Who wouldn’t like to eventually become successful in their lifetime?! if you want to be successful you can’t just meander around and expect success to show up at your doorstep knocking, you have to have the goal defined and really, really and I mean really want to be successful. Successful people have goals, they wake up early and have a great morning routine.

Consistency pays off, having a routine and being consistent turns into success. From the book ‘The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy”, Darren talks about the effect of consistently doing a task, he demonstrates how the effect doesn’t show up in a day, not even in a month. It could take up to 3-6 months of doing consistent work and having a great routine before you see results. Unfortunately every New Year people sign up for gym memberships and only after 14 days they give up because they haven’t seen results. People want results too quick and give up way to quick. Be consistent and commit! Put your head down and commit for the long haul. You will be amazed the butterfly effect of creating and implementing a strong daily routine in your life. The early morning path can take you from a road to failure to a road of success and completely change your life.

The hard you work, the Harder It Is To Surrender”

- Vince Lombardi-

What makes up a great routine? What do successful people do?

Waking up Early

Plan the day ahead

Meditation

Drink Water

Workout

Write out your goals

Listening to successful people

Read each day

Wake up early

When you wake up early you can accomplish more things by 9am than most people do all day. I hear this all the time; successful people wake up early, change your habits to train yourself to wake up early. Let's say now you don’t wake up until 10am, then changing your routine to waking up at 6 am would be really tough. Begin making gradual adjustments until those changes become a habit then re-adjust again. Let’s say now you’re waking up at 9am, once this time feels comfortable change and wake up at 8am, rinse and repeat. Hal Elrod has created the Miracle Morning Routine based on what he noticed successful people completed in their morning routine, check out his book “The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod” this book will truly change your life.

Plan out your day before it happens

A successful day starts the night before, on nightly, basis you need to plan the day ahead. If you don’t know where you are and where you’re going then you’re meandering along like a ship without a rudder. Visualize and write out your day. Know when you will be waking up and fill in your schedule of what and when you will be doing items each day.

Meditation/Spiritual

Everyday plan a meeting with yourself, this is where you can connect with yourself, talk to yourself. How are you feeling? What’s running through your head? What’s stressing you out? Take time to address your internal thoughts and calm your mind.

Your mind is a battleground, the mind is out to worry you to death, out to stress you to death ... if you can win it in your head you can win it in your life, a healthy mind equals a healthy life.

Drink Water

You just spent 6-8 hours a night sleeping, dehydrating your body and now it’s time to replenish your body. This doesn’t mean with COFFEE …. reach for some water and not the coffee pot. Hydrate your body with H2O first thing as water helps kicks the metabolism, improves your alertness and flushes your body of toxins. Drinking more water will keep you from overeating; in the big picture drinking water will keep the pounds off and keep you healthy.

Workout - Plan your workout or it won't happen

Why should I workout? Well to name a few benefits, working out helps with the following:

Controls Weight

Weight is controlled by calories in and calories out, by working out the body it naturally burns calories and exercising increases your metabolism. This means you burn more calories throughout the day with a higher metabolism helping to control your body weight from adding on extra calories, which causes the body to increase in weight, which is not healthy.

Combat health conditions and disease

When you exercise you body releases chemicals called endorphins. These endorphins interact with the receptors in your brain that reduce your perception of pain. Endorphins also trigger positive feeling in the body, similar to morphine.

Working out boosts your high-density lipoprotein (HDL) or “good”, cholesterol and decreases unhealthy triglycerides. Basically, the one to two punches to keep the blood flowing smoothly, which knowingly prevents against heart disease.

Improves your mood

Have you ever left the gym feeling worst than when you arrived? I guess if you dropped a weight on your foot but 99% of the time after a workout you feel good all around. Working out releases endorphins and BDNF (Brain-Deprived Neurotropic Factor). The body releases them when the body experiences the stress from working out.

These endorphins tend to minimize the discomfort of exercise, block the feeling of pain and are even associated with a feeling of euphoria.

After the stress of working out ends, these chemicals are still released in the body, which makes you feel happy.

Improves your energy

A body in motivation continues in motion, and this goes for your energy after working out. The idea of a workout can be tough on some days but the benefits of increasing your energy and the feeling of euphoria after the workout outdoes the downside. Successful people wake up early and work out early, this routine increases their energy level which helps to get them through their day with clear focus and the energy to keep them going.

Exercise can be fun

Getting out for exercise can be fun, especially if you're exploring. Running or walking a new route can be very stimulating to the mind as it digests new buildings, new terrain and adapts to put the new location on your mental map. There's a calm, soothing feeling that comes over a person when they get out to explore and be with nature. Some of the finest quality time by yourself with nature. Successful people preach about their finest ideas coming out when they're out for a jog, a hike in a relaxed state with nature. No cell phone buzzing, no people interrupting their train of thought.

By no means is this list exhaustive but this is just to name a few.

Write out your goals

There’s something about putting your goals to paper, automatically they become more legit. I guess there’s the feeling similar to signing a contract, you feel obliged to follow through and get them done since those are your words on paper. Writing things down just make things feel more real.

If you write down your goals every day this drives the goal home, repetition drives the goal home so everyday you know exactly what you’re striving for. Bit by bit the goal gets accomplished if you have it in your conscious mind. Next thing you know your goal is complete! John Lee Dumas from the Entrepreneur On Fire podcast created a book called The Freedom Journal that aims to help people accomplish their goal in 100 days, it's amazing what a person can do when they write it out and put it on paper.

Read/listen to successful people

You are the 5 people who you associate with. This doesn't only mean in real life, successful people are learners, they listen to and read about successful people and incorporate them into their lives. Successful people learn what other successful people have done and where they have failed. Successful people jump on the shoulders of giants to build on history to move forward at a faster speed. There's no need to reinvent the wheel since the wheel has already been designed and mastered.

Read Each Day

Readers are leaders and leaders are readers. Successful people are continually working on improving themselves. Reading each day keeps the mind sharp with the added benefit of learning a new skill/improving helps builds more confidence to help you become a more successful person.

Having a great morning routine can completely change your life, and the sooner you start the sooner you'll see results. I hope you enjoyed the post and check out our site www.muleties.com for other posts around fashion, lifestyle, self-improvement and much more.

Resources

Evernote for keeping track of your goals

Workflowy – For keeping track of all your tasks

The Freedom Journal - set a goal in 100 days and accomplish that goal

The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

Audible - The Audiobook store