Do you have a morning routine that fills you with energy and focus before you leave the house every day?

 If you don’t, you might want to consider it.

 For the last 6 months, I have been waking up at 5am, meditating, journaling, reading and exercising every weekday morning.

I haven’t been perfect at this. I took time away from my routine when I vacationed for the holidays. I had a neck injury that made any sort of exercise quite painful. I went through a stage of very high stress where I couldn’t make myself sit in meditation for more than 2 minutes BUT despite my lack of perfection my routine has slowly but surely made its way into my heart the way that my morning cup of coffee has meaning I look forward to it.

I look forward to waking up before everyone else in my home and taking time for myself. I know the value of sitting in silence and tuning in to my breath and allowing that sense of connection to start my day.

I write in my journal which includes gratitude, planning my day, and affirmations. I do all of this with zero interruptions. If I tried to do it an hour later it would never happen. 

Next, it’s time to workout and lately that means more and more layers. And even though it’s cold and often rainy I head out anyway. Some days, more often lately with my husband’s travel schedule, I have to miss that crazy cold and super tough morning workout and when I do, I’m genuinely disappointed. I can find other things to do of course BUT the weird thing is that I WANT to get that workout in because I have grown addicted to the energy I have afterwards.

On my way to my workout I listen to a book. Even though I’m basically obsessed with news lately, I don’t allow it. Except when I crack, which has happened, but I always regret it so it happens less and less. I’ve listened to 2 full books since the new year started just driving back and forth to my workouts. That’s 20 minutes of high quality information that I might otherwise miss out on or never get to.

When I get home from my workouts, I am on. The kids are up and the hustle starts but I’m not running to catch up. I’m 5 steps ahead because I filled the buckets of energy, focus, and discipline without taking time away from my family or my work.

I used to do this all before I had kids, and then I started it back up when I had just one, but after my second was born, I’d stop and start over and over again because she would somehow know I was up and want to “play” which of course defeated the whole purpose. So if you have that issue, I feel for you. In my case, I milked that one for too long plus I had other good excuses too. I like staying up late and I strongly dislike being cold so in combination it was really east to stay in bed an extra hour.

In order to get myself up and out I had to reframe my routine. Instead of doing it just to do it. I consider myself in training. I am building mental toughness.

Mental toughness in layman’s terms is your capacity to stick with and achieve a goal despite setbacks and in professional sports it’s been further defined as your level of confidence, your belief in the ability to control the outcome of a situation, your ability to accept challenges and face them, and your commitment to taking action. Obviously, when you have big goals and your passion is helping other people achieve their big goals mental toughness is essential. But I wasn’t factoring it in to my daily routine until now. Instead, I faced goals strategically but never specifically trained myself or my clients to get better at achieving them through daily habits. Now that I am I want to shout from the rooftops what an impact these small tweaks to my daily routine have done to increase my confidence, productivity, and overall success.
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Next, month I’ll be launching the A-Game Mastermind which was an invitation only group that I put together with the specific requirement that each person had to commit to the “A-Game” habits I describe above. I wondered if my clients would think I was crazy. Not so, people embraced the A-Game habits and it filled up right away.
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The good news is you don’t have to be part of the mastermind to implement your A-Game habits. You can start today and if you have BIG goals, I highly recommend that you do just that. Expect that it will be hard at first, but every day that you do it is a win, and before you know it winning first thing every day is something you’ll look forward to.