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As I record this we fly towards the end of the year and although it’s a super common time to be reflecting and setting goals for the year to come, which for the record is a practice I love… I’m also of the belief: Why Wait Until The New Year?

In today’s FAQ show: How You Start Your Day Is How You Start The Rest Of Your Life.

It’s those little daily practices that either enable you to achieve those lofty, big exciting and compelling goals… OR keep you stuck.

I want to keep today’s show simple because personally simple gets down and complicated gets procrastinated.

So under the premise of, How You Start Your Day Is How You Start The Rest Of Your Life here are 3 decisions to make each morning to enable you to achieve your new years goals. Actually the first ‘2’ are NOT TO DO decisions which as I covered in show #048 are even more important as TO DO decisions.

Your Not To Do List will help you say YES to the things that will bring you closer to your goal health. By guiding you to say NO to the things that sap your time, your energy, your life.

NOT TO DO #One: Start The Day RUSHING.

We’ve all been there unintentionally, though some of us choose to repeat the process daily.

It’s the worst start to the day to sleep in, perhaps miss your first client – or meeting – or at the least arrive flustered and unprepared and then spend the rest of the day chasing your tail trying to catch up.

I avoid this even on the smallest scale. I hate feeling under time pressure from the very beginning of the day.

Although I work to a clock with my one on one clients or timer with my online work and my days are often scheduled to within an inch of their life… I always allow myself enough time in the morning to not feel that frenzied need to ‘catch up’ before the day has barely started.

I structure the day to be efficient and effective and to avoid rushing.

I was interested to hear Tim Ferriss in a recent podcast (his own: The Tim Ferriss show if you’re interested) discuss what wealth means to him. That it’s not the flashy, expensive car or house – moreso – and I’m totally paraphrasing here, it’s time wealth and to not feel like he has to rush.

NOT TO DO #Two: Let Yourself Down.

This is closely related to #1 because once you start the day rushing you’ve already let yourself down.

However you have a chance to make it back to yourself. Yourself can be very forgiving!

So, to be more specific about not letting yourself down I mean it’s important to start the day making the best decisions for you.

=> That’s what time you get up and if that involves an alarm do you make that happen as soon as the alarm goes off?

=> What do you fuel your body with?

=> Do you exercise?

=> What is the first task you launch into?

Basically you’re choosing the important actions that deliver long term results even if they may not be the easiest actions right there in the moment.

Talking long term results my TO DO decision is a recent inclusion in my morning routine that I’m loving.

It really helps me start the day as I want to continue the rest of my life. Are you curious?

TO DO #Three: 30 Minutes For ME. Or in this case 30 minutes for YOU!

With all the structure I’ve created in my day I still sometimes found I was getting caught up in the important and necessary right now stuff and never getting to the important later stuff.

So I decided to get up half an hour earlier (which means I get to bed half an hour earlier) and always work on a task related to my number one goal before I do any thing else. So for me this is the Body Gain Lifestyle membership… which you can find out more HERE:

For you it may be the 30 minutes of exercise or meal planning that has the biggest impact on achieving your body gain goal. The thing is it’s really satisfying (and for me also calming!) to know that no matter what else happens in the day to come you’ve taken that next step forward towards achieving your number one goal.

On a somewhat related note…

On another podcast I listened to recently (this one was the School of Greatness with Lewis Howes and the episode on ‘How To Boost Your Productivity By Procrastinating’ where Lewis interviewed Rory Vaden)

My biggest take away was: There’s nothing about prioritising that creates more time. As such the most productive people do the things now that create more time later. Perhaps that’s creating standard operating systems and out-sourcing or delegating. It’s a bit of a time eat now however it pays back big time later.

To get actionable today, let’s go with 30 minutes for YOU. Or if that sounds a little daunting even 15 or 5 minutes to start! You can always build up. What is the thing to work on first thing tomorrow that will be really satisfying to know that no matter what else happens in the day to come you’ve taken that next step forward towards achieving your number one goal?

That brings us to the end of this week in Healthification… a week where this little podcast surpassed 30,000 downloads in total and I’m supremely grateful for every single one.

So super huge thanks to you for your support and for sharing this week with me.

If you’ve enjoyed this show and gotten value out of it I’d truly appreciate it if you pop over to iTunes and leave me a review. It helps other people find Healthification and it inspires me to power on!

If you liked this you’ll also like: Why NOT Being Genetically Gifted Is A Weight Loss Advantage.

If you’re yet to share the Healthification love – just click here to zip over to iTunes and leave an honest rating and review. It’d help me out big time. With gratitude, Kate.