Unleashing Your Potential through Morning Routines

Katie Bell: 1:13

Today we are going to explore the habits, beliefs and practices that can transform your mindset. And unleash your full potential as a clinic, and a business owner. I’m Katie, your host. And we’re going to be delving into a really simple, yet transformative habit. And I’m laughing because it’s about making your bed every day, we are going to discover why this kind of mundane task. And even if you’ve got lots of pillows, and it takes you ages to create your bed, at the end of the bigger in the beginning of the day, how it can set a tone for a successful day ahead. Now, in our foundation programme, our members go through some foundational elements that they need, that we believe that they need to make their business a success. And one of the things one of the elements that we teach in one of our modules is all about time management, productivity, productivity, efficiency, boundaries, mindset growth, and one of the things we talk about is the golden hour. Now in reality, it could be a golden, five minutes, it could be a golden half an hour, it could be a golden hour, it really doesn’t matter that much. But it’s all about how you start your day. And I want to explore the impact of what making your bed on your mindset and your overall day can have and how does this small action create this ripple effect? Well, when you make your bed, it sets the tone for productivity. Your environment is a product of you. Your environment is a product of how you think, how you believe and therefore how you act. So if your environment is messy, is disorganised is untidy, is a place that you don’t feel calm and clear in that sets the tone. making your bed serves as that initial accomplishment. It creates a sense of order, it creates a sense of control a sound like a military Sergeant here, but go with me, it can influence how you approach everything throughout the day. So my golden hour, is mine is actually golden two hours, because I do I make sure that I am up and awake a minimum of two hours before the first thing in my day, if I am exercising, I’m walking the dogs because walking the dogs is an exercise to me, I have to do something on top of that which might be gym class, boxing class, hit class, whatever it is, then it might be three hours before my first thing in the day. Now, in three hours, you can do a lot, three golden hours, you can achieve a lot. The first thing is getting up and making the bet brushing your teeth going through those daily habits, those things that you do, and the next thing I do is get up straight out and walk the dog. Usually then it might for me, it’s all about movement in the first hour of the day. It’s all about movement, it will be walking the dog, or and or doing some form of exercise. This physical act of movement and making your bed can almost symbolise this discipline and this attention to detail. And it’s this fosters the growth mindset. It’s that belief that small and consistent efforts lead to overall success. And, you know, when people say, what’s the one thing that you would say, has created as allowed you to be as successful as allows you to take your clinic from nought to multiple, six figures or has allowed you to go from a team of nought to 28, or has allowed you to have two successful businesses. I would say it’s about consistency. I’m never off. Like I don’t ever not do what I say I’m going to do. So small, consistent efforts that lead to overall success. Those people that are like one hit wonders, just go big, and then go home and wonder why it’s not worked posted on social media once and then wonder why they’ve not got a million followers. It’s it’s about being consistent. And when you make your bed, you’re starting your day with that intention. It’s a simple yet tangible way of declaring that you’re taking charge of your environment and of your day. And this will spill over into your goal setting habits. It kind of gives you that sense of self care, it respects your space. It’s that daily reminder that you you deserve an organised and welcoming environment. My cleaners were in last week and I went in to talk to them and chat to them because they’re just lovely, lovely people. And my house is cleaned before they even come in to clean. I am really obsessed about how my environment is it’s crucial to how I function. And we were talking about some of the hilarious houses and hilarious situations that they had been in and and he said this house is a joy To clean he said, because I can actually clean I don’t have to tidy. Everything is neat. Every all your cupboards are organised if it feels calm when you walk in, he said, and when I get because they clean in my business as well in my clinic when they go into the clinic, he said it’s a complete reflection. He said, It’s like guess, what is it through the keyhole? If I could guess that that clinic was, is yours, I could guess that this house is yours, because it oozes that’s that simplicity, that simple lifestyle, that calm, organised approach to everything that I do, you said, I can guarantee that you run a really efficient organised business. You said to some houses I go into, and it’s utter chaos, and they are constantly chasing their tail, they’ve got no time. They’re disorganised, they feel like they’re just being pulled from pillar to post. They’re not in control of anything. He said, and it’s really, really all about taking charge of that environment. First and foremost, it gives you that boost of self esteem, that good positive self image. So making your bed is just one small part of this golden hour, five minutes, half hour, three hours, in my case, whatever you want to call it, but how can it become part of that larger sort of morning routine. So there’s loads of books out there, the 5am Club is the one that jumps out to me and I read the 5am Club about I think it was about two years ago now. And I did it for however long the 5am club book tells you to do it for an hour, I’ll be really honest, it was really hard because 5am is basically still in the middle of the night. And I am a morning person, but I’m not a 5am person like that it’s early, I’m easy to get up at six, even half five is okay, but 5am was just one step too far for me. I do like to be able to sleep. So the problem I’ve got with the 5am Club is that it doesn’t work for everybody. Not everybody is great in the morning. Some people are night owls, some people to like, like to be able to work at different times. And I think we should be flexible and accommodating enough to understand that sometimes people need to adjust and can’t just follow one bulk. And one way because it doesn’t suit everybody. But successful individuals often often put their accomplishment accomplishments down to morning routines, and getting things right in the morning. So making the bed serves as an anchor for that series of positive habits that set the stage for a productive, fulfilling day. Now when we bring in a new habit, so it might be that you’re going to be trying to meditate or do mindfulness for five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, it might be that your journal journaling, it might be that you’re going to read 10 pages of a self development book, it might be that you’re gonna go for a walk, it might be it might be doing some yoga, whatever it is, it takes time to build a habit. So if you think about a habit, what habits do you have that you literally just do every single day, I would hope brushing your teeth is one of them. But whenever I go on holiday, like I’m just in the habit of exercising, it’s not really like a ah, go gone exercise. It’s just like a habit, it’s just a thing that I do. So whenever you whenever I go away, I always take my gym kit with me because it’s just one of those habits, it’s that consistent approach. It’s now a behaviour of mine. And building a habit can be anything from 21 to 66 days, according to the research with an average of around 66 days. So this is why loads of diets reloaded rubbish because most people willpower is not even a thing. Okay, it’s like something like less than 5% of your of your brain power. So we can’t rely on willpower to stick to a diet, okay. But to get a new habit where we stick to what I don’t know what we’re meant to have our plates looking like in terms of macros, it is easy to not see success in the first 21 days and just stop doing it. Same with your morning routine, you’re gonna feel better, immediately, like, the great thing about a morning routine is that you’re gonna just start to see the difference quickly in the way that your business performs in the way that you are at home in the way that you are with your children, with your family, with your partner, whatever it is, but that that kind of cumulative effect of a morning routine takes time, you can’t stop too early. So habits can become automatic in a much shorter timeframe. Right so take longer, and it depends on how complex that habit is how consistently you engage in that behaviour. So daily repetition, for example, is going to be way more effective than sporadic attempts. It depends on personal motivation. So do these habits aligned with your values and your goals? It could be environmental cues that in ruins habits. So, consistently performing the behaviour, in response to a particular cue can accelerate habit formation. So it can be when something happens like the alarm goes off, you do that. It could be that you’re building on an existing routine or modifying the current behaviour. That means that the habit formation process will speed up. So what is your current routine is your current routine, rolling out of bed setting snooze button rolling out of bed, racing down having a really crap bowl of rice krispies, and then chucking new stuff, throwing some stuff lunch together and flying out the door and racing to work and you’ve got a minute to spare. Okay, that is going to set the tone of the rest of the day, you know, when people say to you, oh, did you get outside out of the wrong side of bed this morning, I can tell you what it is, is that you didn’t get out of the bed outside of the bed that led you into a golden hour. Do you just raced into the day, and that sets the tone for how the whole day is going to go and you just find that then you’re chasing your tail all day, and you can never get back on top of things. So it’s really normal with a golden hour, you’re not going to do it every single day. Okay, because you’re not machines, we’re not robots. I found it really easy Monday to Friday, but Saturday and Sunday did not work for me, okay, because my golden hour needed to look different on those days. And it’s not because I didn’t have good routines. But I kind of recognised that actually, I needed a golden hour, Monday to Friday. And then I needed a kind of different way of doing things Saturday and Sunday, that still allowed me to do those good things that I enjoy. But it had a little bit more flexibility that meant that I was going to stick to it, and one or two days missed. And it’s not going to derail your progress because patience and consistency are key. So if you don’t make your bed every day, but you make it 70% of the time, you’re onto a winner, but we want to make it 80%. And we want to make it 90%. So there’s very few occasions that you don’t set that right intention for your day ahead. So I want you to take a moment as you drive and listen to this, wherever you are. And think about what was your morning routine, like this morning? How did it look for you? Mine is all about movement in the first hour. The second hour for me is all about setting myself up for success for the day. That’s in terms of how my house is because I have to commute an awful long way, from the back of the house to the end of the garden to my office. It takes all of a huge eight seconds into my garden office. But I like to leave the house in a way that when I go back to it for my lunchtime one hour where I walk the dog again. And I have a routine at lunchtime that I’m not going in and it’s utter chaos, because that’s a distraction. So my my kind of mid part of my golden time is about setting myself up. It’s looking at what the days got ahead. It’s making sure that I’ve got a kind of a working list of what I’ve got to get through on that day. It’s all planned previously on the Sunday anyway, so there’s no surprises for me there. I just like to reconnect in. And what I don’t do is check my emails. I don’t check the Slack channel. Okay, it’s about them thinking right? What is the next thing that I’m going to do to move my business forward. Now my podcast episode next week, just to give you a little teaser here is going to be talking about unleashing productivity through eating the frog. Okay. Metaphorically, of course, we are going to talk about getting the biggest tasks done earlier in the day in your most creative time, not allowing yourself to be consumed by all the minutiae of life and business. So to give you an example, today is my podcast recording day, I’ve got a three hour stint where I am recording podcasts. I have not checked slack or emails before that. I don’t. This morning was my golden time to get ready for this. I’d got all my creativity done ready for it. If I then draw, get drawn into emails admin, other people’s stuff, I lose my creative flair, I lose my ability to promote here and produce good content for you guys. So again, it’s knowing what works for you. And obviously, I made my bed. So think about how your morning routine when write your morning routine out of 10 and then write how your day is going so far, because it will be a direct reflection of how you started the day. And what can you change about it. You don’t have to set yourself up to fail. Is it just one thing? Can you get up five minutes earlier? Can you put your phone in another room so you’ve got to get out of bed and you just spend that five minutes having a coffee looking out the window. It can be as small as that but consistently repeating that behaviour is just going to allow your brain to work through what it needs to work through and Set yourself up in the best possible way to have a day that is fulfilling that achieves what you want to achieve that is super productive, that’s super efficient and doesn’t it doesn’t have to feel rushed and calm, rushed and stressful. And like you’re being pulled all the time from pillar to post, you are absolutely in control of how you spend your time. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little power podcast session. Join me next week where we’re going to be diving a little bit more into once we’ve kind of got through our golden hour. What does then the first part of the day need to look like and how you can use eating the frog as a delving into that metaphorical feast to boost your productivity. Join me then thanks for listening