Live Each Day to the Fullest
By: John Cunningham
Tags: Positive Thinking, Routine, Personal Development, Emotional Intelligence, Self Improvement

Get up early and go to bed exhausted

Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash

In a recent interview, iconic songstress and business tycoon Dolly Parton told the world she starts her day at 3 am. 3am! By the time the clock hits 7 am, when many folks are just waking up, she has already finished her prayers, daily meditation and completed 3 hours of writing. Dolly’s morning routine may seem unbelievable. But you too could achieve more, and bring increased levels of success into your life by waking up a little earlier and living each day to the fullest.

There are countless books and programs for creating effective morning rituals. Successful people have meticulous morning routines, and if you want to stack up wins throughout the day, you need one too. You should create a routine that allows you to feel a sense of balance and helps you to record small wins every morning. These activities will give you a sense of accomplishment that will make the start of your workday feel like the middle and bedtime seem like a victory lap.

Every day I feel is a blessing from God. And I consider it a new beginning. Prince

The Three Alarm Method

If you find it hard to get out of bed in the morning, try using 3 alarms. Start by setting the third alarm. That one is for the time you will get up. Then set the two others at fifteen-minute intervals before that.

In the morning when the first alarm goes off, pray, meditate, do positive affirmations, or state what you are grateful for. Anything that gets you in touch with your spiritual self and helps to ground you is fine. If you prefer to do this from the comfort of your bed, that’s perfectly ok, too. If you doze, no worries. Just focus on spiritual connection in that first fifteen minutes.

Alarm two is time to wrap your head around what you need to accomplish for the day. At this point, your mind will be a little sharper. Visualize your day and the list of things you need to do. If you have a presentation or important meeting, visualize yourself not just succeeding at that, but thriving. In your visualization, you own the room and everyone is in awe of your level of knowledge and input. If you are a student, imagine yourself answering every question correctly on a test or stunning your seminar group with your depth of knowledge.

When you visualize success, you are less likely to feel disrupted when things don’t go as planned or worse — reel out of control. You will be more prepared to handle these problems because you have already created positive momentum in your mind.

Alarm three is time to roll back those covers and jump out of bed, ready to win the day.

It’s not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn’t sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day? Jocko Willink

The First Promise of the Day

The first promise you make to yourself every day is to get up at a fixed time. When you break that promise, you start the day with a loss. It’s sometimes difficult to rally past L one, and as a result, you seem to have no momentum throughout the day. Instead, set yourself up for the day with an easy victory. Plan to get up 30–60 minutes before you have to. This time will give you space to take charge of your day.

Oftentimes, when you wake up late you end up chasing the day. When this happens, it’s very difficult to feel a sense of control or to realize that you have had any level of accomplishment. On the other hand, getting up early allows you to create a flow to the day and notice its rhythms.

https://medium.com/illumination-curated/success-starts-with-gratitude-ddf0e25df0ac

I wake up at 5 am, and by the time I am preparing for work at 7 I’ve had a relaxing cup of coffee, read a chapter of a book, completed my prayers, and finished exercising. Getting up early, I am able to see patterns in my morning that help me throughout the day. If I over pour my coffee or drop a plate, it is a sign to pay a little more attention to the small details throughout the day. Likewise, if my morning goes smoothly, without much focus on how to do the tasks, I know I need to trust my instincts more. They will guide me through. There are signs of the rhythm for your day too. You just need to have space in your morning to hear them, and that means going slow.

Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it. Richard Whately

One Achievement at a Time

Whether you are working on a big personal project or just getting your day off on the right foot, getting a win or two will help you to be more positive. One easy way to stack up victories is to knock down tasks that you are working on being consistent with. This may include positives like exercise, writing, or reading a few pages of a book. They can also be avoidances such as not reading or watching the news (it tends to be on the negative side), not hitting the snooze button, or not using social media before work.

No matter what, or how many, wins you achieve in the morning, your day will go smoother if you can tick any off of your list. These achievements create a positive spiral that will provide you momentum for being positive and resourceful throughout the day.

Get up every morning, tell yourself you are beautiful, and gear up to win! Manushi Chhillar

When Things Don’t Go as Planned

There will be days that your morning sucks and nothing goes as planned. It happens. You don’t have to accept that your day will be miserable. Instead, behave yourself into a new reality.

While emotions and memories are strong, actions are stronger. If you don’t like the direction your day is taking, change your mindset, and change your actions. Emotions are one way your body and subconscious communicate with you. To improve your emotional state, analyze what that message is, and make the appropriate move. Thinking and responding, rather than feeling and reacting. You may not be able to control your emotions, but you can manage your actions. Choose to do those things that move you in a more affable direction.

I get up every morning and it’s going to be a great day. You never know when it’s going to be over, so I refuse to have a bad day. Paul Henderson

After You turn Out the Lights

As you lay your head on your pillow, reflect on your day, your successes and shortcomings, also consider your discoveries and surprises. As you run through the story of what was, count your victories, and analyze what you could have done better. What lessons did you receive today? How can you apply those to your future? Doing a daily inventory like this will help you to feel a sense of achievement for the day. You may not have been as successful as you had hoped, but you have moved forward from the person you were yesterday. Regardless of if you have taken a step forward or back, resolve to make tomorrow better than today, utilizing the knowledge and experience that has come from this day.

https://medium.com/illumination/dont-forget-to-celebrate-your-victories-6b4a2b5b3bbd

Consider what is on your agenda for tomorrow and resolve to give a good effort as a means to achieving success at those tasks. Just as you did in the morning, visualize your success. Finally, spend your last waking moments dreaming. Dreaming of what you want your life to be. Creating this vision of the future will sprinkle seeds of success along your path. If you fall asleep, that’s perfectly ok. Maybe you’ll overcome your challenges and move closer to the life of your dreams as you sleep.

Before you go to bed each night, make sure you have squeezed every last drop out of the day. Tomorrow is not promised. So you need to get as much out of each day as possible. When you go to bed exhausted, besides falling asleep quickly and sleeping deeply, you will also have a real sense of accomplishment. If you didn’t accomplish all you wanted to, it certainly won’t be for a lack of effort, and hopefully, you’ll have tomorrow to continue working your plan.

Even if I ain’t the famous-est, the richest, the best — as long as I know I kept it real and didn’t backstab nobody — I sleep good at night. 21 Savage

Summary

Waking up early and going to bed exhausted will help you to feel you have won the day. Winning life a day at a time means you mount victories in the coming weeks, months, and years too. You were born to succeed. Starting and ending your day with reflection and a solid plan will help you to achieve that.