Let Me Tell You About My Morning And The Ensuing Day. It Was Eye Opening To Me. If You Want To Exact **MASSIVE** Change In Your Life, This May Be Of Interest.

I am not really in the habit of starting posts with...

"Let me tell you about my day."

But WOW! today is different.

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OK I will start with a little background... But without 5000 words this time, I promise!

I have decided I want change in my life in 2019 MASSIVE CHANGE. Many of you will feel the same we are still quite early in the year and hopefully have lots of optimism about where we can be, who we can be and what we can achieve by December 31st. Now although I have stated that I want this change to be of a significant nature I have a caveat one condition that I will apply in the early days and it is non negotiable.

I want to start the process of change with only small changes. However I want to maximise my chances of gaining enormous momentum by finding small changes that are profound in the effect they can have upon us.

I know what you are thinking, He doesn't want much does he??? Small changes that can shake the world.

I believe that is achievable. we could all find a million quotes or anecdotes that begin with sentiments along the lines of a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and so on... Now that I come to think of it... I would like to share a maxim that you may also be familiar with

If you win the morning you win the day.

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Maybe that has given you a clue to my current thinking. If I am going to begin to make a difference to my day, what possible better time could there be than the very moment I open my eyes. A concept that I have been familiar with for many years is that change does not happen by accident. Often it takes planning, decision making, focus and commitment. Yes positive change usually happens by design. So yesterday I began to search for inspiration on an empowering morning routine. I am interested in the psychology of change more than the practical application if I am completely honest. When there is scientific evidence to backup that methodology, all the better.

So I found lots of strategies, tips and hacks for morning success and many of them had multiple steps. I intend to add a lot of these steps to my morning habit moving forward but as I explained, right now I want to find the simplest, least traumatic changes that have maximum impact. I guess what I'm saying is I want real value for money when it comes to my upcoming journey of self improvement. So I refined these steps down to one idea. The idea does have a few offshoots but they are complimentary to the initial change and requires no further effort on my part than achieving the first step... Let me explain what I did...

I learned the psychology of the snooze button!

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The strategy goes like this. We go through several sleep cycles at night, I think most of us are familiar with that idea. the science behind our understanding of sleep has moved n n the last few years immensely. I was quite surprised at the latest developments in understanding.

• Sleep cycles tend to last 75-90 minutes.
• We have several per night obviously.
• When we are nearing our sleep setpoint with regards to how much we personally need, this varies massively from person to person. We begin a 2 hour programme for want of a better word that results in a slow waking of the brain, you can think of this as coming around gently.
• This would be the natural point where we would wake, without the false time constraint of the alarm clock.

What we do next is key to how we wake up ((Not when we wake up, HOW we wake up)). This can have enormous ramifications for the kind of day we have. In fact it does!

Most of us nowadays sleep with our cellphone next to the bed. Most people instinctively reach out and press the SNOOZE BUTTON. muttering something along the lines of...

"Just 5 more minutes!"

Unwittingly they just sowed the seeds of disaster for the day ahead.

I have always believed that I needed that extra bit of sleep before I rise. How mistaken I was.

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Once you hit that snooze button you immediately dive back into a comfortable fuzzy sleep cycle. Several minutes later the alarm pierces your consciousness again and you are woken from a freshly started sleep cycle. This causes a wholly unpleasant condition known a sleep inertia this has many nasty side effects some of them potentially dangerous. I think this will be a follow up post as it is such an important factor to your day.

It is likely to put you in a non harmonious mood to put it politely. You then stumble to the bathroom to begin your morning routine feeling like garbage. Often this results in drowsily travelling to work for several hours of grind whilst in a bad mood. You see sleep inertia can last up to 4 hours to shake off entirely. It can make even the simplest of tasks nigh on impossible as it comes hand in hand with lack of focus, concentration and impaired mental clarity.

There is a way to instantly rid yourself of this brain paralysing condition... A freezing cold shower!!! I was looking for a simpler way.

So I took advice from several sources and came up with an incredibly simple way to begin my day.

• I placed the phone significantly away from my bed.
• This meant that I had to get up physically to switch off the alarm.
• There was no instinctive reaching out for the alarm and ultimately the snooze button.
• I remembered why I had moved my phone further away instantly.
• I felt a sense of achievement that I had not hit dreaded snooze button, this feeling hit me instantly. ((this already gave my usual morning mood a boost)).
• I instantly turned on the light ((5.30am)).
• I achieved my usual 30 - 40 minute routine in under 15 minutes!
• I arrived at work 15 minutes earlier than I ever do.

Now! you may be thinking I read all this way down for this simple nugget of information?

It sounds much too easy for a great start to the day, right? Wrong!

Let me share another little bit of information with you. I was still writing here at 1.45 am. Yes you read that right I went to bed at almost 2, awoke at 5.30 and felt fabulous. I am not suggesting that is a good thing to do by any means. immediately after waking I thought for a minute or 2 about the dreams I had. this can be a great way to work out problems and fears as that is what dreams generally speaking are. It is the subconscious trying to problem solve the things that affect us most in life.

If you are familiar with my posts you will likely know that I detest my job and manual work and 12 hour shifts in general. I may have real news on this soon. :wink: but let me share the most powerful thing that happened to me today. On the way to work I said to my partner that whatever work had in store for me... I was gonna have a great day and be in an awesome mood all day. You don't know how I am at work, so cannot fully appreciate how ridiculous this idea is, but it worked and worked well.

If you are a serial snoozer, try this, no, really, try it. I understand how simple it sounds, but it works.

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Maybe do what I did too, tell yourself with passion that you ARE going to have a great day, no matter what happens. You owe that much to yourself to at least try, right?

Tommorrow will be day 2. I will reply to this post with a comment if there is any significant news to tell. In a few days I will add some more simple steps into my life. I have lived 46 years without ever really challenging myself to be exceptional... I am waiting no longer to do it, to be it! :sunglasses:

If you try it, let me know what you think. Do you have any simple life hacks, tips, strategies to share? please feel free to let me know I may even write a post detailing my experiences with them, giving you credit for the idea of course.

Live the life you choose to live everyday :sunglasses: :heart: :+1:

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