An IMPERFECT Morning Routine (works great)

Have you ever heard of that book miracle morning by hal elrod. I listened to that like a couple of years ago on audio book. And I can't remember exactly what it said, but I'm mentioning the book because probably some of what I'm going to share with you is inspired by what I . Read or more accurately listened to in that book.
And I want to give credit where credit is due preemptively because surely none of this is original. I want to introduce you to the concept of the imperfect morning routine.  We all talk about we're not we all, but we all at least hear about a morning routine and the importance of a morning routine.
And when I started hearing about that, I was like, man, that sounds hard. You know, like what if you missed the morning routine and you don't do it. Right. So I decided to embrace this idea of just doing the best he can and accepting imperfection in a morning routine. And if you skip a morning and you skip a morning, whatever.
Just do it again the next morning, or do the morning routine around noon when you remember who cares. Right. In fact, we could just say stuff that we do every day that helps a lot. Maybe that should be the title of the imperfect morning routine, but I'll share mine with you because since doing it My general levels of happiness have gone up.
Stress has gone down. Productivity has gone up quality of life has improved. So here we go. And the interest of keeping it short, number one, try to get up earlier than everybody else in the family. So I can do this stuff. uninterrupted. , I don't  set the alarm for four and then get up and do 2000 burpees or anything like that.
 But generally speaking, I try to be out of bed earlier than the rest of the family, so I can do my stuff and not be interrupted and also not feel like I'm isolating myself from my awake family and ignoring them because I don't want to do that. Yeah. So this thing, number one, make the time. Okay. Make it.
You have to get up. Get up. Come on. You got this. Step number two, boy, I feel dumb saying this is actually, you know how people say, Hey, you have those minutes of gratitude every morning that  works real good. And I think the reason it works is I think it releases dopamine or serotonin or something in your brain.
I don't know. Here's how I do it. I do it through prayer.  You may or may not know, but I'm a, I would consider myself really to be like a hardcore Christian, but not the kind where like I'm all judgy against everybody else. I'm just crazy about God. What can I tell you? Get a lot of peace from it crazy about all three of them, the father, the son, and the Holy spirit and the archangels that, I study orthodoxy.
And so for me, the gratitude thing in the morning comes in the form of what's called an Orthodox prayer rule, which is something you do in Orthodox Christianity. And a big part of the Orthodox prayer rule is Gratitude, thanking God for all of the things that you want to thank God for.
And I got to tell you, man, I don't, you know, I don't care what religion you are or if you don't have one, as long as you're happy, I'm cool. Be happy. Don't hurt each other, knock yourself out, have fun. but for me, that's my thing. It, uh, it works, you know, it works. I feel significantly better every day when I do that.
So the gratitude thing. Sounds like something you'd see on a social media quote card, it actually works. I can tell you, I have split tested doing it versus not doing it feels better. When I do it. And so that usually that whole routine for me is about 20 minutes. You know, it's not 20 minutes of pure reflection on things that I'm grateful for.
There's other parts of the, an Orthodox prayer, if you're interested in it, you can Google it, but the gratitudes things, a big one. So that's how I try to start out.  The second part is to think about. What you want to do for the day. And I try to limit it to just three things.
All right.  I don't  write a gigantic to-do list. I know I'm not going to get all that stuff done. Why do you want to set yourself up for overwhelmed? So I just say, okay, what are the three big things I got to do? And then that's it. And the final thing is what I call P M I, which has positive mental input.
I try not to create any output. For the day until I have fueled my brain with positive mental input, which could come in the form of reading something that is inspiring or uplifting or helpful, or listening to a podcast or watching a video on YouTube. But as long as it's positive and helps you focus on that, which is good and that which you want to achieve.
Natalia. And I both have my wife has her name is Natalia probably would have guessed that we both have discussed this in detail, how different it is when , we consciously decided to just quit talking about things that we don't like and don't want and focused only on things that we do. Like. And do want now not to suggest once to put their head in the sand or anything like that, but just as a general habit,  the difference that it has made in our personal life and our relationship and our overall state of mind.
So, If you compare this approach and by the way, I know it's imperfect, right? Like I'm not attached to doing it perfectly every morning. It doesn't have to be in that order yesterday.  I didn't do it. First thing in the morning slept in, got up at eight, which was awesome. The kids were already up. You know, they were having to get on zoom class and I'm like trying to help them get on zoom.
I didn't do this morning thing until like 10 yesterday, so it doesn't have to be perfect. But man, I tell you, if you just sort of take a little time to do those three things in whatever order you want sure does help. And if you try really hard. To not focus on stuff you don't like and stuff you don't want.
And instead, focus on stuff you do like stuff you do want. I promise you, man, these results are typical. You'll just feel better. I can't guarantee it's going to change your life overnight or that, money will fall from the ceiling or any of that kind of stuff. But I can guarantee you if you do that for a couple of days, you're just going to feel better, man.
And then think about it. I want you to feel better. You do better, you know, if you feel good and you're in a good state of mind, you create more and you create better and you're a better service to others. And so it's a, win-win all around. I hope you enjoyed this imperfect episode on the imperfect morning routine.
Sure. Do appreciate you listening. Hope you have a great day.