day and I’m going to get much stricter with this. With all the travel I’ve been doing, I find myself sleeping in and honestly because I’m a very honest person and I just say these things that the other day I was in bed until eleven o’clock on a workday. And that’s not great. That is not productive. It’s not effective. It’s rare. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not doing it every day but I’d been travelling, my jetlag was kicking in and I was exhausted and sometimes I truly believe you have to listen to your body and take it easy when it’s telling you to. But, if I’m not careful I could be super lazy because I love my sleep and I love my bed and I could just stay there.

So the first thing is I set an alarm and I set it for quite early. Now one of the first books that I read was Mel Robins’ Five Second Rule. It’s such a simple concept and yet transforming and it basically says when you have a decision to make like getting out of bed in the morning you give yourself a five second countdown and on zero you do the thing that you are counting down to because her science and thought around this and do read books it’s fun. It’s really really good. But her science of thought around this is that if at any point we pause and allow our brain to make the decision, our brain is going to go ‘Oh I don’t want to go out of bed. Now I’d much rather stay here it’s much nicer and warmer and cozier’ and or I will snooze. And again there is loads of science around if you snooze your alarm then you fall into a different sleep and if you then try and wake up again it’s then a horrible sleep to wake up from. There’s another book I link up to called Shawn Stevenson’s Sleep Smarter. He talks a lot about a lot of science around that which is fascinating.

So anyway the first thing I do is set your alarm if you can get up immediately then great. Another trick you can do is obviously put your phone somewhere else in the room or your alarm clock somewhere else in the room so that you have to physically get up to turn it off. That’s also helpful. But if you do struggle with wanting to hit the snooze button you literally in your head as your lying there go five four three two one and on one you get up out of bed. So that’s the first thing.

Then normally what I do is I will get out of the room because if I stay there, I want to go back to sleep and I’m normally pretty tired by thee. Now one of the things that Mal recommends is going in and splashing some water on your face. I’m not a big fan of that if I’m honest. That doesn’t seem to make a huge amount of difference to me so I tend to just go straight into my routine and I could go downstairs and I probably make myself a coffee straight off because I’d like a coffee that time in the morning. I do try and drink water as well so do try and drink a full glass of cold water to kind of wake yourself up a bit.

But like I said I’m not going to lie to you I sit there with a coffee as well as my water and then the first thing I do is journal. Now if you don’t journal, you might be sat there thinking ‘What on earth are you talking about Teresa? Why would I waste my time getting up at 6:00 in the morning to write in a journal?’ But honestly, I can tell you it’s one of these ways in which I keep my head really clear because I have a real problem of overthinking. Generally in life and about things but also about the business and when my head is full of stuff and full of ideas and full of worries and full of concerns and full of amazing goals, I can’t think straight and I can’t work straight and I’m not very productive. So getting up in the morning and writing down in your journal whatever comes into your head and it doesn’t have to be neat and it doesn’t have to be exact. And I have the worst spelling ever and I promise you I’m sure if you saw my journal, not that anybody doe,s you wouldn’t be able to read it even if you saw it because my handwriting is so appalling. But it’s more the action of writing for one physically writing which is nice I like that. I know it sounds silly but in a world of digital stuff I actually really like to write and secondly just pouring out a load of stuff.

So some of the things I journal about are like I said getting the stuff out of my head that’s in my head of what I’m thinking about ideas and goals and objectives and concerns. The other thing I do which could be slightly woo woo I guess but I actually find it really helps is if I’m struggling with something. If I’m struggling to come to an answer or write something or coming up with an idea of about something is I will literally write the question or the problem on my journal. I will literally write. How do I do this? What name can I choose for this? And then I just try and start writing down whatever comes into my head. And again there is something different about the physical writing that enables you to come up with ideas differently and you know what it might not even come straight away. It might be the following day when your journaling something jumps into your head. But for me I really enjoy the journaling bit.

Also the other thing that I find it useful for and I’m being very honest here is you know when there are times in your life that you have an argument with someone or you fall out with someone and you know you should be being a little bit more sympathetic or thinking it from their point of view. Well actually those are times where journaling for me really comes in handy. I’m glad it doesn’t happen very often but sitting down and writing about how they might feel and what they might think and why that might have happened or how you reacted and was that okay, it actually just gives you another perspective, it just gives you another way to think about it and it’s a calmer way. And therefore often at the end of that journal when I’ve been writing about it I’ve then literally turned around and gone you know what I’m sorry, thinking about it this is what I should have done or should’ve said or how I should’ve reacted. So for me, having that space to write back can really help.

Now there’s another podcast I listen to by Brooke Castillo. Hers is the life school podcast, I put it in the show notes again and she also talks about journaling at the end of the day. So downloading your brain is the way she puts it. So after the end of the day and you’ve had loads of things to think about and you’ve done lots of things, literally do a download on some paper of all the stuff in your head and she says it really helps us sleeping better. Now if I’m totally honest my evenings always go a little bit awry with either, I just want to zone and watch telly or on a drink wine and gin and tonic and then I go to bed and I forget about it but I am going to try and stop doing that journaling in the evening because I do understand what she’s saying and I think I would sleep better if I’m having the opportunity to kind of just pour out anything that’s been in my head that day and think I didn’t achieve that I maybe wanna achieve tomorrow. So journaling for me is definitely a morning routine and that’s normally one thing I’m very good at doing.

Now the next thing I do in the morning which I am very good at doing because I love it is meditation. Ah right. I’m going to be totally honest that it’s basically the fact that I can sit there with my eyes closed and not move for about 15 minutes. That is the best thing about meditation. I have gotten much better at it over time. Again it’s something that has taken time off from been doing it a couple of years now. And not consistently. I’ve probably more consistent in the past 12 months but actually there are loads and loads and loads of health benefits to meditating and it doesn’t have to be what you imagined it to be. You don’t have to be sat cross legged umming and arring. That’s not it at all. In some cases I’ve done stuff like that but a lot of the cases it’s just closing your eyes concentrating on your breathing. And normally I like a guided meditation so I like to hear someone saying something to me. It helps me to keep focused because otherwise my brain goes off in every direction and starts thinking about everything. But like, I said the health benefits are massive. It’s things like lower your blood pressure, your brain activity increases, it promotes sleep and concentration. It really does have so many positive benefits. And like I said it’s something that I have to work harder. I do really enjoy meditating and I tend to do different ones depending on how I’m feeling so there’s a Tony Robbins one that I listen to on YouTube. That’s a really good one. If I want to feel more grateful and positive and get ready for a great day. If I want to relax and do some sleeping ones that I have different ones that I do there. Other people like Deepak if you search Deepak and meditation he has got some great stuff right there. Also there’s an app called Headspace which I’ve done a few off there. They’re quite nice and again quite simple and a good starting point actually. And Brendon Burchard who I’m going to talk about a bit later, he also has his own meditations as well. If you just google Brendon Bouchard meditations into Youtube then you will find some stuff there so there is definitely lots of different meditations that you can do depending on how you feel. But it’s so worth trying. And like I said in all honesty in the craziness of life, I just like the fact that I get to sit and relax for a little bit. And I get to try and quiet my brain because it does work overtime a lot of the time.

Now one of the books that inspired me to meditate and also to look at my morning routine was Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. Great book, great back story actually and has a lot of personal triumphs and challenges which as been you know hard work for him that he’s overcome and he has talked...