SDS 392: Start Your Own Morning Ritual

(00:14):
Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast everybody. Super pumped to have you back here on the show. Question, what do successful famous people like Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Hugh Jackman and many more have in common? Well, all of the ones mentioned and many others have a morning ritual. They follow the principle, win the morning, win the day. 

(00:43):
A couple of examples. What is a morning ritual? They can be combined of certain things, because it doesn’t have to be one thing, it can be a whole series of steps, in most cases it’s a whole series of steps. It’s usually very personalized, very tailored to the person. Over time they understand what’s most important to them, but the thing is that it’s the first thing they do in the morning. They’re going to wake up, first thing that they do is they start with this set of actions, set of tasks, or a sequence of actions, it takes about up to 30 minutes, in some cases 15, 30 minutes, an hour, but that enables the person, enables the human being to charge up for the day, and while sacrificing that short amount of time in the beginning of the day, get much more out of every single hour that follows. 

(01:33):
So a couple of examples. For instance, Steve Jobs, it’s said that every morning he would wake up and look himself in the mirror, focus his gaze on his eyes, and he would ask himself the question, “If today was the last day of my life, would I be happy with what I’m about to do today?” If the answer was no for too many days in a row, that means he knew that something needs to change. 

(02:02):
Tim Ferriss, the famous podcaster, the author of many books, in addition to meditation and other parts of his morning ritual, he journals for five to 10 minutes a day. Every morning he writes in his journal for five to 10 minutes. 

(02:20):
Hugh Jackman, famous actor, has a morning ritual where him and his wife read a fiction or fantasy book out loud in bed as the first thing. As far as I heard, they spent about 30 minutes or an hour doing that and while doing that, that actually leads to discussions and important quality time together that they connect with each other, because otherwise the day passes and that opportunity might run away from them and they might not connect during the day. He prioritizes that, that’s a very important element for him. 

(02:58):
In fact, just as a side note, there’s a very cool podcast of Hugh Jackman on the Tim Ferriss Show, it’s just released a few weeks ago, or a month ago or so, maybe a few months ago. We’ll link to it in the show notes, or you can just search for Tim Ferriss, Hugh Jackman podcast, really insightful. Really cool. 

(03:15):
So those are just three examples. Another one example is Oprah Winfrey meditates for 20 minutes. A lot of these people meditate for a certain period of time in the morning, but it doesn’t have to be that way. 

(03:27):
So, this FiveMinuteFriday episode is a challenge, a call to you for you to come up with your own morning ritual. So I will give you the example of the one that I have been using. I started with this one in 2017 and in fact, Hadelin and I started with it when we were in Portugal at his place in Lisbon, when we were working on the Artificial Intelligence A-Z course. Since then, I would use it for a few weeks or a few months, and then I would drop this morning routine or ritual because life would get hectic, or I would get carried away with certain things. But because of this lockdown, I’ve had the opportunity to use it more regularly. So I have been traveling less, I’ve been able to be in the same environment and almost the same environment most of the time and that’s allowed me to incorporate this more as a habit. So over the past four months, I’ve been doing this almost daily. Maybe I’ve missed, maybe a total of 10, 15 days in the past four months, but otherwise I’ve been doing it almost daily. 

(04:37):
It’s called the morning priming routine by Tony Robbins, so we’ll also link to it in the show notes. There’s actually an audio that you can download or listen to online, it’s 15 minutes audio and it walks you through this routine from start to finish, so you can just try it out for yourself the way that Tony Robbins shows it at his events. In a nutshell, this is how it works. 

(04:59):
So in the morning, I try to go somewhere where there’s nature if I can. If that’s not possible, then something like a balcony will work, or standing next to a window, preferably somewhere where you can look outside and if possible, get fresh air as well, or some air from the outside. Then you do 30 sets of quick breaths. So you put your hands up, you grab the air above you with your hands fully up, and then you bring them down and you go … like that, 30 times. Then you pause for a second. 

(05:34):
So that’s going to fill you with oxygen, also be careful about this because you might get dizzy, especially the first time. Be cautious of how you do it, it is possible to get dizzy, so please only do this at your own risk if you decide to try it out. Best of course, to look up the original set of instructions by Tony Robbins. 

(05:52):
But anyway, so I do that 30 times. Then I wait, just pause for a few seconds, then I do it again. So a total of three sets of 30 breaths. Then I close my eyes, I slow my breathing and put my hands on my heart, the point here is to feel grateful. You’re first of all feeling grateful for having a heart, that’s a big deal. As Tony Robbins says, “You didn’t have to work for it, it was given to you.” When you think about that’s like a really cool thought that it’s a gift, the fact of having a heart in the first place. 

(06:29):
Then think about three moments from your past, it could be recent past, distant past, that made you smile and trying to relive those moments, smiling, filling yourself up with joy, gratitude. The point here is that you cannot be grateful and experience a negative emotion at the same time. You cannot be grateful and angry. You cannot be grateful and miserable, you cannot be grateful and feeling guilty at the same time. Sometimes we wake up with those bad feelings and this exercise allows us to move away, to dissipate those feelings, and actually focus on something that you can actually be grateful for, something beautiful in your life that’s happened, a coincidence that’s maybe happened in your life. Somebody smiling, some random event, some random meetings, some fortunate thing, or just even the grass outside, or the fresh air, or the sunrise, something like that. Anything in life, just think of three things consecutively one after the other, that will help you feel grateful, remind you to feel grateful. 

(07:35):
Then what I do next is I collect the energy from all around me. I collect the energy from the buildings, the trees, the air, the water, the sun, the clouds, everything. I pull that energy into me and I say it out loud, “The energy from the sky, energy from the water, energy from the clouds, energy from the air that I breathe, energy from everywhere, come into me.” Then I hold that energy inside me for a bit, for like 10, 15 seconds, then I send it back out, send it to everybody because it’s not mine to keep. It’s not mine to have, it’s not mine to give, it’s mine to borrow, use for a few seconds to fill me up and then I give it back out to everybody and send it to everybody, for everybody in the world to have a better day, morning, evening, afternoon, or night, just a little bit better and I let that energy back out. 

(08:26):
Then that’s when I proceed to setting my goals. I think of three things that I want to accomplish. It could be today, this week, this month, this year, usually I think of three good things I want to accomplish today. Something like, today, I want to record these three, FiveMinuteFriday episodes and they have to be amazing. The way to think about is imagine in that moment, you can have your eyes closed, but just imagine that you have already done it. Imagine that you’re looking at it as if it’s in the past, you’re already at the end of the day, you’re looking back and how do you want to feel? If you did it the way you anticipate to do it, how would you feel? You fill yourself up with that feeling of success, of accomplishment, of contribution, that you’ve done something great for the world, for yourself, for your family, for your friends, for colleagues, for clients, for whoever. You’ve learned something, you’ve grown, you’ve connected with somebody, you’ve discovered something, you’ve overcome a challenge, an obstacle that you’ve been facing for a while. How would that feel? 

(09:29):
So you try to feel that way, imagine how that would feel. That goes back to the whole Napoleon Hill book of Think And Grow Rich, basically it’s not about growing rich monetarily, he lists like 11 other ways you can be rich and more important ways rich, from spiritually to consciously, to intellectually, with your friendships, with your healthy body and so on. Basically the whole notion that your thoughts manifest. If you feel you’ve accomplished what you want to accomplish in the day, then eventually you’re much more likely to do it. So yeah, so I think of that. Usually I think of being kind and loving to myself and what it means for me in this particular day. For instance, today is for me to just sit down and read a book for an hour and then get up and feel like, yes I was able to relax, wind down and calm my mind. 

(10:30):
Maybe on another day it might be eventually something like meditating or sitting down and learning a language for an hour or something like that, or cooking a healthy meal and eating that. So being loving and kind to myself. Another goal might be being loving and kind to my girlfriend and connecting with her, and what does that mean? And how does that manifest? How do I want it to manifest? 

(10:55):
So I think of three goals and then at the end of that, I get excited by the fact that how I’m going to feel when I accomplish them, I really feel that way, get pumped. I jump up and I say, “Pumped for the day, I’m pumped for the day, I’m pumped for the day.” From there, I go and get into my day and it’s a completely different story. 

(11:18):
If I start my day like that, I’m super pumped, energized. I know what I want to get out of this day. I know how I want to maximize it. The levels of procrastination drop significantly. My level of excitement, the energy I bring to these tasks, you can do the same task with low energy, poor energy, or we can do it with amazing exciting energy. The energy I bring is completely different and I’m excited. I’m excited through my day, I feel amazing and at the end of the day, I look back and I’m excited again. 

(11:51):
So, that’s how I want to live my life and that’s what a morning routine, or morning ritual is designed to do. Again, everybody’s going to have a slightly different, or radically different morning rituals. There were a few examples in this podcast already, try to figure out what is your best morning ritual. Maybe it’s radically different to what I described about mine, but if you have that and if it gets you into the right state, remember change your state, change your story, change your life. It gets you into the right state, you will have the right stories. You won’t have the excuses in your head anymore. You won’t have the, “Oh, it’s not my fault, this was somebody else’s fault.” Or, “I can’t do this because I don’t have the right resources,” or whatever else. You won’t have those in your head. You will have the story of smashing it and getting the most out of your day and bringing amazing energy to it. That is going to, step by step day by day, it’s going to take your life to an absolutely new level. 

(12:51):
There you go, good luck. My challenge to you is to try out a morning ritual for yourself on one of the days this weekend, could be a huge step forward. I look forward to seeing you back here next time. Until then, happy analyzing.