Every weekday morning starts with a 5 o'clock wake up. I know it might sound early, but I love the calmness I feel in the morning. This is the time of the day that I reserve exclusively for myself and to take care of myself. Everything I do from the time I get out of bed until I start my work day around 9 is designed to help me be relaxed, awake, and extremely productive. Once I get downstairs, the very first thing I do is to drink a glass of water. It's great for hydration, and I find that a glass of water first thing in the morning actually helps to wake me up. Once I'm down with my water, it's time to make breakfast. But hold up, because my morning routine doesn't actually start in the morning, it begins the night before. So this is arguably the most important part of my morning routine, and it happens the night before. What I do is to lay out everything I need the night before, so I can just get up, come downstairs, and get on with my day without having the day. So I get my workout clothes ready, put them in my gym bag, and leave the bag in the path that I'll take to go out the door. Next, I lay out everything that I need to make my breakfast. Bowl, spoon, oatmeal, pecans, banana, measuring cup, wooden spoon, knife, and small pot on the stove, though the blueberries will stay in the fridge until the morning. Then I set out my workout drink, vitamins, and a glass of water. This whole process serves one important purpose, and that purpose is to reduce the friction that I would have in the morning if I hadn't done these things the night before. It makes it easier, there's less to think about, and there's absolutely no possibility that I'm going to forget something. I've basically made this habit automatic and inevitable, which makes it easier. And all that stuff comes directly from a title called Atomic Habits, which I'll discuss in more detail in just a second. First, I need to make breakfast. Every morning I make a healthy breakfast of what I call power oatmeal. It's a recipe I picked up in my cycling years and is a great way to get fueled before my workout. It's half a cup of oatmeal, half a cup of blueberries, but I just kind of eye it, quarter cup of pecans, again, just kind of eye it, and one banana sliced up. Once that's ready, I do the dishes right away and make my way over to the table to eat. One of the things I've adopted as a part of this routine is to have a strict policy of no social media, no email, and no news until I'm finished with my entire morning routine. The only exception is that I do play the wordle as soon as I sit down. I decided to cut all of that stuff out of my morning for two reasons. First, I found that it would derail me. I'd get distracted, and before I knew it, I'd wasted 15 perfectly good minutes or more doing I honestly couldn't tell you what. And second, I found that those things, particularly social media, would really put me in a bad mood, and that's not the way you want to start your day. So the idea of getting off to a positive start and focusing on my mental health in that way was very important to me, especially now as I'm retiring and transitioning from my career in the army to doing he spoke style full time. And in order to really hit the ground running with a lot of great positive habits to help set me up for success, I turned to Audible, today's video sponsor, and one of the recommendations that you guys have given me in the comments several times, Atomic Habits by James Clear. To say that this title changed my life would be an understatement. And what I really love about Atomic Habits is just how easy and actionable everything is. For example, and the thing I started applying immediately are the four steps to creating and maintaining good habits. Number one is to make it obvious. Here you're arranging your environment so the thing that you strive for is right in front of you, and the thing that's holding you back is completely out of sight. Number two is to make it attractive. You want to make that good habit more appealing by combining it with something you already love. So for example, if you want to exercise more, you might try listening to your favorite music while you work out. Number three is to make it easy. Big changes take time, so what you want to do is to start small. Making the entire house, for example, that's overwhelming, but neatening up my desk is a lot more manageable. And number four is to make it inevitable. Make good habits part of your routine so they become automatic. Listening to Atomic Habits as well as other titles unaudible became and is a part of my morning routine, and you'll see that part in the great chair in my office that I sit in to do it later on in the video. And what I found is that audiobooks in audio itself has a medium, has the power to boost my mood and help me disrupt those negative thinking patterns. In fact, psychology today said that for those of us prone to anxiety and depression, listening to someone else read aloud can help by replacing negative thoughts with something else. And in this case, the something else for me were a lot of positive habits that put me on the path to success as soon as I get out of bed. Now no matter who you are or what you're into, audible offers an incredible selection of audiobooks across every genre. As an audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from the entire catalog, including bestsellers and new releases. And members also get full access to a growing selection of audiobooks, audible originals and podcasts. New members can try it free for 30 days, visit audible.com slash eSpokeStyle or text eSpoke style to 500-500 to try audible free for 30 days. Now let's get moving. Once I finish my breakfast, the dishes go in the dishwasher. I take my vitamins, make my pre-workout drink and set it at the end of the island so it's easy to grab on my way out. Then I head downstairs to my office where the lights are already on from the automation I set up. I then head to the bathroom in the studio to get ready for the gym, brush my teeth, rinse with some mouthwash and floss. Next I head back to my office to get dressed. I change into my workout clothes at the gym so I just throw on some joggers and a hoodie, which I've conveniently laid out on the valet the night before, along with some sneakers. I grab my Apple Watch, top kit, wallet and phone, head back upstairs, grab my pre-workout drink and gym bag and get into my car. Now once this happens, I feel like I've already won because everything else basically becomes automatic at this point. I'm going to drive to the gym, I'm going to do my workout, I'm going to take a shower, et cetera, et cetera. All of those things have literally become inevitable, so let's stop delaying the inevitable and get going. So I usually pull out of the house around 5.45, 5.50 and it's a little bit less than a 15 minute drive to the gym. Currently we're kind of late spring time coming up on early summer and it's more or less completely laid outside. I actually like it in the fall when it's in winter, when it's super dark. It's black, I don't know why, it's just I just feel like it's so peaceful. Even though it's laid out now, I still feel that same sense of the drive. Like I said at the beginning of the video, this time in the morning is time that I reserve exclusively for myself. There's no distractions. I'm focusing on things that I know are going to make me feel good, make me healthy and things that I know that are going to help me have an awesome day. All right, just pulled into the gym parking lot, going ahead inside and hit today's workout. I workout six days a week Monday through Saturday and I begin each workout with a short, easy half mile jog inside to get warmed up. For my workouts, I use a strength and conditioning plan that I found on train heroic, which is a combination of classic strength and resistance training, body weight exercises, high intensity interval training and cardio like rowing and jumping rope. Each workout takes between 45 minutes to an hour and I always spend an extra five minutes after the workout stretching. So once I finish my workout, I do like to shower at the gym for a few reasons. Number one, I hate being sweaty and nasty when I get back into the car. Number two, it's one less thing that I have to do when I get home so I can just transition into doing other things. And number three, I won't be in Robbins' way when she's trying to get ready for work as well. Before I turn the car on, this is what I do. I sit back, I close my eyes and I take several deep breaths. While I'm doing this, I'm just sort of meditating, listening to everything around me, feeling grateful. And I do this until I start smiling. It's a small thing that takes hardly any time at all but it's so worth it. Then I turn the car on and drive home. And while I'm driving home, I'm also expressing gratitude. I love where we live, it's beautiful, there is so much for us to be thankful for. Once I'm home and have settled in, head back down to my office, I will light a candle and then sit down in my chair, put my headphones in and spend up to 30 minutes listening to an audio book. This is a very important ritual. Not only does it help me center myself, but it also inspires and sparks a great deal of creativity. Once I finish listening to my audio book, I go to my desk and start my day. I've been using a digital planning app called Sonsama that I really love because it allows me to block my time, track the time I spend on tasks, and gives me access to the most important things I need all in one spot so I'm not frantically toggling between various apps and tabs. Now this is the very first time that I will check my email. I give myself 10 to 15 minutes to scan through, delete what I don't need, and respond to what's most important. And once that's done, I'm ready to jump in and start my day. Many thanks once again to Audible for sponsoring this video. Reminder that new members can try it free for 30 days, visit audible.com slash eSpokeStyle or text eSpokeStyle to 500-500 to try Audible free for 30 days.