Today, I go over IN FULL my morning routine, how it works, and why I do what I do.  I am going over this to challenge you! Will you take the challenge??  --  Transcript:  4:25 a.m. My watch is vibrating me awake. And side note: I use a vibrating alarm where I don’t wake anyone else in my family who does not enjoy waking up at 4:25 a.m. My eyes open and I know I have two choices. I can get ahead of this day like a sniper mounting a rooftop awaiting the enemy. Or... I can let the day get ahead of me and just be another grunt in the infantry, praying I end up somewhere promising. Think about that for a second… When you start the day are you reacting? Or are you acting on a plan? My feet hit the floor. Then I grab the two main instruments I need for my routine and that is a pair of headphones and my phone. And a note on the phone: I sleep with my phone on Airplane mode and it remains on airplane mode till after my morning routine is complete. No instagram. No email. No facebook. No internet. No notifications. No distractions. My first step is to calm my brain which generally starts racing as soon as I am awake. I do this by some sort of breathing practice. It has varied over the years, but it will either be wim hof breathing, box breathing, or something of that nature. This is also a form of unguided mediation for me. I enjoy wim hof and box breathing because it can have a purely psychological benefit in the form of meditation, but also a physiological benefit through the breathing practice itself. If you’d like more info on the benefits, search back in this podcast feed as I’ve done an episode on both wim hof and box breathing. From here it's visualization. I don’t spend a lot of time here, but typically 5 minutes of the most concentrated effort of visualizing what I want to achieve in every area and aspect of my life. I mean earnest visualization in the most realistic form my mind is capable of producing. It’s important to note that things like affirmations or going through the motions of visualization are next to useless if you are just doing them. I truly believe that you have to have the deepest faith that you will achieve your goals and most importantly you have to feel something. If you go through a visualization exercise and you don’t feel things like happiness, gratitude and I mean actually feel it in your entire body…you’re doing it wrong. So learn to do it right, or do something else. This took me a long time. And has changed me in a dramatic way. After that… I switch to multi-tasking. I listen to 10-20 minutes of an audiobook, at 2x speed, while performing long stretches and mobilization exercises. People often ask how I read so many books. It’s not time. I never read or listen to a book during work hours. That’s for focused work and activity. But 10-20 minutes of a book at 2x speed in the morning coupled with doing the dishes and tidying the house at night for 30-40 minutes with another book at 2x speed puts me at listening to up to 2 hours of an audiobook every single day. That’s how I read 9 books last month and that’s how I’ll do the same this month. But back to my morning routine… B/c maybe at this point you are thinking things like… “Must be nice to do that every morning, but it’s not possible with my schedule…” Or maybe you have some excuse for why you can’t do this. But let’s get real for a second… I wake up at 4:25 a.m. And if you’ve been doing the math. Breathing = 10-15 minutes. Visualization = 5 minutes. Book + Mobility = 10 minutes. On a long day, it’s now only 4:55 a.m. And that’s my minimum effective dose of the morning routine. So if I wake up late. A kid wakes up too early. I’m traveling. Whatever happens, I should always be able to find 25 minutes to get in the minimum. And that’s my challenge to you. Set something up that will make you better, move you in the direction you want, and doesn’t require a huge time commitment. Now, that’s not all I do. Recently, I have started something new on weekdays.