My Morning Routine for a Limitless Day

BEFORE YOU SLEEP

• Start your day the night before.
• It helps your episodic memory to review your day, especially if you are not leaving your home for work or aren’t leaving your home often.
• One of the ways to prevent days from blending together is by reviewing your day. Recall what you did when you woke up, what you ate for lunch, or conversations that you had.
• It could be difficult at first, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. Remember: there is no such thing as a good or bad memory. There is a trained memory and an untrained memory.
• Besides reviewing your day, end your day with gratitude by highlighting 1-2 things you are grateful for that day.
• You don’t have to wait for a greater life to be grateful. You can be grateful and you will have a greater life.
• Check out our episode on how to rewire your brain using gratitude for appreciation, peace of mind, productivity, and performance, here.
• Lastly, meditate on a question that would help move your life or your mission forward. You could even meditate on a question that you are looking to solve.
• Using your brainpower to focus on that question will harness answers to your questions in your dreams.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

• When you first wake up, use the 6 step process to write out your dreams. It takes about 2 minutes. Remember: practice makes progress.
• Check out our episode or how to remember dreams, here.
• After that I do a quick prayer — one of the most important being “thank you.” It is important to start your day with gratitude.
• Next, make your bed. This is to stimulate the practice of excellence. How you do anything is how you do everything. It feels great to come back to your well-made bed. It represents coming back to success at the end of the day.
• Your routine may not look exactly like my routine. This is just a model for you to customize in a way that best fits your life. More on my morning routine, here.

ENCOURAGING QUALITY SLEEP 

• Your brain thrives on a clean environment, free from chemicals and toxins. Carpeting and furniture are known to have some sort of off-gassing. These chemicals are shown to disrupt hormones, potentially create respiratory challenges and cognitive issues.
• Avocado Mattresses are great because they are 100% organic and natural. It does not contain potentially harmful chemicals and it is carbon negative.
• You can improve your sleep quality by using a ChiliPAD to help lower your body temperature at night.
• Another great product that measures heart rate variability to track sleep and activity is the Oura Ring.
• Sleep is not necessarily about how long you sleep, but how deep you sleep. Deep sleep helps you to recover your body and REM sleep helps you to recover your mind.
• One of the things I make sure I do not do is read technical information at night. I choose not to get into the business, executive, education, or psychology mode right before bed.
• To capture dreams, I use The Five Minute Journal. It’s a process you can do at night and in the morning.
• Another ritual I am sure to partake in is looking at the sun in the morning. Sunlight can help you maintain circadian rhythms.
• A great alternative device was created by Dr. Daniel Amen which mimics natural sunlight.

NEXT STEPS

• From there I drink a glass of water with lemon and take my probiotics.
• I use my non-dominant hand to brush my teeth to engage the other side of my brain.
• The next thing is exercise. A study done at Appalachian State University says that the best time to exercise for weight management and better sleep is at 7 am. If you exercise in the morning you get 75% deeper sleep. It does not have to be a full exercise. It can be as simple as 3-minutes of exercise.
• I drink more tea than coffee but remember a book and a beverage goes a long way.

TAKE TIME TO MAKE TIME

• I take 2 minutes to journal my dreams, 1-2 minutes to make the bed, and 3 minutes to exercise.
• I take an additional 3 minutes to journal each morning by writing down 3 things I would like to achieve personally and 3 things I would like to achieve professionally.
• My goal is not for all of this to take time but to help you make time in focus, energy, productivity, and more.
• The biggest way to save time is not just by what you are doing, it’s in what you are not doing.
• One thing I do not do is touch my phone in the morning. I understand that some people have to check our phones because our lives or careers depend on it in some way. Take what I am saying and apply it to your life in a way that best suits you.

MAKE IT FUN

• If you have children, accomplishing these goals may seem like a challenge. Anything worth having takes time, effort, and energy, so to make things easier by including your children.
• Teach children to remember their dreams. Before bed, you can have them ask themselves a question that they would like to dream about. You can get them a dream journal to recall their dreams first thing in the morning.
• As they go through their day ask them 2-3 things that they are grateful for.
• Teach them to make their beds first thing, exercise with them, or have them partake in your morning smoothie.
• Involving your children helps them to learn these practices that will benefit them lifelong.
• The idea is to make it fun and playful.
• It’s not as much about time management as it is about priority management.
• Remember this: the most important thing is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing.
• You are the greatest project that you will ever get to work on. Make time and take your time to create magic.

SHARE WITH US

• Take a screenshot of this episode, tag me on social media (@JimKwik), and share your greatest “aha!” moment from this episode with us.
• Share you morning routine online and tag us!
• Find out more about Avocado Mattress, here.
• Find out more about ChiliSleep Technology, here.
• Find out more about the Oura Ring, here.
• Get The Five Minute Journal, here.
• Get Dr. Amen’s light, here.