So many of us want to achieve extraordinary levels of success, yet our morning habits are entirely ordinary. If we practice healthy morning routines every single day, it has a compounding effect on our success in the future.
In modern times, so much of our work is done sitting on a computer. The amount of human activity we miss out on is tragic. Taking on healthy morning routines can help us get powerful momentum towards our success.
In this article, we’ll reveal 10 healthy morning routines that successful people use to stay on top of it.
Wake up Early
We all know that time is a valuable asset. Time = Money, but also Time = Life.
If you lose all your money, you can make it all back. Many people have done exactly that. If you lose 1 hour of time, it’s gone forever. That’s why time is a crucial element of setting up a healthy morning routine.
Some of the most successful people in the world wake up between 4 and 530am to really get the most out of their day. At night, most of us are pretty tired from a long day, and working on a side hustle or doing anything to try to better ourselves seems a bit daunting at that point.
Waking up early not only means you’ll have more time, but it also means you’ll have more time to do what you want for yourself. Throughout the day you might be bombarded by demands from the outside world, but at 5 in the morning, most people are dead asleep.
If you’ve tried waking up early before, you know how difficult it is to do consistently. That’s also exactly why it has such a strong impact. You start your day with a hard-earned achievement, and that sets you up to powerfully conquer the day.
To do this practically, try waking up 15 minutes earlier each day at a time, and adjust gradually.
Practice Awareness
If you really want to be successful in life, you can’t do it without awareness. You need to be able to observe yourself, your environment, and those around you.
While there are several ways to practice self-awareness, one of the most popular ways is through meditation. There are various types of meditation, but you don’t need to be an expert to get started.
Simply sitting down and paying attention to your breath alone for ten minutes can do wonders for your awareness. You may notice that your mind begins to chatter about all kinds of things that feel “important.” If you can simply sit through that and acknowledge your thoughts without taking them too seriously, you’re on your way.
Plan & Visualize
Morning is the ideal time to start planning out your day. Imagine life as a big map, and your job is to get directions to your destination. This is, of course, impossible if you don’t have a destination mapped out.
It’s quite simple. If you can “see” something, you’re more likely to achieve it.
While this is simple, don’t beat yourself up if you don’t do it, because it can be very hard to adopt this habit if it’s not already in place.
This isn’t to say that you can just daydream and all of a sudden success will knock on your door. Visualization is just a tool and a healthy morning routine that can be combined with your actual efforts for optimal success.
Avoid Distractions
Science has found a correlation between the frequency of brain waves and the body’s state. In the first 20 minutes that you wake up, your brain runs at about 10.5 waves per second. Anything between 8 and 13 Hz has been referred to as the gateway to the subconscious mind.
This is prime time to remember your goals, set up your day, and even set the mood for how your day will feel.
And what do people do with those first precious minutes?
Many people wake up, turn over, and grab their phone. They check to see if they got likes, comments, followers, emails, texts, etc. Then a catchy visual grabs their attention and they start scrolling. The external world has officially taken the spotlight over your internal world.
Don’t be that person.
That’s a 99% move, and you want to be part of the 1% that are in control of their day.
You see, by immediately checking your phone, you’ve given control over to the outside world. Now, instead of your own goals, swagdrip86 has planted the seeds for your day and he hates your new Instagram post. Now, that’ll be in the back of your mind for the rest of the day since it was one of the first things you saw.
Nurture yourself in the morning and ditch the phone for at least the first 20 minutes of your day so you can get into gear. That way, you have room for your truly healthy morning routines.
Get Some Exercise
This is not about getting fit. Exercise makes you smarter, and not just a little either.
In fact, physical exercise has a ton of effects on brain structure, function, and cognition. [1][2][3][4]
There is no replacement for exercise. There’s no pill, no shortcut, and no hack for how to outsource such a fundamental part of our species survival.
Check out the neurobiological effects of exercise on Wikipedia.
The old quote “Health is wealth” is truer than ever in today’s sedentary world. No healthy morning routine would be complete without exercise.
Read
Early in the morning, your imagination is more active than usual. It has to do with being between the dream world and the physical world. For this reason, it’s also a great time to read.
We mentioned physical exercise, but this is a great way to get some mental exercise. It will stimulate both sides of your brain, both the left (logical) and right (imaginative) sides.
The best thing you could read is some self development material that educates you and gets you feeling positively motivated about your day.
Eat Healthy Foods
It’s always a good idea to eat healthy foods, but especially in the morning.
If you think about it, usually it’s been at least 8 hours since you last ate something. This is an opportunity for your digestive system to start fresh. Why not supply it with some highly nutritious food that can be put to good use throughout your day?
When you feed yourself good foods, your body is much more cooperative and you may even be surprised at how much better you feel. You get all of this just from eating healthier food instead of something easy, convenient, and unhealthy.
Set yourself up for success by starting with what you put into your body.
Take Cold Showers
There is probably nothing more invigorating and revitalizing than a cold shower.
Stay with me! I know it sounds scary, but it doesn’t have to be as bad as you may think.
Advocates of cold showers such as Wim Hof (The Iceman) often recommend starting slow. You can gradually get yourself used to colder and colder water.
But WHY?
Cold showers improve your circulation, improve your immune system, increase metabolism, and detoxify the brain (Wim Hof). Honestly, these are just a few. There are many other benefits reported by people who have seen a variety of positive side effects.
Many of us spend the majority of our days sitting down while working on our laptops, trying to figure out how to get more traffic to our website. Because of this lifestyle, the circulation of blood to our brains is minimal. Increasing the circulation of blood to the brain is a huge boost.
There’s also a psychological and emotional resilience that results from taking cold showers. When one of the first things you’ve done in the morning was to put yourself through such an intense experience, the rest of the day feels like a breeze.
Practice Gratitude
It’s been said that the human brain has evolved to focus on the negative as a means for survival. Negative bias even colors what we judge as true. As a human, you’ve got a bit of a mountain to climb to see life in a positive light.
That’s where gratitude comes in.
This isn’t just some cheesy idea to be more grateful in life. It’s an actual practice that requires effort. In the morning, you can simply ask yourself: what am I grateful for? Chances are, your mind will start to fill in the blanks.
However, there’s also a chance that your mind will go blank.
Consider this, when you have a hard time thinking of something to be grateful for, it simply means that some perspective is in order. Did you get a call saying that a close family member died? If not, that’s something to be grateful for. Somebody else got that call today. Did you sleep under a roof? Do you have a blanket to keep you warm? Do you have one good friend? Does anybody love you?
Don’t underestimate the power of this practice. It gives you back your perspective so you can live with gratitude instead of bitterness and victimization.
Eat that Frog
Oh yes, the most difficult concept, yet the simplest.
Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do in the morning is to eat a frog, you can rest assured that it will pretty much be the worst thing you do all day.
Think of the “frog” as the biggest and most important task of your day.
It’s amazing the kind of effect it can have on your day to know that you’ve already done the most difficult thing.
This concept was also popularized by Brian Tracy in his book “Eat that Frog.”
The last thing you’d want to do is live out your day looking at that frog from the corner of your eye, knowing that eventually, you’ll have to eat it.
Conclusion
The idea is very simple. If you want an extraordinary life, you have to do extraordinary things. If you want to be a massive success, realize that success leaves clues. This article brings together 10 of the absolute best clues and gives you a well-rounded understanding of each concept so you can actualize them with intent. You are in control of your life, even if you are not taking the reins, so you might as well start making your life the way you want it. Start with these healthy morning routines, and you’ll be on your way to more success than you ever imagined.
What’s your most important morning routine? Let us know in the comments below!
