“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the heck she is.” — Ellen DeGeneres
Bzzzzzzt. There it goes again. The only new tech gadget I bought in the past 3 years. A fitness tracker. What my Garmin Vívosmart HR tries to tell me with its soft, yet definite vibration is that it’s time to get off my butt and move. Read More
“The days are long, but the years are short.” — Gretchen Rubin
It’s that time of the year again. Tax day’s got you throwing your hands up in frustration, your New Year’s resolutions have long vaporized into thin air and you feel like your hold on 2017 is getting weaker and weaker.
I’m here to tell you: You still have time. Read More
3104.
That’s the number on my locker. Wanna see it? Sure, here it is:
6 out of 7 days of the week I go to the library. None of the lockers belong to anyone by the way.
Anyone can choose whichever locker they want on any given day of the week. You come, you pick one, you go, you leave it open.
Then how come on all 6 days I get to use that same locker, again and again and again?
Why can I walk around and tell everyone with 100% confidence that that’s my locker, number 3104, Nik’s locker?
Here’s why (and why you should care): because it’s on the bottom.
I looked at his journal entry and it hit me like a brick to the head. Finally! The missing piece in the “how to break bad habits puzzle”.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Back up a bit with me, will you?
“You can’t do that.”
How often have you heard these 4 soul-crushing words? Read More
Tomorrow 2015 will be over.
I remember January 1st as if it was yesterday.
Interesting theory:
The reason each year seems to fly by faster than the last is that as you age, each year represents a smaller portion of your life.
Here’s a visual example:
If you’re 1 year old, one year is your entire life. If you’re 14 years old, one year is only 7% of your life.
And so on.
That means at 42 years old, a year is only 2% of the time you’re alive, and it gets less with every year!
Seems to be true for me, and while I always ponder about the happenings of the last 12 months during those last few days of the year, I thought I’d take those ponderings public this time.
Since this is a blog about habits, why not make it a habit review?
“Ha, that’ll never work! I know a better way.”
Rick thought he was smarter than the rest. Yet again. But we’ll get to it.
Today I want to introduce you to three old college friends of mine.
Just like you and me, they struggle with bad habits.
Recently, however, all three of them successfully broke a bad habit.
Even though the habits were very similar, each of them used a very different approach to breaking their habit.
Letting go of bad habits is not a straightforward task, and the process looks different for everyone.
You and I can learn a lot from how my three friends did it, so I asked them to share their story with me.
Here’s what they told me.
“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” — Buddha
When you wake up, does your brain go straight into overdrive? Do you feel tempted to snooze? Do you think about all the things you have to do today and start worrying about what could go wrong?
Not long ago, I didn’t want to leave my bed either. I’d browse the web on my phone, read some emails, and procrastinate. Often, this meant I’d already be late by the time I finally did get up. I would rush into the shower, get angry about stubbing my toe somewhere, and end up with no time to eat.
When I arrived at work for my internship, I was already feeling behind, so the best I could do was spend the rest of my day trying to “catch up.” That’s not the frame of mind you want to operate in.
Now, however, I know exactly what the first hour of my day looks like. I don’t even have to think about it because it’s a set routine, and that’s wonderful. My internship is over, and so are my chaotic morning — because I made a deliberate change.
My morning routine makes starting the day easy, and it sets me up for success. There’s no perfect day, but if you’re prepared to have a good day — every day — that’s a great place to start. How you spend the first hour of your day determines how you spend the rest of it.
Before you can add new, good habits, however, you must let go of the bad ones. Here are seven toxic habits you can drop. Don’t bother with these, especially not before 9 AM. Doing so will make you feel calm and happy as you start your day.
Hitting the snooze button in the morning feels great at first. You know you still have time and drift back to sleep.
But when your alarm rings again 7, 9 or 15 minutes later you were actually just about to enter a deep sleep phase. That means the snooze button interrupts your sleep at the worst time, making you feel more groggy and tired as you were before.
What’s more, every time you hit the snooze button you tell yourself subconsciously: “I don’t really want to get up. I want to stay in bed. I don’t want to start this day and face what lies ahead.” That’s not a very good mantra.
Even when you have to get up with an alarm, as soon as you wake up, rise and shine! Be excited for the day, get up, have a glass of water, start moving around.
Brush your teeth, read, do something that makes you excited about getting up.
Don’t drag yourself from snooze to snooze, as it will make you drag yourself through the rest of the day as well.
You snooze, you lose!
This is what I call “monkey mind”. I still fall for this from time to time.
Right upon waking up I start thinking. And I think a lot. My brain starts racing down a never-ending train of thoughts.
“Okay, let me check what time it is. 6:07. That’s good. I can start work right at 7:00. What will I start with? Oh yeah, that guest post I want to write for Marc and Angel. I’ll spend 30 minutes on that. Then I’ll do some client work. But what do I eat for breakfast? This cereal I bought yesterday? Or the one I have leftover. Damn, I don’t have any milk!”
That’s what the first 30 seconds of my day can look like. Terrible, right?
So be sure to practice a form of conscious silence in the morning. Lie in bed, close your eyes once more before you get up and just feel everything. The blanket on your skin. Your head resting on the pillow.
You can also do a short meditation by just sitting upright and cross-legged on the floor and focusing on your breath for one minute.
Notice the rhythm of your breathing as you inhale and exhale.
What also helps me is standing under the shower, just letting the water run over my head and only listen to the sounds of the water.
Don’t go from zero to overdrive right upon waking up. Practice a little bit of silence for your mind and you’ll feel much calmer for the entire day.
We all draw a line when it comes to consuming toxic food, drinks and drugs. For some the line is marijuana, for others it’s alcohol, others draw it at coffee, or even soda and fast food.
Wherever you’ve drawn your line before, chances are you need to draw it again. Because what is true for food is also true for thoughts.
You can spend your mornings watching the news and Youtube videos, reading gossip, chatting in WhatsApp groups and reading the obituary section of the newspaper.
Or you can read a book that will help you create a better life, let yourself be inspired by classic poetry or a good novel.
You can eat pancakes with bacon for breakfast. Or you can have oatmeal with an apple and cinnamon.
You can drink lemonade from the store or brew your own coffee fresh from home ground beans.
What comes out of your mouth and brain in terms of speech and thought can only be as good as what you put into it in terms of food and knowledge.
Take a stand. Draw a line and make a choice to only consume what’s good for you in the morning.
Remember that hitting the snooze button is like subconsciously telling yourself you don’t want to wake up? I’m willing to bet you also do this on a much more conscious level.
You worry about what the day will bring. You tell yourself you might not have what it takes to deal with the day’s challenges.
“Will Joe approve my presentation?”
“Can I get all my housekeeping done?”
“I’m not sure I can make that call today.”
Instead of already talking yourself into failure, why not boost your confidence? Create a small set of affirmation that you can tell yourself. It can be as short as one sentence:
“I will do great today.”
“I will give my best to make this day successful.”
“I believe in myself.”
Before you brush your teeth, stand in the mirror, look yourself in the eye and tell yourself something encouraging.
Be your own Dad, your own Mum, your own partner, your own friend and do what all these would do: motivate you by telling you that you can do it.
A tiny adjustment that can change the entire trajectory of your day.
Yes, not all mornings will go smoothly. Sometimes you will have to rush, get stuck in traffic, or hit your elbow on the door.
But don’t start yelling. Every day the world throws many opportunities at you to get angry — and many of them deserve your anger.
The little hiccups in the morning are not one of them. Don’t focus on what goes wrong, focus on what you do great.
The 5 pushups you did. The glass of water you drank. That smoothie you made for yourself. The way you motivated yourself by saying something positive. A chapter in a book you read that made you feel inspired.
Remember that silence in the morning is important to make you feel emotionally calm. So when you hit a bump in your early morning road, take a deep breath, remember all the good things about your morning and move on.
There is a Japanese proverb that goes like this:
“When you are in a hurry go slowly.”
It means that it is especially important to take enough time to do things right when they are urgent.
A classic game played at kids’ birthdays is balancing an egg on a tablespoon while walking from one end of the room to the other.
Who wins that game?
The kid who tries to walk very fast, but eventually drops the egg and has to go back to the start multiple times (or breaks the egg altogether), or the kid who just walks very slowly, but reaches the finish line in one go?
The more you rush the more mistakes will happen. Slow down, do everything once, but do it right.
The best idea is to give yourself plenty of time in the morning. I usually give myself an hour to an hour and a half before I get started on work.
Yes, that means waking up earlier, but the time is spent so well it is absolutely worth it.
You’ll have time to visualize the tasks of your day. For example, just picturing yourself typing when you want to write a novel has been scientifically proven to make it more likely you’ll actually start writing (and enjoy the process!).
A journal is also a great way to spend the extra time and get some structure. I usually write into my one-sentence-journal before I start work.
I just answer one question: “How do you feel right now?”
It helps me make sure I’m ready to go and don’t start when I don’t feel good.
So even when you don’t have much time in the morning. Don’t. Rush.
As famous basketball coach John Wooden said:
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
Imagine a typical morning of the average person:
Waking up in a bed with a comfortable mattress and a warm blanket, artificial light on the nightstand, waiting till the last minute, then jumping into a warm, hot shower.
Afterward a quick pre-processed meal for breakfast while watching a video on a smartphone, before they’re off to the next comfortable, modern amenity: their car. With air conditioning, radio and a seat warmer.
All of these modern conveniences are great, but they have detached us from what’s natural.
Our ancestors woke up outside, on the ground, with the rise of the sun. The first thing they saw in the morning was sunlight. The first thing they heard was the sound of the birds.
There was no rush. They got up, started moving around, stretching.
If it was cold, they would move more, if it was warm a little less. They ate what they had gathered the day before or had to go look for food.
If your day often feels challenging, that might lie in you not challenging yourself at all. We’re not used to being challenged.
We’re not responsible for creating our own food, furniture, gadgets, and hot water. We don’t even have to move if we don’t want to!
Which is why exercise is a great start.
Give up a little of the comfort you indulge yourself in every morning.
When you get up, do some exercise. Do a set of pushups. Try some squats. Do pull-ups on your door. Go outside and run around the block, or at least walk. Get up, get moving, get some blood flowing.
Prepare yourself a meal that takes effort, but is healthy. Just sit and eat in silence, without technology to distract you.
Open a window, let in the fresh air, listen to the birds and the hum of the city as it starts to wake.
Walk to work. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Have a cold shower.
Let go of huddling up inside your comfort zone. Challenge yourself. Just a little bit. Every morning.
It will leave you prepared for what the world throws at you during the rest of the day.
The morning is the greatest time of the day. There are so many opportunities to set yourself up for success.
But a beautiful morning doesn’t happen by accident. You have to work for it. You have to create it.
Try to let go of one of these toxic habits today. Then another one. And another one.
Soon, you’ll have plenty of space to create a magical morning routine.
What’s the difference between these two pictures? Hint: It’s the same guy.
His name is Hal Elrod, and in the picture on the left, he is dead. But the picture of the jumping, happy guy on the right was taken way later. So what’s the story? If I gave Hal 3 words to sum it all up, I know exactly what they would be:
The Miracle Morning.
