One of the habits that can be observed with most of the people who are successful is perhaps rising early in the morning. While many people use mornings to sleep more or to compensate for the lost night’s sleep, the successful individuals wake up early enough to ensure that they are able to practice certain rituals that create a good environment of productivity during the day.
In this article, we’ll explore the morning rituals of some of the most successful business leaders, athletes, and celebrities to uncover tips and tricks you can incorporate into your own morning routine:In this article, we’ll explore the morning rituals of some of the most successful business leaders, athletes, and celebrities to uncover tips and tricks you can incorporate into your own morning routine:
The 5AM Club
It is said that some of the most successful individuals have a way of waking up at 4 or 5 in the morning. This group of people has been termed as the “5AM Club” and it consists of top executives like the Apple CEO Tim Cook, the media personality Oprah Winfrey, and the former CEO of Pepsi Indra Nooyi among others.
Cook, Winfrey, and Nooyi are all early birds, and it means to wake up before the sun rise and have time for exercise, planning, and getting centered before the work day starts. By morning most people are already getting ready to go to work, The 5AM Club have already spent an hour or more to get themselves ready.
Admittedly, it is not possible, or even desirable, for everyone to wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning; the point is to have some time for you. Employ morning time for personal care in the form of exercising, praying or writing, whatever helps in starting the day well. This means that the earlier you wake up, the more time you free yourself to be personal before reactive work comes in.
The 20/20/20 Ritual
Called 20/20/20 after perfect vision in vision tests, this practice is an early morning regimen that was brought to light by Kevin O’Leary. Upon waking up, O’Leary drinks 20 oz of water, walk on the treadmill for twenty minutes, and to feed his brain he reads another twenty pages of education information.
It also provides O’Leary enough water for his bodily needs, increases his heart rate through cardio and engages his mind by acquiring new knowledge. It only takes an hour to complete the whole process but it accrues into more benefits. Much of this success O’Leary has attributed to the 20/20/20 ritual that he adopted during his working years.
You can also adopt this routine by taking the right dose of activity that you are comfortable with. Consume 2-3 glasses of water, do light exercise for 10-30 mins, or read, write, or listen to an educational podcast. Create your own jumpstarts of 20/20/20!
And that is where the so-called “Iron Hour” of endurance athletes comes from.
The mornings are particularly important to endurance athletes as a number of training sessions take place in the morning. Coaches of Ironman triathletes and marathon runner create full training schedules around morning workouts. The general progression is the completion of the hardest session on the day at the time when the energy is said to be highest.
The ‘Iron Hour’ or ‘Peak Hour’ is the period of time 45-60 minutes past waking time, where cortisol and testosterone reaches at its highest, providing you more power and vigor. This one is only known by elite athletes as Iron Hour is the name given to the block of time designated for killer training sessions because the body is most tolerant of this type of stress at the time.
It is also very important to emphasize that the Iron Hour can be performed without any necessity to follow the peak endurance objectives. Just get out of bed and get moving when it is most important in the morning in that 45-60 minute slot. Take a 3-5 mile jog, Do HIIT or extend through Sun Salutations. To be more precise, it’s enough to do something that’s not dangerous but increases your heart rate. Iron Hour makes you healthier, mentally tougher and helps to get ready during the day to train and get through all the troubles.
The Miracle Morning
The ‘Miracle Morning’ with Hal Elrod is a motivational speaker who has developed a specific routine that has gained popularity online especially among the ‘gurus’. The Miracle Morning combines six practices into one hour in order to make it easier to start off with a bang.
After waking up, devote 10 minutes to each practice in the MEGA order: The personal plan for healthy habits includes the following: Meditation, Exercise, Gratitude, Affirmations, and Reading. Altogether, MEGA is a whole set of tools for personal development to start every day with purpose and goal-setting.
Prayer helps to alleviate stress, training produces endorphins, being thankful changes perspective, stating affirmations build up confidence, and reading bio-books instills knowledge. Through investing time in MEGA every morning, you create a positive mindset and position yourself to achieve goals that can be considered Mega.
Bulletproof Coffee
One of the so-called biohackers, Dave Asprey from the Bulletproof Coffee company, has long been advocating for drinking a cup of coffee in the morning to improve the function of the brain and the gut, as well as provide long-lasting energy. For Bulletproof Coffee, it is advised to use low mold coffee beans, grass-fed butter for fats, and Brain Octane Oil which is pure C8 MCT oil.
When BPC comes into your system, the fats contained in grass-fed butter elevate the clarity of your brain while MCT oil is converted to energy cells. The outcomes are a better mouthfeel, improved flavor, and the ability to boost cognition, obliterate hunger for hours, and burn away brain fog.
It is as easy as making a normal cup of coffee, add 1-2 tbsp of grass-fed butter and 1-2 tbsp of MCT oil to the brewed coffee. Taking it up a notch, switch also breakfast with BPC to jump start ketosis even more so. However, you have to be very cautious with this kind of fat coffee as it may give you stomach upset if your stomach is not set for it.
Arriving at a new analysis, it is more effective to have a Morning Workout instead of a Coffee Meeting.
Have you ever heard of Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism? He tells that leaders wear masks in the form of hurried morning briefing and sliced-up time tables. Thus, instead of a random, accidental brilliant morning, the successful essentialists such as McKeown choose deliberate ones.
Instead of using the contacts to network, which he does with everyone around him, McKeown prefers exercising every morning to safeguard the morning hours. He described it as, “I normally do a stand up meeting with myself. .. take a walk outside or to go for a workout”. He understands that while extending the morning for his own welfare may not be beneficial for his profession at the initial stages, it will help improve his brain and work in the subsequent unavoidable meetings.
Spend more care in what you do in the morning. Schedule personal downtime to allow time for thinking, moving, and just taking care of yourself. Do activities that set the mood before reactive work takes over your mood and is the only thing you focus on. If something is scheduled that will notNot years ago he did not safeguard this time and work and health declined accordingly. No more.
Called The Morning Magic of Creatives
Ideality is the key success factor of the modern world. It is high time that innovative entrepreneurs, singers, artists and other creative minds start charging their creativity daily. The idea is to lubricate the creative process, and so, often, people design their morning rituals deliberately to create magic.
For instance, conductor and composer Benjamin Zander wakes up each morning and tells himself he is in love; filmmaker and screenwriter Peter Jackson writes in his journal in the first person and tense throughout the day; and pop singer, songwriter, and rapper will. i. am listens to some music in order to get energized.
Develop your own morning routine of inspiration before picking up the phone and going through the notifications. It is important to quieten mental noise through practices such as freewriting to eliminate inner obstacles that hinder the creative process. If you are an artist or a poet, live your life within your artistic means and create art every day.
In Summary
I can attest that mornings set the tone of days, or vice versa. Savor your precious morning hours for more dedicated activities before reactive work grabs the wheel. Ensure that you do not have any distressing factors lurking in the background affecting your energy. Spend time for prayers, exercising, learning, eating good foods, and doing what you are living for. Plan your mornings and exercise control over the unfolding events and choose the direction of the day. Choose one new morning habit this week, and add another new habit each week to encourage gradual growth. Tap into the optimal self-empowering attributes of the most successful individuals to increase the volume of your days consistently.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief look into the morning processes of some successful individuals as well as some pointers on how to incorporate morning rituals into your life. Wake up with the best feeling!