morning routine

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Recap: Personal Constitution

OK, we’ve now spent a good two weeks on the idea of a personal constitution. Time to wrap up. 

The purpose of maintaining a personal constitution to do the right things every day, not because you’re forcing yourself, but simply because of who you are. It lets you become the best version of yourself. 

Getting ourselves to do the small things right every day is the central theme of this blog. It’s the key to unlocking the superpower of consistency and the most powerful force in the universe: compounding. 

A good personal constitution is therefore a fundamental building block of a great life. 

I really hope you’ll give it a try!

The checklist

Here is the short and simple blueprint to a good personal constitution:

  1. Draft your own version with elements for health, creativity, people and burdens.
    • Make it as personal to yourself as possible.
    • Keep it simple and short.
  2. Passionately recite your constitution for a minute or two each morning.
    • Integrate it into your morning routine to ensure consistency. 
    • You need to feel it, not just ramble it off.
    • Preferably get some inspirational background music.
  3. Be patient. It will take several weeks before you start noticing behavioral changes.
    1. Be aware of these changes and pat yourself on the back when they happen.
    2. If a certain part of your constitution is not working or becomes outdated, modify or replace it. 

So, there you have it: a simple 1-2-3 to a good personal constitution 🙂

Good luck!

Schalk
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Recap: Morning Movement

OK, let’s wrap up our third weekly topic: establishing an early-morning exercise habit. 

The previous two weeks talked about establishing a consistent sleep pattern and getting an accountability buddy. Both these strategies make it easier to get out of bed bright and early each morning. 

This week’s habit ensures that we manage to switch ourselves on once we are actually up. In combination, these three habits can work wonders for your daily productivity!

The checklist

So, without further ado, here’s the summarized guide to establishing a good morning exercise habit:

  1. Select your movement of choice, considering the following criteria:
    • It should be easy to do regardless of the weather
    • One session should be quite short (10 minutes will suffice)
    • You should be able to see yourself enjoying this activity
  2. Get some equipment (e.g. a yoga mat) and instructions (e.g. a highly ranked app)
  3. Make space for exercise in your morning routine
    • This mostly means getting up 10 minutes earlier 😮
    • Never try to squeeze anything into your morning without deliberately making space first!
  4. Develop a 1-minute Lite version for crazy or uninspired days
    • It’s critical to stick to the habit even during your worst mornings

So, there you have it! May mastering morning movement motivate many marvelous minds 😀

See you tomorrow!

Schalk
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Yoga: the Habit That Finally Stuck

My yoga experiment started many years ago, mainly out of frustration about my lack of flexibility. In fact, like a true yoga dinosaur, I still bought my yoga instructional videos on DVDs! 

Predictably, my practice was very hot and cold. Sometimes I would get inspired and practice regularly for a week or two. Other times, my DVDs would gather dust for weeks on end (as is the fate of most DVDs nowadays).

My breakthrough finally came when I fully committed to my morning routine. Yoga was a natural candidate for inclusion, mostly because it wakes up the body and can be done whether it rains or shines.  

Thus, yoga soon claimed a slot quite early in my routine right after my rather odd 2-minute habit of scoring the previous day (we’ll get to that in a couple of weeks).

Which brings me to another important point about habits… Routines tend to work well because the start of one habit is triggered by the end of another. 

For me, filling in the last number on my scorecard is the trigger to turn off my wake-up music and put on Rodney Yee. And when Rodney says “Namaste” at the end of the routine, it’s my trigger to sit down for a few pages of an educational book.  

So, that’s how, after years of trying, my yoga habit finally stuck. I gave yoga an honorary position early in a string of habits that naturally cascade like a chain of dominoes every morning. 

We’ll be collecting some more dominoes for your own habit cascade over coming weeks. I hope morning exercise has already earned its spot 🙂

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Morning Exercise in the Real World

So, now that you have a yoga mat (or have dug the old one out of the closet), we can talk about using it. 

The internet has all the instructional material you’ll ever need. Just try putting “yoga” (or any other kind of exercise) into the app store on your phone and see for yourself. Go ahead, try one.

So, now that you have your mat and something to do on it, we can talk about the real issue: Actually doing it.

Consistently.

Every morning. 

It’s absolutely essential that you do not try to squeeze morning exercise into your already hectic morning. Instead, rearrange your hectic morning to open up the required space. 

This will probably involve getting up a little earlier, which has hopefully become a less frightening prospect since our first post.

But there will still be those days when life just get in the way of establishing this great little habit (a special shout-out to all those with small kids).

These are the make or break days, especially early on when you’re forming the habit. On these days, shorten your 10 minute session to 1 minute: one sun salutation, one plank, 10 push-ups, whatever.

Just don’t skip it.

Remember this key fact of life: a habit is formed by repetition, not by time. A one-minute repetition will help almost just as much as a 10-minute repetition.  

To summarize:

  • Make space in your morning
  • Religiously fit your chosen physical activity into that space every morning
  • Have a Lite version for those totally crazy or totally uninspired mornings

Like most good habits, it takes a good dose of dedication to form. But once it’s formed, things become decidedly easier. 

Tomorrow, I’ll share my journey to totally habitual morning yoga. See you then!

Schalk
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Ritualize Early Morning Movement

I’m super inflexible. So much so that getting to the point where I can touch my toes ranks among my biggest accomplishments to date (see that smug expression on the right 🙂 ). 

This, in combination with my highly rational Western mindset, should make yoga one of the last things on my radar. 

But believe it or not, I do 10 minutes of yoga every morning. And I mean every morning, regardless of whether I had a late night or am out travelling.  

My yoga practice would probably stress out some hardcore yogi’s (at least those yet to find true inner peace). Indeed, I do sacrilegious things like putting the instructional DVD on at a higher-than-normal speed and thinking about work during my session. 

But the important part is that it works for me. It’s a highly convenient and ritualized practice that wakes up my body in a healthy manner. 

Which brings us to our third…

Monday 1-minute action Buy a yoga mat

 

And make sure it’s a nice and comfy one 🙂 Using it on a regular basis should be as easy and natural as possible. 

Also, you can replace yoga with pilates or planking or aerobics or belly-dancing or whatever you think you’ll be able to do every morning. As long as it’s highly convenient and ritualized, it’ll do. 

We’ll delve deeper into the practicalities tomorrow. See you then!

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Recap: Accountability Buddy

Awakening your own superpower of consistency demands that you master your mornings.

Early morning is the only period of the day when you have full control over your time. And this control can be leveraged to proactively steer your life in the right direction. 

Those who don’t take proactive control are simply blown where the winds of life take them. As they inevitably crash into life’s many obstacles, a primitive “fight or flight” mode kicks in, sapping tons of energy for little or no reward. 

Breaking free of this mold requires a strong catalyst to push you to take action and claim your mornings. An accountability buddy could be that catalyst (it was for me). 

The checklist

So, here’s a simple guide to finding and maintaining a good accountability buddy:

  1. Select someone who can fulfill this role. If someone doesn’t come to mind right away, maybe some options listed in Monday’s post can help. 
  2. Ask this person to try this experiment with you. If they hesitate, suggest a week-long trial period to give an easy out if it’s not working. 
  3. During the conversations, focus on the following:
    • Keep it short. Be conscious of your accountability buddy’s time and end the conversation while both parties are still enjoying it. 
    • Keep it positive. See it as your mission to give your accountability buddy a more positive outlook on life. 
    • Show genuine interest. Keep track of important developments in your accountability buddy’s life. Ask for their opinion on important subjects and think carefully about the insights they share. 

Alternatively, you could simply leave a short comment on this blog every morning. I’m very interested to hear more about any practical challenges you face with these suggestions. You could also just say “hi” 🙂

In time, I hope that we can get several people commenting each morning. This could turn into a nice little community of accountability buddies making sure that everyone’s up bright and early!

I really hope you give this a go! In my experience, it sure is worth it 🙂

See you tomorrow!

Schalk
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Accountability Buddies

Last week was all about establishing a consistent sleep pattern, not only when we feel strong and motivated, but every day, like clockwork.  

As we’ve all found out for ourselves multiple times, pure willpower can’t get this job done. We need more ammunition – a lot more actually. 

So, get ready: the next couple of weeks will present an entire arsenal of weapons to help you win this daily little battle. By the time we’re done, it will no longer be a battle, it’ll be a walkover 🙂  

The best place to start is with this week’s action step:

Monday 1-minute action Set up a recurring early-morning meeting

 

The person you decide to meet with will become your accountability buddy: someone who will be expecting you to show up in decent shape every morning. 

Finding this person can be tricky in some cases. If no-one comes to mind right away, here are some good candidates:

  • A loved one who would genuinely enjoy seeing you succeed
  • Any person in your life you know deep down you should be spending more time with
  • Anyone you know who is into personal or professional development
  • That friend who just seems to be a natural morning person

An accountability buddy should not be a major time commitment. It can start with a 5 minute Skype chat. If it naturally grows longer over time, so be it. If not, it’s fine to just check in every morning. 

I really hope you make the effort to find your accountability buddy. As we’ll discuss tomorrow, the added motivation to get up bright and early each morning is just one of the great benefits 🙂

I wish you an awesome day!

Schalk
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Win the Morning, Win the Day

Cliché, but true. We all know this, but very few of us manage to do it with any degree of consistency.

Perhaps part of the reason is that we have never really stopped to think about why it’s so important. 

So, let’s do that now. Imagine you’re in a maze with doors all around you. When you go through one door, you are faced with several new doors to choose from. This will be our life analogy for the day. 

Yes, each day is a series of choices. And each choice we make shapes the next choices available to us. 

The diagram on the right shows why it is so important to start the day with the right choices. If you screw up the first couple of choices, the day is likely to be a mess.

We’ve all been there. Snooze the alarm, run late for work, skip breakfast, run out of energy, grab some unhealthy snacks, get home tired and frustrated, snap unnecessarily at a loved one, sooth the pain with some empty calories and equally empty entertainment, get to bed way too late, repeat. 

On the other hand, starting the day right makes it so much easier to have a great day. And a great life is simply a long series of great days. 

We’ll talk a lot more about morning routines in coming posts. But for now, let’s just start with building the habit of giving ourselves a fair shot at a great day by getting our asses up and running at the same time each morning (discussed yesterday). 

Why not give this a try? A new post will be waiting for you every morning, giving you one minute of quiet reflection before life starts happening. 

See you tomorrow!

 

Schalk
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The Secret to a Great Life

So, you want to know the secret?

Here it is: simply do the right things (and avoid doing the wrong things) day after day, week after week, year after year. 

Yeah, I know this sounds like state-the-obvious for beginners, but just bear with me for a few more lines. 

We all know right from wrong. Eat apples, not chocolates. Work on that important project, don’t binge the latest Netflix series. Save for retirement, don’t splurge on another electronic gadget you don’t really need. 

Yet, we keep on doing the wrong stuff. Why? Because it gives instant pleasure. Yes, we know there will be pain down the road, but when that chocolate cake looks at us with those big brown eyes, we must devour it. 

It’s basic instinct. 

Luckily, human beings are capable of controlling their basic instincts. Willpower is essentially useless in this battle, but there is a tried and tested solution: intelligent design.

Designing a life where you are in control will be a recurring theme on this blog. But for now, let’s start with the simplest of habits that lies at the foundation to a good life:

Monday 1-minute action Set a constant sleep and wake time on your phone

 

If you have an iPhone, just visit the bedtime function of the clock. Android users need to install an app like “Sleep as Android” or simply set two recurring alarms: one for bedtime and one for waking up. 

Go on. Just do it. Just for tonight…

Then join me tomorrow morning as I try to convince you to go for another day 😉

 

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