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Are YOU a morning person?

I absolutely am however it certainly was not always the case. In my first flat I believed I wasn’t a morning person. In fact, 20+ years ago (!) I’d regularly sleep through almost the entire morning and get up just in time for lunch.

As much as that was a fun time of life, it certainly wasn’t an especially healthy or even productive time!

Today’s show is for you if you’re not so much a morning person. Or simply if you’d like to be even more of a morning person. Today I’m sharing:

4 Things You Must Avoid In The Morning To Feel Good. 

It’s about more than feeling Good though. It’s also about being effective, efficient and giving yourself every opportunity to win your day.

Let’s get rolling with the first thing you must avoid in the morning to feel good…

One: SNOOZE.

Hitting the snooze button is telling your body: “My day isn’t worth starting!” The reality is that likely your day is worth starting and even if it’s not? Well, the sad fact is it’ll be there waiting for you in 5 minutes or 30 minutes or tomorrow so best option is to just get up and make a go of it!

Here are 3 tactics to Avoid Snooze In The Morning To Feel Good:

• The 5 second rule. I heard this from Mel Robbins and I LOVE it.It’s like a launching rocket. That simple. You have 5-4-3-2-1 to take that action! In this case get up as soon as your alarm goes off.
• Create a morning routine you look forward to. This needs to be individual to you. However some of the things I look forward to in the first 30-60 minutes of my day are: 10 minutes meditation. My first coffee. My delicious green smoothie. An awesome podcast to listen to as I walk to work.
• Get to bed 7-8 hours before your ideal time to get up.It’s tough to expect your body to bounce outta bed if it only just got there right?! It’ll make the snooze button and likely everything else I cover today harder to ignore. If you struggle to get to bed early enough my first question to you is: “Exactly what are you doing that keeps you up and eats away at your quality sleeping time?” More often it’s not growing your side business. Or quality time with your kids. Or exercise.

In show #110 I cover How To Become A Morning Person.

Two: SKIPPING BREAKFAST or INHALING A REFINED CARB BREAKFAST.

A skipped or poor quality breakfast is priming your body for cravings and inconsistent energy and fuelling the carb-o-la crap-o-la cycle.

It’s setting the tone for the day to come and no fuel or rubbish fuel is not what your body deserves. My caveat is if you’re the person that functions really well with intermittent fasting and as such you PLAN to not eat breakfast and you plan your high quality meals later in the day.

Here are 3 tactics to Avoid A Rubbish Breakfast In The Morning To Feel Good:

• Have a go to 5 minute breakfast. The “but toast / cereal is so quick” excuse holds no weight with me. Whether you prep and freeze smoothies for the week on a Sunday or throw together overnight oats / chia the night before there are limitless 5 minute breakfast options. The trick is to know your option in advance.
• Accept the way you start your day sets the tone for your meals to come. It’s also your first chance of the day to prove to yourself (and your body) just how committed you are to your goal. Sometimes the most powerful first step in changing a habit is just to acknowledge and accept the negative consequences continuing with that habit will guarantee. It’s time to stop reasoning yourself out of results with those “I’ll get the green smoothie not the banana bread at the cafe by work” or “I’ll eat a proper breakfast tomorrow” excuses.
• Commit to a big weekly (or bi / tri-weekly) shop so your house is always well stocked with the great breakfast fuel your body deserves. I’d even go a step further and make sure you always have those emergency back up options of the non-fresh food – so you might be out of fresh berries and kale (emergency I know!) however that’s not an issue if you keep a supply of frozen kale, spinach and berries plus some powdered spirulina and vegan protein powder. That’s a smoothie ready to go in 5 minutes even without weekend meal prep.

In show #155 I cover How To Stop Supermarket Sabotage.

Three: OTHER PEOPLES TO DO LISTS.

Starting your day with email, phone messages and other likely culprits is saying Yes to others and NO to you and your goals / priorities.

It’s super-crazy-easy to get sucked into busy yet not effective when you attempt that early morning peek at what’s waiting for you via other peoples to do lists.

Here are 3 tactics to Avoid Other Peoples To Do Lists In The Morning To Feel Good:

• Start your day with 5 minutes (or more) of something that helps you feel grounded, grateful and in control of your focus. Perhaps meditation, gratitudes or your goals. I find even just 5 minutes before powering into the day has a calming effect.
• Plan your day to come the night before. I see this as both a non-negotiable and also a constantly evolving process. There’s a fine line between overly structuring your day – which can be somewhat stressful and disheartening when you can’t follow your perfect plan perfectly and settling on the manageable strategy that gets the most out of you!

I go into more detail on how to plan and How To Start An Ideal Fat Burning Day.

• Lock and load your big rocks first. Big rocks are those things that keep you happy, healthy and effective. They deserve set non-negotiable spots in your week so that they can become easy to maintain habits that give you a high return on time invested. You’ll likely know your big rocks – or perhaps you recognise them best when they’re missing? The things that when you skip them you’re grumpy, low energy, unmotivated or life is just UNfun! It might be time spent with your family, exercise, meal prep, time in nature or any number of other high value actions and interactions.

Four: WASTED DECISION MAKING or WASTED DISCIPLINE.

Both your quality decision making power and your daily discipline quota are limited. If you doubt this I’d like you to recall the last time you had to make a decision on what to eat at the end of a long, exhausting day… you know there’s nothing prepared at home, you know you’ve got another early start and long day tomorrow and your faced with the discipline based decision on what to eat.

Here are 3 tactics to Avoid Wasted Discussion Making / Discipline In The Morning To Feel Good:

• Decide once and as such put as many decisions in auto pilot as possible. This is why I’m a fan of prepping my breakfasts on a Sunday and eating roughly the same thing each morning mon-sat so I’m not tempted to make the less beneficial decision. The same could apply to what you wear. When you exercise. How you exercise. Even what you listen to as you exercise.
• Don’t put yourself in unnecessary high discipline situations. This might relate to buying your coffee from the cafe that doesn’toffer those delicious muffins you’re trying to avoid rather than the reverse. Or perhaps deciding you don’t ever want a ride to work – that walking is just something you do each day rather than deciding “Do I feel like walking or getting a lift?” each day.
• Do follow that plan you set for today the night before. You’ve like experienced how much more discipline you have tonightfor the thing you need to do tomorrow? It’s applies to tasks, to exercise and of course to food and alcohol. How easy is it to convince yourself you’ll go alcohol free tomorrow as you indulge in that third glass of Shiraz tonight?!! That kind of result ruining justification is called Borrowing From Tomorrow. It’s something I still fall for too and my question to each of us regarding that promise to do double or consume half tomorrow is: “Just how regularly do you come through for YOU?” 

In show #043 I cover Borrowing From Tomorrow.

We must be at the time of the actionable. Does one of the things to avoid in the morning resonate with you? If so, implementing an action we covered today – just one to start – is todays action step.

Here’s a recap of those 4 Things You Must Avoid In The Morning To Feel Good:

One: SNOOZE.

Two: SKIPPING BREAKFAST or INHALING A REFINED CARB BREAKFAST.

Three: OTHER PEOPLES TO DO LISTS.

Four: WASTED DECISION MAKING or WASTED DISCIPLINE.

That’s it for me today. Thanks so very much for sharing todays show with me. I appreciation it.

Cheers!

If you liked 4 Things You Must Avoid In The Morning To Feel Good, you’ll also like: Damage control when you find yourself in an UN-ideal fat burning day!

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.