There is a saying, “the early bird gets the worm”, and this is true. In 2009, there is a study conducted by University of Leipzig and the study showed that morning people were more productive than evening types.
To put it more simply, when you wake up early, you get more time than others to accomplish your work. You get to spend more hours into pursuing your dreams and work on your goals.
However, do not be mistaken for getting up early equals to being productive. You can wake up at 5am but are not accomplishing anything. It is what you do that separates you from the rest.
This is why adopting an effective and productive morning ritual is important.
A morning ritual is basically your morning routine. It is a routine that is planned to kick start your day and has become your daily habit, and hence, it is called your morning ritual.
Imagine a day when you wake up late. Your alarm did not ring for whatever reason and you were late for work. You quickly rushed into the bathroom to brush your teeth; you have to skip breakfast because it was late and you have a meeting to catch. You quickly changed without ironing your shirt that you supposed to do the night before.
While on your way to your office, you stuck in a traffic jam because it was peak hour. You honked; you squeeze and tried to get ahead. Eventually, you reached your office, but you were 45 minutes late and the meeting was over. Your manager requested you to see him in his room. You were hungry and your entire day was ruined.
Do this sound familiar?
Now, imagine another scenario where you have adopted an empowering morning ritual. You get up at 5am automatically even without using your alarm because you have made it your habit. You wake up early, you spend your time exercising, reading, and planning for your day.
And at 630am, you take a shower and you prepare a healthy breakfast for your family. Your wife and children wake up at 7am and join you for breakfast. You feel happy because your family is there for you. You feel great because you have a healthy breakfast and you spend quality time with your family.
And by 8am, you get into your car and go to your office. You are on time, in fact, you have an extra 15 minutes to prepare for your work day when you reach your office. What a great start of a day, right?
And this is why becoming an early riser is important, especially if you want to produce extraordinary results in your life and achieve outstanding success.
Therefore, choose to become an early riser and adopt the right morning ritual to boost your productivity. This is what you are going to learn in this article.
Successful People Who Wake Up Early
Do you know that most successful people, including billionaires like Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc, all choose to wake up early?
Richard Branson, the airline tycoon behind Virgin Group said in his blog that he wakes up at 5am most of the days. He would start his day early and go through his morning ritual to kick start his entire day.
Billionaire Branson would engage in physical activities such as playing tennis, swimming, and surfing, and he would plan his day for what is coming.
On the other hand, Tim Cook, the Apple CEO wakes up at 3.45am every morning including Sunday. He will then check email for about an hour, goes to the gym, and get a cup of Starbucks and goes to work.
Tim Armstrong, the AOL CEO said that he is not a big sleeper and used to wake up at around 5am every day. He will workout, read, and answer emails. And Armstrong has a driver who takes him to his office where during his long commute, he would spend the time to get things done.
Jack Dorsey, the Square CEO and co-founder of Twitter told the New York Magazine that he wakes up at 530am each day. He will meditate and go for a six-mile jog.
Disney CEO, Bob Iger is an early riser too. He revealed to The New York Times that he wakes up at 4.30am each day and he will read the papers, listen to music, exercise, check emails and watch TV.
Howard Schultz, the Starbucks CEO is an early bird who gets up early to workout, which he will go for a bike ride with his wife most of the time, and he gets to the office by 6am.
According to Yahoo Finance, Xerox CEO Ursula Burns gets up as early as 5.15am each day and she spends her morning time for a workout session. Ursula schedules an hour of personal training at 6am twice a week.
Kara Goldin, the founder, and CEO of Hint Water told Business Insider that she wakes up at 5.30am every day to catch up with emails. She will get her favorite latte and goes for a morning hike with her husband and dog before she starts her work at 7.15am.
Why Morning Rituals Are Important
Most successful people choose to wake up early and there must be a reason for it. If you want to be successful, make it your habit to wake up early. Here’s why.
1. Kick Start Your Day
Morning rituals are important because they set the pace and kick start your day. This is common sense, and that means choosing the right rituals to follow is extremely important. If you wake up each morning and the first thing you do is to check updates on Facebook, it may sap your energy and put you on the low-energy pace for the day.
On the other hand, if you choose to wake up early and spend the time to meditate, exercise, and spend quality time with your family, you will find that you enrich your day and you will feel more energetic throughout your entire day. What you do in the morning will determine how you will go through the whole day.
Thus, choose to start your day strong just like all the successful people mentioned above. Most of them spend their time on physical activity and exercise because when you move your body, you oxygenate your blood and this will make you awake and fresh.
2. Make You More Productive
Do you know that waking up early can make you more productive? First, the morning hours usually have less distraction as the world is still sleeping and obviously, no one will give you a call as early as 6am.
Next, you will gain an advantage over most people because you have extra hours to work on your goals and to pursue your dreams. If you wake up two hours earlier than the average people, you will have an additional of 730 hours in a year. And this is equivalent to having an extra month in a year!
Can you see how powerful this is? Successful people wake up early and they have 13 months in a year.
3. Creating Your First Victory
One of the most important things you can do in the morning is to spend time and focused on working on your most important task. This will catapult you toward success faster than most people.
When you get your most important task done the first thing in the morning, you will feel great, a sense of victory and you will be extremely fulfilled. As a result, you will have more self-confidence and able to tackle the rest of the day with ease.
Brian Tracy, the success guru, and the bestselling author suggested people eat the ‘biggest and ugliest’ frog the first thing in the morning. What he means is that you should do the most important and difficult task first before you do other things.
And once you have eaten the ugliest and biggest frog of the day, the rest of the frogs will be no issue for you.
Therefore, create your first victory early in the morning to set yourself on the productive pace of the day.
4. Develop Self-Discipline
Everyone knows that if you want to be successful and produce outstanding results in life, you must have the self-discipline to follow through your plan and persist until you reach your goals. And waking up early can help you cultivate a strong self-discipline.
People who lack self-discipline will never choose to wake up early. As a result, those who wake up early are those who are more successful.
It is not easy to wake up early, especially in the beginning. Most people choose to continue to sleep on their warm bed rather than wake up and hit the gym. This is why successful people are made of a different breed.
They choose to wake up as early as 5am to exercise, to plan, to meditate, to visualize their dreams and to work on their goals. They will do it no matter if it rains or snow. They wake up early each day and make their wildest dreams a reality. What about you?
5. More Time Self-Reflection
Lao Tzu once said, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”
The quote is so powerful. You have to understand yourself if you want to do and perform better in life. And when you wake up early in the morning, you get to have more personal time to be alone.
There is no one to distract you. You are all by yourself. Hence, you will be able to spend more time into reflecting your life and how you have been all this while. And because you get to spend more time with yourself, you will have better self-esteem and you will love yourself more.
The Top 10 Morning Rituals Of Successful People
Now that you know why it is important to get up early, it is time to learn to develop the right morning rituals that will boost your success and go through your day strong.
Morning rituals are important because they are habits. It is true that we are what we repeatedly do, and thus, success and excellence is about being consistent. It is about the habits that you adopt.
Most people formed lousy and unproductive habits that get them nowhere in life. While successful people develop empowering and productive habits that get them ahead in life.
And one of the most powerful ways to build success habits is by adopting the right morning rituals. You have to understand that rituals are powerful tools that are freely available to the practitioner, and that is you.
Below are the top 10 morning rituals that most successful people follow. Make them part of your life today.
1) Practice Gratitude
This is one of the most underestimated activities one can practice as their morning ritual. The real power of feeling gratitude and expressing your appreciation comes when you focus your mind and thoughts on what is working in your life.
When you choose to think about things that you appreciate and grateful for, you automatically set your mind to think positively and constructively. More importantly, you are training your mind to focus on what to be grateful for. This, my friend, is one of the most powerful effects you can get from practicing gratitude.
If you go through a tough day and things are not working out in your life, most people will feel dejected, negative and focus on the bad things. This will make them blind to the opportunities that are present around them all the time. Things will be different when you choose to focus on what you have at hand and things that you appreciate.
So start your day by expressing your gratitude towards positive things that happened in your life. It can be as small as your bed and as meaningful as having a loving wife sleeping beside you.
What you can do is to write down the things that you feel grateful for. From your cat, your car, your cell phone, your children, to your work and your career, express your appreciation and write them down.
Studies have shown that people who constantly thankful for whatever they have in life get to experience more positive emotions, feel more alive, more compassion and tend to have a stronger immune system.
Thus, get yourself a gratitude journal. Write down all the things, experiences, and events that you feel grateful for in the morning. You just need to spend about 5 to 10 minutes on this each morning.
2) Meditate
Everyone knows that meditation has a lot of benefits, but few actually practice it. Do you know that Oprah Winfrey, Arianna Huffington, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Anthony Robbins, and more practice meditation daily.
When you meditate, you learn to handle and quiet down your ‘busy mind’ and immerse yourself in calmness. This will spark your creativity and improve your concentration. You will be less likely to get distracted by other things when you focused on doing your work in the day.
Furthermore, you will discover that meditation allows you to more easily accessible to your ‘flow state’ whereby you become focused and adaptable to change. Studies also showed that consistent meditation is able to reduce stress and promote more positive moods.
Just sit in a quiet place and focus your thinking on your breathing.
3) Plan Your Day
Plan your day is a very productive morning ritual. It can be as simple as writing down your most important work to be completed for the day.
The key is to be conscious of what you need to get done. There is a saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, and it is true.
Sometimes things will not go according to your plan, but it is much better than going through your day without having a clear plan at all. If you have no idea what to do during the day, you will be reactive and act on what is coming to you at that moment.
Conversely, when you have a clear plan and you know what you need to do, you will then focus your energy and go through your day with a clear direction. You are proactive instead of being reactive.
For instance, you can choose to write down what you have to do for the day. Or you can also write down your goals and revisit them each morning to make sure you are on the right path to the success you desire.
4) Exercise
Everyone knows that exercise is important, but not everyone is doing it. This is especially true for people who are living in the city. If you read the book, “What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast”, the author Laura Vanderkam states that most successful people would spend their time for exercise.
Successful people like Richard Branson, Michelle Obama, Ursula Burns, Gary Vaynerchuk, Kevin O’Leary, etc, choose to wake up early to exercise. Some will workout in the gym while some will go for jogging. And like Richard Branson, he will play tennis or go surfing.
Exercise and working out is important because exercise allows us to maintain our health and make sure that we are healthy all the time.
And successful people seem to prefer to exercise in the morning because they want to prepare themselves both physically and mentally for their day. Research has shown that exercise can reduce stress, keep your metabolism rate high, oxygenate your blood and make you happy.
So move your body early in the morning before you get to work. In fact, Robin Sharma, the author of the book, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” suggested people exercise twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening after work.
Laura Vanderkam interviewed many successful people in her book, and she discovered that most successful people spend their morning time exercise before they went to work. She said, “These are incredibly busy people, and if they make time to exercise, it must be important.”
5) Enjoy Healthy Breakfast
One of the most important things one must do in the morning is to take their breakfast. The sad thing is that most people these days do not take their breakfast. They choose to wake up late or oversleep, and they rush to their office to work without eating any breakfast.
Do you know what the meaning of breakfast is? It means “break-fast”, breaking the fasting. You spend the entire night sleeping without taking in any food, and when you wake up in the morning, you should break the fasting.
This is why eating breakfast is important. Never ever skip breakfast. Study shows that people who skip breakfast often feel sleepy, tired, and finds it hard to concentrate on the task at hand.
Plus, if you skip breakfast for the long term, you may suffer serious health issue. Breakfast is important as it is the first meal of the day. And it will give you the energy you require to handle the rest of the day.
So never skip your breakfast. Even if you are busy and find it difficult to get extra time for a meal, try to eat something and never let your stomach get to work empty.
6) Practice Visualization and Affirmation
Another powerful morning ritual you can adopt is to practice visualization and affirmation. What you can do is to visualize the success you want or the dream life you desire each morning after you wake up. Spend about 5 to 10 minutes for visualization and then use another 5 minutes for affirmation.
Affirmation is just like a pep-talk that most professional athletes used in the game. Take basketball, for example, you will see the players gather around in a circle and shout to boost their confidence and mood. Affirmation has the similar effect just that you do it by yourself.
Oprah Winfrey, the media mogul once discussed creating her vision boards to realize her dreams in her talk show. Oprah said, “Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life because you become what you believe.” She practices visualization and meditation regularly.
7) Work On Your Most Important Task
If you are serious about achieving your goals and accomplishing the extraordinary feat in life, you should choose to work on your most important task as your morning ritual.
The quiet hours in the morning are one of the best times to focus yourself on important task without being interrupted.
A business strategist will have to deal with many meetings, interruptions, and ad hoc tasks during the day, thus, the best time to focus and get the most important work done is early in the morning.
Great people such as Tim Armstrong, Tim Cook, PIMCO co-founder Bill Gross, Bob Iger, Howard Schultz, and more check emails in the morning.
These people will scan their inboxes for important messages or emails that require an immediate response. They choose to work on their most important work first because they can focus better when their minds are still fresh.
8) Spend Quality Time With Your Loved Ones
Some successful people like Richard Branson and Jack Dorsey spend their morning time with their family and loved ones. You don’t have to wait for dinner or use your night time to be with people you love. You can do it the first thing in the morning.
Jack Dorsey chooses to bike with his wife, Richard Branson chooses to workout and have fun with his family. Imagine preparing breakfast for your daughter, help her get dressed, and sit around to enjoy breakfast together, it will be the most precious and memorable time you spend throughout the day.
When you get back from work in the evening, most likely you will be tired and time can be easily wasted in front of the TV or any unproductive activities. This is why most successful people choose to make a connection with their loved ones in the early part of the day as their morning routine.
9) Improvement And Self-Growth
Another common morning ritual most successful people share is reading. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Barrack Obama, Warren Buffet, Howard Schultz, etc, are all voracious readers and they choose to read in the morning when possible as part of their routine.
Reading is one of the best morning rituals one can adopt because it improves your knowledge and widen your perspective.
Some successful people choose to read books while some prefer to read the news to get latest updates on the economy and market.
For example, GE CEO Jeff Immelt starts his days with exercise and then reads the newspaper and watch the news. The same goes to Virgin America CEO David Cush who uses his mornings to listen to sports radio and read the papers while exercising with the stationary bike in the gym.
Successful people keep improving themselves and commit to self-growth. Of course, most would scan the newspaper headlines to find out the latest news because they have to keep themselves updated to stay ahead.
Try to make it your morning ritual to read for at least 30 minutes every morning. Make it a habit and commit to reading.
10) Make Your Bed
This is a simple, yet powerful morning ritual anyone must adopt. It can make you happier and more productive all day long.
Charles Duhigg, the author of the best-selling book, “The Power of Habit” says that getting into the habit of making your bed every morning is correlated with increased productivity.
The idea behind is simple. Making your bed is the first small and simple victory you are going to achieve in the morning. It makes you feel good, increase your confidence and put you in for a great start.
While this routine does not necessarily increase your productivity at work, but it is a key habit that can spark chain reactions that help other good habits to take hold.
Developing Your Morning Rituals
Now that you understand morning rituals are important and if you want to achieve more in life, you must start off by adopting empowering morning rituals that will give you a great start each day.
And you have also discovered the top 10 morning rituals of the most successful people. Hence, it is time for you to develop your own morning rituals.
What you can do here is to take a piece of paper and write down the activities or actions that you want to incorporate as your morning ritual.
For instance, you can choose to read for 30 minutes, exercise for 15 minutes, take a bath, plan your day for 5 minutes and prepare breakfast for yourself and your family before you go off to work.
As a start, do not choose too many actions or activities, less than ten will be ideal. And try to organize your list of actions and visualize them at night before you sleep.
In the beginning, it may be difficult to wake up early and follow through your morning rituals because you are not used to them. However, do not give up and continue to practice them and commit to them.
Studies showed that some habits require 21 days to form. Some more challenging habits may take longer, but this should not deter you.
Stick to your plan and commit to following your morning ritual. Eventually, you will find that the rituals slowly become your habits.
If you are serious about living an extraordinary life, achieving your goals and living your dreams, you must start your day strong. Position yourself with the right frame of mind each morning before you dive into your work. Make sure you are ready to take on what is coming.
Successful people are extremely busy people, and yet, they emphasize so much about their morning rituals. This shows that your morning habits are important and if you want to be successful, you must take control of your life, start with your morning rituals.
You don’t have to wait to be successful only to adopt these empowering morning habits. In fact, you should adopt these powerful routines only then you can become successful. Just like what Zig Ziglar said, “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”
References
- onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2009.00549.x/epdf?referrer_access_token=HL7-WoeqEl-XfRSLDBbHMIta6bR2k8jH0KrdpFOxC66TQIqpmaJ9dL5N7_VZ9vrDVI8QXbne0Zo0mOx-XUmCSDXRj8JrnkgZ1HL5WvxPifCBX-TKp8VRO9i6os3Fy3ryLDOUc_0nChdx4ln1V8tT6bl64aCUsP9bhb6bGs0xGV_JbvVRVHe3MB4AtKObvrmQ4neO1ePn4zqw-s0iLqawU9XTH1IFtt4lNSPBjqwMdIJK1T8ogs0CtpH9VwNo8JJyNXd92zcIKQSBYRdd9_k6Yw%3D%3D
- businessinsider.com/successful-people-who-wake-up-early-2015-6/?IR=T
- thefreshexchange.com/5-reasons-to-establish-morning-rituals-our-own-rituals/
- zenhabits.net/10-benefits-of-rising-early-and-how-to-do-it/
- lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/7-morning-rituals-empower-your-day-change-your-life.html
- my.happify.com/hd/the-science-behind-gratitude/
- businessinsider.com/what-successful-people-do-before-breakfast-2015-10/
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