Morning Routine 2021 | Healthy & Productive Habits // Do you want to know what the world’s most successful people have in common? They all have a morning routine. A morning routine consisting of personal growth, self development and productive habits. If you want to be healthy and happy then you should follow the success habits of the world’s top performers. In this video, peak performance expert and coach, Eric Partaker, shares a morning routine of activities you should be doing everyday.
KEY POINTS
I for Identity – Behaviour Follows Identity. Separate your life into three domains, health, wealth and relationships. At the start of every day decide who you are at your best in each of these three domains. What does that person look like and how do they act?
R for Reading – Schedule around 20 minutes per day where you are focused on your growth and development. Do some reading, listen to an audiobook. Open yourself up to learning new things.
E for Exercise – Spike your energy at the beginning of your day. Do at least 20 minutes of moderate exercise. Your body is designed to move. You are designed to be active. Exercise will boost your mood and lead to a happier day.
V for Visualization – Picture your identities on the health, wealth and relationships front. How would those versions of you show up throughout the day? How decisive, inspiring and reliable will you be?
A for Affirmations – Throughout the day remind yourself of your affirmations. They are positive statements, a selection of phases, sentences, or words which when you say them to yourself will increase confidence and help you complete your day as your best self.
M for Meditation – For 5 minutes a day, put your phone away and focus on just counting to 10 and back down again .Create clarity and peacefulness in your mind to enable you to navigate your way through the day as your best self.
TRANSCRIPT
Eric Partaker: Today, I’m going to share with you one of my most powerful morning routines, because the way you start your day has an incredible effect on the entire rest of that day. Winning at business and life is about stringing together as many winning days as possible. Hi. My name is Eric Partaker. I’ve been recognized as one of the top entrepreneurs in the country, and I’m also the author of two best-selling books, including The 3 Alarms. So I like to think of the morning as the time where I’m going to rev the engine of my day, where I’m going to rev the AM. We have our AM and our PM, in a morning and evening.
The morning is when I rev the AM. I rev the engine of my day. That literally is the acronym of the routine. I, letter I, rev, R-E-V, AM, A-M. I REV-AM. I stands for Identity, behavior follows identity. Not long ago I got a Captain America shield for one of my sons, and the shield arrived and I gave it to him. I didn’t have to teach him how to be like Captain America or be like the superhero. Once he got the shield, he just immediately became the character, and he started to run around and jump all over the place. That’s because as children, we get that identity drives behavior. That behavior follows identity.
This is incredibly powerful because we can harness this power as adult each and every day. The way that I recommend doing this is by separating your life into three domains, the health, your wealth, and your relationship. At the start of your day, coming up with or tapping into, what’s you at your best on each of those fronts? What’s the super hero version of you? What does that version look like? Give that version a name, on the health front, on the wealth front, on the relationship front. For example, for me, on the health front, I like to think of myself as a world fitness champion, even though I’m nothing close to being a world fitness champion and I never will be. That’s the mentality that I like to set goals from for the day.
So with that identity in mind, I asked myself, what’s the one thing I can do today that will evidence that I’m being that version of me on the health front? I might pick a particular set of exercises that I’m going to do, or think about a particular intensity level that I’ll do with those exercises. Or if it’s a rest day, I might think about, okay, I’m going to go and do a bit of sauna, or a little bit of relaxation, or maybe an extended meditation. But I’m choosing these number one things to do in the context of my day from the vantage point of me at my best, identity wise. I also do it on the wealth front or the work front, and I think in the context of today, what’s one thing that I can do, which by doing it would allow me to step into or prove that I was being me at my best on the work front?
My identity that I use there is world’s best CEO. Am I the world’s best CEO? No. But I like to think from that point of view, when it comes to setting my goals for the day. So if I was operating from that perspective, how would that version of me go about the day, and I pick one thing. Then, last but not least on the home front, when the day is going to be coming to an end and I’m getting back home, what’s my identity there? I like to think of myself as the world’s best husband and father. Of course, there is no award for this and I probably wouldn’t win it if there was one. But still that’s the intentionality that I like to bring in because it helps me think about, well, if I had to evidence that. For example, if I had to prove that in the context of today, what’s the one thing I could do such that by doing it would prove that I was being that person?
So that there only takes a handful of minutes for me to think about each of those three identities, and pick simply one thing that I can do in the context of that day, that would evidence that I’m stepping into being the champion version of me in each of those domains that matter most. So you can think of it as the superhero version of me in each of these areas that most matter to me. Now, that’s the I part. So again, just a few minutes there. The R is for Reading. So for me, I like to read, it constantly allows me to continue learning new things, which I find exciting. I tend to read non-fiction, but you could perhaps read fiction if you like that. Maybe you don’t like reading, maybe you like audio books, but I use the R for Reading, simply as that’s the block in my routine where I’m focused on my growth and development, I’m learning something new.
I do about 20 minutes there out of my favorite book or whatever I’m reading at the moment. The E is for Exercise. I like to spike my energy at the start of the day by getting enough exercise, which will also positively boost my mood for the rest of the day thereafter. I do 20 minutes, at least 20 minutes of moderate exercise. These days I’ve actually changed that up, I mean, when I originally created this routine, it was about 20 minutes of moderate exercise. These days I’m actually doing about 45 minutes. I do a mixture of strength training and endurance training, or cardiovascular training throughout the week to keep myself fit and healthy. I do that Monday through Friday, and I allow myself to kind of just relax Saturday and Sunday.
Our bodies were designed to move, right? We’re designed to be active. When an astronaut, for example, goes into space, one of the biggest things that they need to worry about and help the astronaut comeback is something called muscular atrophy. Which is simply the fact that in the absence of any gravity, which creates resistance, right? All right. For example, when you get up off of a chair, you don’t just float off, right? You actually have to use your muscles to push off. Why? Because the gravity is pulling you down to earth. It’s keeping us attached to the planet. Well, when you go into space, you don’t have any of that gravity. You don’t have any of that resistance. So the muscles of the astronauts actually start to atrophy, they actually start to degrade. So they have to constantly keep them active so that they don’t come back to earth completely frail and unable to move.
So exercise, our bodies are designed to experience resistance. They literally are. We’ve evolved to constantly experience stress in some form or another physically throughout the day, and that keeps us strong. In the absence of that, you will weaken quickly. So E for Exercise, some moderate exercise at the beginning of the day, or a little bit more, whatever you prefer, but at least 20 minutes of some kind of moderate exertion activity. The V for me is Visualization. So it stands for… It simply means that I picture those identities mentioned earlier, going through the course of the day and I picture, how would those versions of me show up throughout the day? How much excellence will they act with? How decisive, inspiring, reliable will they be? How strong and confident will those versions of me be?
I just visualize me going through the day with that excellence, how will I go into that meeting? How will I handle this call? Having that intentionality and thinking through my day in that way is just so incredibly empowering. It just makes you feel like you’re totally in control and that you really are the master of your own destiny on a day-to-day basis. Last but not least, we have the AM part of the acronym. So the A stands for Affirmations. What are affirmations? They’re essentially just positive statements, a selection of phrases, sentences, or words, which when you say to yourself, foster yourself belief, foster your confidence, foster your courage and will. To stand up and express yourself, and walk through your day as you would, as the most courageous version of you would, as the best version of you would.
Whatever you choose there is really up to you. I came up with some affirmation statements years ago that I’ve been using ever since. My statements simply I read to myself, I don’t need to read it anymore to myself. I simply say, “I never give up. I keep going. I win. I’m a warrior and I’m a champion.” So these simple statements that I use with myself affirm me at my best. They mean something to me. They help me keep going even when I don’t feel like it, even when the times are tough. Knowing that things will always get better on the other side, that whatever it is in any given moment, this too shall pass.
Last but not least, we get to the M, Meditation. So we started with identity, and then, so I REV-AM, right? Identity, Reading, Exercise, Visualization, Affirmations, and then Meditation. If you haven’t tried meditating yet, if you think that it’s this thing where, oh my gosh, I’m going to have to go to India or China, and spend all this time in a monastery and learn. You don’t need to do any of that. I’ve never done that. There’s so many simple ways that you can learn to meditate, but the net is full of… There’s apps that you can be download in to your phone that can help you meditate. There’s videos on YouTube that you can find to help you meditate. There’s articles that you can read to learn how to meditate. It is not as hard as you think, and the benefits are astounding.
Just a handful of minutes a day, literally just five minutes a day. You can literally, 60 seconds, times five, it’s 300 seconds. In a period of 300 seconds with your eyes closed, and just focusing on simply counting, count up to 10 and then back to one again, and then up to 10. Just doing that over and over, one, two, three, and cycling through, while you have your phone, perhaps on a timer to tell you when the five minutes have passed. If you just do something as simple as that, which is one simple form of what’s called a breathing meditation, where you’re focused on your breath, and then you’re just counting to 10 and then back. Just doing something like that, you’d be amazed.
It’s like all these clouds, sort of develop, right, over the night in our brain. It’s almost like a stormy sky. When you do that, it’s like a big gust of wind has come through your brain and all the clouds get blown away, and it’s a bright blue sky with a shining sun. It just makes your day feel more warm and vibrant, and it all starts here in the mind. When you have that kind of clarity and that peacefulness within you. You find that you’re able to just navigate your way through all the unexpected things that might happen in the day, and much stronger, more fulfilled, more confident state.
So in summary, if you haven’t yet installed a morning routine, highly recommend that you go to bed one hour earlier. Create an extra hour in your day, get control of your day. How you start your day really affects how the rest of the day flows, and if you can set that day right, every single day. You’ll be amazed what it does for your work, for your life, for your health. I REV-AM, Identity Reading, Exercise, Visualization, Affirmations, Meditation. I’d love to hear from you. So don’t forget to leave a comment and a rating as well. If you’d like to get a copy of my new book, The 3 Alarms, please head over to my website at ericpartaker.com. That’s E-R-I-C, ericpartaker.com, where you could pick up a free digital copy of my new best-selling book, The 3 Alarms.
