Episode 35 Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The most important thing when it comes to building out your morning routine is one habit at a time over time. Hi everyone. Rob here and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den, good to have you back, Dan. How’s things?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Thank you, Rob. Great to be back. Hello. Very excited. We’re coming into our mastermind weekend, so always up and about when we’ve got a live event coming up with all our clients and seeing all the gang again.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Yeah, we’re all embarking into Adelaide next week and so yeah, we’re busily trying to put in the final touches of everything at the moment from an event organisation. Really great topic. We’re going to be talking about modelling management, financial reporting, everything from pricing, margin management, mindset around wealth, values, beliefs around money, and absolutely everything. It’s going to be a cracker of an event, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
It is. You get to scratch that accounting itch that I know you like, so it is a good one for you to geek out on numbers for a while.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Oh, I love it because it’s just the combination around mindset and strategy around money is just a winning formula and winning. It’s just one thing that a lot of people don’t get and a lot of people get into business to be able to make money, but one of the very skills that they miss is financial making and management of profitability in their business. So it’s a big thing that sets our clients up for success, that’s for sure.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, it is. And I think just remembering back, I think from the two years ago when we ran it last, just some of the breakthroughs and the follow on from that mindset conversation around money and the beliefs and what it unlocked in people to understand numbers was huge. So really looking forward to that again.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, one in particular, one of our clients hit a glass ceiling and they catapulted and added an extra million dollars in rev and flowed through to profits in the next 12 months purely from a breakthrough from that one event, which was a belter. So yeah, can’t wait to do it all again.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Really cool. But we’re not talking about that today are we? We’re talking about something completely different. How was your morning this morning?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Really good and yeah, set myself up for success, which is nice and new.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, it was good. Stuck to the rhythm, got through some of the stuff we’re going to talk about today and set myself up for a good day.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, really good. And that’s really the essence of what we’re going to be talking about today. We we’re going to be talking a bit about morning routines, morning rhythms, winning the morning so we can win the day. And the reason why this topic is so important is because if you look at really highly successful people in their field, regardless if it’s elite athletes or elite business people or whatever it is that they’re playing the top of their game in the field, the difference between them, the great people, the people who dominated in their space versus the 95 percenters, I suppose is the way that they set themselves up for success in the morning to succeed and perform at a very higher level throughout that day. So that’s why this topic is so important, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It is. And people often equate what we’re talking about, winning the morning, winning the day, some of these sort of sayings that go around, it’s always around just sort of get up earlier and fill in with more shit in your day. Try and do more, but don’t do it earlier in the day and you’ll get more done. But really what we’re talking about today is having a really good look at it and setting yourself up with a strategy for the morning in a way that works. It doesn’t mean you’re just trying to cram more in and be more exhausted by the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, I think it’s being intentional around how you show up, getting yourself in a state of peak performance. You’ve got to remember when you are running a business, you’re being an elite business person and you’ve got to put yourself in that frame of mind to an elite athlete, has a frame of mind and a way of operating business is no different if you want to play at the top of your game in business, it’s not just about rolling out of bed and just grinding out the day. It’s about getting mentally and strategically, getting yourself in that right frame of mind to be able to set yourself up for success. And I think the reason why this is so topical is because I don’t think most people realise that it’s almost like 40% to 50% of what we do on a daily basis is almost habitual in nature. Like our behaviours are habitual in nature, which is pretty scary that science tells us that 50%, 40% to 50% to 60%, they’re the rough numbers, but half of what we do on a daily basis is we’re unconsciously doing it, which is just we just go through the motions. It’s pretty scary.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
It is. I think it even more than that. I think when you really look at it, I think there’s that study around the unconscious behaviour, which is way up there. I’ve seen numbers as high as 80% just for unconscious behaviour through your day, but you’re right, that thing about routines and just working through autopilot on the rhythms and habits and patterns that you run every day above half of it is just autopilot stuff. And if you really sat down and stopped to think about it, you’d probably fill that time in yourself with it just going, shit, there’s so much of what I do is totally habitual. It’s not planned, it’s not focused. It just happens whether I’m there or not. And when I say whether you’re there or not in terms of being aware of it, whether you are conscious in that moment, it could be driving to and from work. I know everyone’s probably had that experience of just going, shit, I got home, I don’t even know how I got home. I can’t even remember driving home. I was thinking about other things. So that autopilot sensation carries through a lot into the start of the day as well. It’s a huge part of your day when you first wake up in the morning for being habit driven. You know what you do.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the thing about a habit is a habit is a behaviour that we do once and then it becomes ingrained. The more we do it through repetition, repetition over and over and over and over and over again is what creates that as a habit. There’s certain responses and triggers which put us into that state of habitual operating and that’s the thing. Habits are there. They’re there for a reason. It’s actually to preserve our mental state because what it does is makes our mind more efficient, more effective in terms of decision making. So it’s our mind’s way of conserving energy because it doesn’t have to make so many decisions on a day-to-day basis. The moment something becomes a habit, you don’t decide to do it, you just do it naturally. And so that’s the thing around morning routines is that each and every one of us actually have got a morning routine right now. We’ve already got a rhythm in the way that we start our day, but the question is how much time and energy and effort have you actually put into analysing this routine and designing it in a way that sets you up for success? And for most people, they haven’t gone through that process, have they?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
No. It’s well grooved. You do it every morning, you open your eyes, something happens, you do something next, you do something next and eventually you find yourself at work or wherever you are. So that rhythms really just, it’s always going to be there and it has been well grooved. What we want you to do though is to really take a moment and reflect as you listen to this, just pause if you need to, but what did your first hour look like today when you first woke up? What was the first thing you did or what’s the first thing you know? Do every morning when you wake up? Do you grab your phone and start ploughing into the day? Just let’s go it. It’s go time. The second your eyes open, do you have a morning routine that gets you into the right frame of mind and the right sort of energy levels that you need to operate at the peak performance mode that you want to be in as a business owner, as a leader? How do you want to show up? Do you put time into that or is it something else that you’re doing in the morning? But take a minute to actually reflect, step out of that automatic thinking and just come up with what is your current routine? What’s the current state look like?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah. And then what we’re going to do today is we’re actually going to talk through the four elements of a winning morning ritual, and we want to talk through these with you because what we can do is start creating a bit of a framework where you can start introducing winning success habits into your morning routine, one at a time over time, and build these into your morning so you can really start grooving your mornings that start being intentional around how you start the day. So you’ve got the ability to win more during the day. So today what we’re going to do is talk through these four elements, then we’re going to take it another step further and start talking a bit about how winning the morning actually starts the night before. And then we’re going to touch very quickly on how we can eliminate some of those random inputs that can derail you in the morning. So we’re going to talk through those first few things and yeah, I’m really looking forward to getting in today. It’s really, really important this topic, and I can’t stress that enough because like we’ve said a few times now, if you win the morning, you absolutely win the day and it sets you up for success to be able to absolutely smash out of the park. So where do we start, Dan, what’s your thoughts?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I think we can get into just start on these four elements. I think it’s really, really important that we do that. The four elements that we’re going to be talking about, I’ll go through, we’ll come back to these, but we’re going to talk about the four elements of feed, focus, fuel and move. There are our four elements. So what we’re going to do is break those down and as you listen again, take this on board and then we’re going to ask you to reflect a little bit deeper. But to start with, let’s just start at the top and what we’re really talking about is how do you become intentional with this stuff? You’ll have elements of these in your morning, guaranteed you’ll already be doing these, but it’s now about having the awareness of shit, do I really do it that way or is it I need to change something here, I need to make an improvement. What can I get out of being more intentional? So I think that’s where we’ll start and start off with probably feed is our first one.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah, feed’s a big one. Feeds your ability to be able to remember that our brain takes in whatever it’s fed and it’s like a sponge and it just consumes everything in the day and age that we live in that our brains are open to so much, whether it’s social media, the news, the radio, whatever that device is. But it feeds a really big one in the morning because whatever we consume early in the morning and feed our brain with ultimately determines the tone in how we start the day doesn’t it?
Speaker 2 (10:52):
It does. This is probably one of the biggest ones. I think in terms, if I look back personally making the change in this area is probably one of the biggest impacts or things that I’ve felt as a part of this morning routine. I know when I’m on point, and it’s not that it’s every single morning, it can slide, it can slip and it can change, but I know if I have dips in my day or my output or how I’m feeling just energy wise, I can always come back to this feed concept and I’ll know that there’s something that needs to be tweaked and adjusted there. So at the moment, there’s no question we’re in an information age. Most people have got their, no one has an alarm clock these days. If they do, the clock radio used to go off back in the day and you’d have the news on first thing in the morning and you’d hear the news at six o’clock or whatever time you were waking up, and that’d be the first thing you heard.
(11:38):
And gradually over time, we’ve got more information, now we’ve got our smartphone, so now we get even more stuff like you said, emails. We can have music, we can have podcasts on, we can have social media feeds, whatever we open our eyes up to with that phone next to us, that usually takes over and that becomes a charge on our day. We can charge ourselves up based on what we consume in that early time, what we feed our brain like you were saying before. So as we talk through this, there’s a quote that I really loved that it came out, it’s actually from the 1970s if you can believe it, but it said that a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. So a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. And if you think about it, what we’re saying there is that the more information we have, the more we look at that, the more our attention is taken away from other things because we’re consuming information.
(12:33):
So our attention’s on our screen usually in modern times, right? We’re looking at our screen, that’s where our attention goes. So the information where we’re looking at it, the things that we see, so how often have you seen something on socials, listen to news, open an email, whatever it might be, and all of a sudden, no matter what mood you thought you might be in, no matter you’ve just opened your eyes and nothing’s happened yet, but whatever that first piece of information you feed yourself is it almost sets a charge. It’s positive or negative, the switch or the lever gets moved one way or the other. So I think the first thing we’ve got to really explore is what are we feeding our mind first thing in the morning? We all reach for something, whether it’s a phone or something that we do that immediate moment that we start to take in inputs for the day.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, I know I’ve been there before where it’s phones on the side table, roll out a bed, grab your phone, flick through email, and it’s like, oh fuck, I wish I hadn’t have read that straight into negative mode. And then it’s like, skip breakfast, skip this straight into firefighting mode. Something’s happened. Big challenge and it’s not something I wanted to read and it’s like boom, set me off. I’m in a negative head space before I’ve even started the day and the whole day turns to shit because that’s your frame of mind when you start the day, and I’m sure you listening, you’ve been there before. It doesn’t matter if it’s an email like you said before, a text message, whatever it is, sometimes you read it and you’re like, oh, wish I hadn’t read that. And it just sets our frame of mind up sometimes in a really negative place.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
It hijacks your emotional state, it hijacks that the ability for you to your focus now is on that negative thing. You’re either reacting to it and you’re getting more emotional about it. I think about the news. Something bad happens, something sad happens. There’s always going to be something like that that gets thrown in your face. So it’s going to take that emotion or it’s going to be, like you said, a spot fire and it takes you out of you being in control. You’re now responding to whatever’s going on in the world before you’ve even set foot on the floor, usually sometimes if you’re reading it in bed first thing in the morning. So I think being able to really understand how and what impact those, what I’d call random inputs, it’s a game of chance. It’s like playing Russian roulette. I’m going to turn the phone on, look at the screen and let’s see what comes up. And having that mindset’s really, really it’s a big gamble.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I like what you said there around emotional state because when I think around when we say win the morning, win the day, what we’re doing is putting ourselves in the best and emotional, physical, best state of mind, mental, emotional, physical state of mind and the state of being to be able to ensure that we can succeed in the day. And this is why feed isn’t so important because it’s a state of mind thing, but it’s also an emotional state as well, that if we don’t get that right at the start, we are feeding our brain with the wrong things, then what it’s doing is putting us in the wrong state of mind to be able to start the day. And if we start the day on a negative front, then that flows, that sets the tone for the rest of the day. So when we can become aware of it, what can we replace it with? Now we’re becoming aware of what we’re feeding our brain with. Obviously content and learning and consuming is important. What can we replace it with do you think?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I think I’m going to give, the first one I give is probably in coaching is the most simple and it’s just a habit. It’s a habit replacement, but it’s a really positive outcome that you get from it. It’s so weird. I do it myself now and it’s made a huge difference. And that is first thing, when I open my eyes, I tell myself to smile and it can be a forced smile. It doesn’t have to be anything in particular I’m thinking about, but my first reaction when I open my eyes in the morning now is smile. And that’s all it is. There’s no more to it. It’s not smile because I’m not trying to do gratitude or anything like that. You can do that, but all I’m trying to do is remind myself, Hey, smile. And that’s the first thing that happens and it’s amazing. It’s almost a joke with myself and it makes me laugh to myself to am I doing this again? But it’s that charge. I can feel the charge, which is what I’m after that I don’t want to go into negative mode the minute I open my eyes by looking at email and stuff. So smile is probably the most simple and easiest way you can sort of bust that habit of going into negative state or going into that negative charge to begin with.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
So instead of listening to the wireless for those who might be little bit older or the radio for us youngins or instead of watching the news in the morning, what can we replace that with? What’s a great replacement for that?
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, a little bit further down the track, you’re looking at things like a podcast, an audio book,
Speaker 1 (17:25):
A Trade Den podcast maybe.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yeah, that’d be good. We’re usually positive. So yeah, you could definitely do that. If you want to hear the dult tones of Rob coming on and greeting you every morning, that’d be awesome. We’d love that. What I would suggest is podcasts, audio books, things like that. Other ones that people aren’t aware of is you can get some really cool morning mantras and things to listen to that are positive on YouTube, just short videos that it’s a bunch of words and sounds that are positively charged. And remember, it’s not that you have to take them on board and start studying and implementing the second you wake up, it’s not about doing more shit, it’s about getting the charge right to give you the capacity to have a great day. So I think podcast, short speeches, whatever that might be, positive articles, whatever you’ve teed up would be great. And then the second part of that is reflect, and I think reflect is just take a minute rather than just consume information. It’s like, all right, I’m not going to consume information, I’m going to smile and then I’m going to get into reflecting. And that could be things like journal gratitudes meditation and things like that.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, they’re really great ways to be able to just get our mind in the right place because as we’ve spoken a lot around in the podcast is success is majority of that is all mindset. And I think that if you get your head in the game early, you fuel your mind with the right things, set yourself up for success. You’re not looking at all the negativity shit of all the things that are going on around the world, but you’ve got to remember that the news and the radio get their clicks and their listens through publishing negative media. That’s how they make their money. And so they’re bombarding us with negative shit all day long. So what we’ve got to be able to do is choose to be able to be intentional around what we consume in the morning and managing our time on social media. It’s not that thing where you sit down and doomsday scroll for half an hour and Instagram’s like shit where that half an hour go. It’s like your ability to get up, feed it with the right thing, reflect on it, the right thing, and just set yourself up for success and just getting your mind in the game. That’s the most important thing.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, absolutely. So I think that’s a really important one. Feed is our first pillar there, so reflect on that one. If we look now to number two, the second one we’re going to talk about is focus and focus is all around being intentional rather than responding and reacting to things as they come up with spot fires. In your day, focus is really just taking a few minutes before you get into the body of the day, that sort of work period or whatever comes up for you and just having a plan, isn’t it? It’s starting to come up with what’s that plan look like? What am I trying to achieve today? What do I want as an outcome?
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yeah. Most business owners that we speak to pre-coaching is they don’t use a two do list. Well, they don’t manage their tasks and their priorities, they don’t understand how to prioritise and their calendar’s empty and they wonder why they’re working crazy hours and they get their time hijacked by everyone else’s priority. So focus, as you said, is your ability to sit down. And we spoke around a lot back in episode 12 is using that acronym of wit, what’s important today. So if you haven’t listened back to episode 12, make sure you go back and do that. But it’s your ability to sit down before you even get stuck into the first email or the message that goes off on your phone or on your inbox. It’s your ability to park other people’s agendas and priorities and sit down and go right as the owner and director of this business, what’s my priorities?
(20:58):
What’s important today when you sit down and think about what’s my priorities? What am I doing to work on my business, what are the very important things that I need to get done to keep this business moving forward? Whether it’s a quote, you’ve got to get out invoices, you’ve got to do a business development call, you’ve got to make whatever your priorities are right now, it’s about being intentional on what you need to get done rather than being hijacked by what everyone else’s priorities need to get done. So focus is a huge one because it enables you to start the day and you prioritise what matters to you, not what everyone else needs to get done.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, it’s basically just saying, well, if I’m going to win the day, what does winning mean? How would I define a win today? What does a win look like? Is it like you said, what’s the number one priority from a business development? What’s that one phone call I need to make? What’s going to be my measure of success today will help you get there? And what’s important today is a great one to do. So go back to episode 12 and listen to it.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
It’s pretty scary that most people aren’t actually intentional around what they have to do. Most people are just professional firefighters. They they’re running a business, but they didn’t realise they got into being a professional firefighter, did they?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Exactly. And I think this comes up a lot with our clients and specifically if you’re listening and you are in some sort of reactive maintenance sort of world and you are world is reactive, you are wired to react to urgency. And what we see with a lot of people that are like that, they don’t have any list, they just react because that’s what they’ve been incentivized to do for the majority of their working life. It’s all around reacting and being able to respond. And people do, they groove their days around that, which means they leave huge suede of time open just in case something comes up so I can react quicker. But what that means is you’re totally on the hook with someone else’s priorities. It’s going to be when someone else tells you it’s time to move, when it’s time to do this, and you’ll always end up with this place in your life where you end up coming to coaching.
(22:52):
We hear this all the time, don’t we, that people will come in and say, I always put myself last. And it’s amazing how that correlates to the way that people just can’t or won’t be intentional about their day. So I think that gives us a really good idea around how can we stop our day just being hijacked like derailed the second we wake up within minutes, it’s just a runaway freight train of a day. So those are the first two things, feed and focus. The next two that we’re going to look at are all around revving the engine up, having enough in the tank to get through a day and having the right energy that we bring in to that next phase after we get through the morning and get into our body of our day. And the first one for that is fuel.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, fuel’s a big one and no difference. If you want to run a high performance engine in a car, you it up with the fuel to us as human being. What we eat and consume sets our energy levels ultimately. So fuel is a big one in the morning in terms of how we fuel our body and our mind with what we eat and what we consume in the morning. How often do we hear with tradies, the first thing that they do is grab a big m and a pile on the way or an iced coffee or something at the server on the way to work, or worse yet skip breakfast. That’s the worst thing that you can do in the morning. And I know for myself without failure, one of the most important things I do in the morning is have a really healthy high protein, really healthy breakfast, which just sets me up for a really productive day. So what we consume in the morning is fuel is super important, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (24:37):
It is. And the reason why most tradies, just going back to what you were saying, most of them will skip breakfast because they’ve taken in the random inputs and decided that, hey, putting out that spot fire that I looked at on my phone or answering that call and now I’m in firefighting mode before I can do anything else. So again, I’ll put myself last and I’ll eat something later on, I’ll grab something from the server or grab something in the car on the way. So it just sort of keeps playing into it.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
And I know we’re going to talk about it later in the episode around how our morning routine starts the night before, but when you are working late at night on the laptop, as you’ve busted your ass on the tools all day and then you’re back into the office at nighttime, you’re sleep deprived, that means you’re not doing your meal prep, you’re not thinking around what to eat and when you’re tired and worn out and stressed, you have less discipline. That’s what happens. You have less discipline and when you don’t have high levels of discipline and willpower, you take the path of least resistance and when you take that path, it’s easier just to grab a snack out of the fridge or grab something on the way to the work or to the first job or into the office or whatever it is that is unhealthy because you’re trying to prop yourself up from an energy point of view because you’re so depleted, because you’re so tired and stressed. So that’s what happens when you work big hours and you work long days and you work long nights, you’re behind the eight wall before you even start and that’s why most people don’t have good breakfast and eat healthy because they’re so tired and stressed and worn out to even to begin with.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah, it’s all based on just dealing with stress as opposed to trying to fuel up. You’re just trying to get back to zero is basically what most people spend most of their time doing if they’re caught in that trap.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Correct. Now we’re not health experts. You and I are not health experts, but I just know from my own personal experiences, having a healthy breakfast sets me up for a great day, healthy breakfast and a coffee. I love my coffee, I get up, have a healthy breakfast and a coffee without fail in the morning and a nice big drink of water and I know that that just sets me up for success for sure.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah, definitely. You can feel it. The difference between when you do and you don’t, and I think that’s a lot of this, we’ll talk about it when we come to setting this up at the end, but being able to really understand what the impacts are. If you do or you don’t, these can be like mini experiments for people to try. It’s not take us on this word because the science says so because we’re experts, but we’ve tried both. We know what works, what doesn’t. You’ve got to find your way again. So I think that’s really, really critical. Shall we get on to number four?
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Number four is move and moving is a big one and it’s just physically moving and we see a lot of this with clients as they do wind themselves off the tools. When they were on the tools, that’s how they got their exercise. They were healthy and fit on the tools and staying active, but the moment they moved into the office, then this is sometimes when the weight pile’s on and they get unhealthy because they’re not being active anymore. And so if you’re in that space, moving is super important every day because what it does is just gets the blood flowing, it releases endorphins, it makes you feel good, not that you have to move to be able to train for certain events or whatever it is, but simply going to the gym, going for a walk, going for a run, doing some exercise in the morning, combining moving and fuel together is just a really good recipe, a really good recipe to be able to start your day.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah, like you said, it’s like the engine and getting the engine primed. I mean, you don’t just sit there and floor the engine the second you get out of the driveway, at least I hope you don’t, but you want to make sure that when you do this, you’ve warmed the engine up and that’s what you’re doing by fueling yourself correctly and then getting a bit of movement, it warms the engine up, you’re more likely to be able to get going and you’re going to be in a way better state of mind to be able to handle what comes up. If you’ve moved around, you’ll just feel that blood flowing. You’re more alert, you’re more able to think all the systems are switched on, which is what you really want to do.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I know for me personally, I’m not a massive gym guy. I’m not, don’t love running. I’m not a big yoga person or anything. For me, it’s going for a walk and we’ve got a dog named Doug. You probably hear him in the background having a bark occasionally on the podcast. And we’ve got three kids and our youngest one is Ben, he’s just turned 12 months. You probably hear him in the background of the podcast sometimes, but my morning routine is from a move point of view is throw Ben in the pram and grab the lead and take Doug for a walk for an extended walk around the block. And even if it’s just for 20 minutes, even this morning it was raining this morning, I threw the rain jacket on, put the cover on the pram, and Ben and Doug and I went for a walk.
(29:30):
The three boys went for a stroll and it’s just good to get out in the fresh air. Doug gets a walk, I get a walk, it’s a bit of quality time with Ben. We sing out nurseries at rhymes and I’m teaching him to clap and smile and do all those types of things at the moment and then waving. So it’s just good quality time with Ben, get Doug out for a walk and I get some exercise as well. So for me that’s as simple as it does. It is you just got to find your jam. And I think that’s the thing where there’s no one size fits all. You don’t have to be prescriptive for what it is, it’s just finding your groove around what works for you so you can get in there and move in the morning and go from there.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yeah, I think you’re right. And in terms of this, we are talking habits, so let’s maybe round this little bit out with some tips on these habits. I know there’s some really important things you’ve covered a couple of already, maybe come back to our number one motto when it does come to setting up habits. And if you’re going to look at these four elements that we’ve talked about today, how would you say people should approach?
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, the most important thing when it comes to building out your morning routine is one habit at a time, over time and it’s choosing one thing. What’s one thing that you can start taking out of your morning, which is a negative habit and start and one thing that you can replace it with, which is a positive habit. The worst thing you can do is go right, I’m going to change these five things at once and let’s do it all. I’m going to eat healthy and train and turn off social media and start podcasting and start taking supplementation and water and do all of that, and I can guarantee you’re going to fail within the first couple of weeks. It’s just not sustainable. And a lot of people underestimate the amount of effort required to ingrain a habit in your world. And so I think the real secret to this around building out and your morning routines and starting the day from a positive habitual side of things is one habit at a time over time, and that’s the key to longevity and sustainability in this process.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, I’d just add to that, Rob, that as much as people underestimate how much work it is to change, I think especially around this morning, this morning routine, just the fact that you change one thing, the impact that that can have on the knock on it has, it doesn’t take all four, it doesn’t take a change in your whole life and turning everything upside down at once to get a huge benefit. Like I said, try smiling in the morning first thing. For me, that was a huge shift and I was like, are you out of your mind? That couldn’t have given such a big hit, but it did. So try one at a time. Over time, like you’re saying, it’s absolutely critical.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
You’ve got to think if over the next 12 months you change, which we’re advocates of. I’m not an advocate of, I don’t mind those challenges like 75 hard and all those types of things. I think it’s good to get, people make snap changes, but it’s not sustainable. There’s a lot of people who do them and it doesn’t become a way of life, and at the end of that 75 days, they go back to their old ways. And so the key to sustainable change is just choosing one at a time. And if you do one per quarter, which is what we’re advocates of, if you think over a 12 month period, if you improved your nutrition in the morning in terms of how you fueled yourself, if you started to move, if you started doing wit every day and you didn’t go straight into social media and instead listen to podcasts, if you did those four things over the next 12 months, your life will be completely different in 12 months time compared to what it is today. But it’s not by trying to do everything, it’s once, it’s just introducing and tweaking and changing and adapting and dialling in your morning routine over a period of time, that’s what’s going to make you a high performer for the long term, not just a flash in the pan results.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah, absolutely. Sustainable success and progress is what we want. Again, not just that flash in the pan, let’s look at our second thing we said we were going to talk about today, which is coming back to that idea that the morning starts the night before.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Yeah. I want to quickly just very quickly talk a bit about this, and this is once you start dialling in your morning routine, this is the next layer to it, is that your sleep and your energy is absolutely fundamental to setting yourself up for success the next day and getting the right amount of sleep. It just puts you in the best state of mind because you can eat well move well and do all those things, but if you are sleep deprived, a lot of your morning routine is going to go out the window. And so I think starting your morning routine the night before does start with having a really good night’s sleep. It enables you to rest, recharge lets your mind and your body recover. You’ve got to find what works for you, whether it’s six hours, seven hours, eight hours, whatever it is. I know for me my sweet spots, a good seven to seven and a half to eight hours between seven and eight is right for me. When I start having less than that, I start feeling tired, worn out, stressed and grumpy, rob. And so it’s about finding what works for you, finding a rhythm where that works for you, getting the right amount of sleep, and that just sets you up for a really good start to the day rather than starting behind the eight ball because you’ve had a shit night the night before.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
And I think the other thing to add to that, which is it’s all sort of common sense, and you’re right, people have to find their own routine, but those routines are fueled with energy. Even just starting to do something or remember what you want to do in the morning, a morning routine is going to demand physical and mental energy. You have to have it. So I think without that proper rest, no matter how well you set this up, no matter what intentions you have, as you sit here listening to us and you might be sitting here in the middle of the day or in the morning feeling great and going, yep, I’m going to do all this stuff, guaranteed, no matter how good those plans are or what those intentions are, if you are tired, if you’re not sleeping well and you haven’t got the amount of energy in the tank, you need to even kick the day off, right? You won’t do it. So I think we can’t underestimate how important this is.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah, absolutely. What’s your biggest takeaway from today?
Speaker 2 (35:53):
I think how you start the day sets the tone for the day. That energy switch of is it positive or is it negative? So much of your day can be lost just as we say, win the day, win the morning, win the day. You can lose it in the first five minutes based on what you’re doing when you set that energy switch to positive or negative.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah. For me it’s that high performers have winning routines and they weren’t born with that routine. What they did is they were intentional about it, they defined it, they crafted it, they applied it, they grooved it, they adapted it, and they just dialled it in and got better and better and better at that morning routine. It’s just that one thing that you could just keep working on and getting better and better and better at it. A 1% improvement every day, every week, every month, and just work on making it the best start to your day. And it’s just a reminder that high performers, they weren’t born with it, they created it.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah, for sure. And I think let’s just hammer it home with one more, which is keep it simple and remember that one habit at a time over time, the ability, everyone listening to this would hear one thing where they can think, oh, that needs a bit of work. Stick to that one thing and just groove that over time and then stack on the next one when you need to. It’s really, really important that you do one at a time over time
Speaker 1 (37:05):
And that’s how action step out of today is. What we want you to be able to do is look at your morning routine and like Dan asked you to reflect at the start of this episode around reflecting on how did you start the day, what was the first thing you did in the first hour or two of your day, and is it by default or is it by design? And if it is by default and you’re not great at, haven’t defining it well at the moment, let’s start getting a little bit intentional. Choose one, choose one habit that you’re not happy with. Eliminate it or replace it with one positive habit. Whether it’s been by either what you’re doing with your feeding focus, fuel moving. Choose one of those four elements that we’ve spoken through today and work really hard on integrating one really positive habit into your morning routine. Lock it in, then move on to the next one over a period of time.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Brilliant. I love it.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Great episode, Dan.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
It was, I love this topic so much good stuff happens when we start to set this up right with clients. So I look forward to hearing from other people that are listening in and on The Trade Den community, what you are taking out of making some of these changes in due course.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Shout out to Chris Timmons at our mastermind event coming up next week. He’s a big advocate of this. He’s got Tim O’s tours who takes the boys out for run club. He loves, he loves his mantra, win the morning, win the day. I’m sure he is looking forward to taking the boys to see the sites of Adelaide I think.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
He does, and I can absolutely guarantee. I reckon, Chris, his first thing you’d do in the morning is smile. He probably laughs. I think knowing Chris, he’s that positive. So good on him. Good stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
All right, let’s leave it there. Thanks for tuning in for another episode here on The Trade Den. Then looking forward to coming back to you next week. Thanks heaps.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Catch you on the next one.