Most professional athletes, successful business people or individuals set on improving their life advocate the importance of a finely-tuned morning routine. They place enormous value on a morning routine that consists of a blend of meditation, breathing, gratitude journaling, reading books and saying positive affirmations.
There is no doubt this would make for an incredible start to your day, but how consistently find the time? And what about the people who get up early for work, how do they fit it in? The shift workers that need that extra sleep in the morning or at the end of their sleep cycle? Or your kids wake at 4:30 am and you miss the opportunity to have time to yourself!
I tried for 6 months to make morning routines stick but found myself frustrated and angry at the failed attempts. Which totally defeats the purpose right? The kids would always have this amazing ability to know if Daddy had set his alarm at 4:15am (20min earlier than it needed to be for work) and wake up at 4:10am and need mummy or daddy to comfort them. Or it was simply too freaking early that it seemed counter intuitive.
So, I decided to develop a new night time routine. And it has been the best thing I have done this year. I 100% believe that this new routine has enabled me to:
- Kick arse in the gym every day and regain my Mojo
- Improve our business 10-fold
- Form better and stronger connections with strangers, family or friends
- Better tolerance and have increased energy for my kids
- Better outlook on life. Appreciate my current life situation even more so
- More love for myself and others who I care about deeply and so on…
Seriously, look at that list of improvements! So here they are – The four things to do before bed if you want to kick arse the next day and life.
- No blue screens or devices
Oh no…I might just get ridiculed and out casted for this one. But seriously…turn off the TV and put your phone on airplane mode. Just a couple of hours before sleep time. Not only will you eat less junk (BONUS) but you will fall into REM, stage 3 and 4 of deep sleep much quicker. Did you know that screens can delay deep sleep up to 3-4 hours – See some Mathew Walker research on this.
If you only sleep 6-7 hours because “you’re getting after it” AND use screens before bed, there is a fair chance you’re only achieving 3-4 hours of “quality sleep”. And no, blue light classes and dimmers don’t cut it.
Also, just as we’re conscious not to feed our bodies crap then let’s not feed our mind crap from all the antics on social media, war and murder in movies, theft, rape and deceit via mainstream news before bed. Why do you think we don’t let children watch scary movies before bed? If you answered, “because it would give them nightmares” you’d be correct. Their powerful subconscious mind will be creating all sorts of nasties while they’re in deep sleep. Same goes for adults. Let’s start feeding our subconscious mind more positivity before bed.
- Read positive self help and inspiring autobiography books
If you stop with the screen time at night, you’ll have an extra hour or two up your sleeve to get some positivity in before you rest. You may find that reading 1 or 2 pages is all you can manage initially because you’re so sleepy. And that’s a good thing. At least the last thing your mind absorbs before bed is positive. As mentioned above… your conscious mind laps up plenty of information and stores in the sub-conscience. Your subconscious mind comes into action during deep sleep. Particularly stage 3 and 4 of deep sleep.
- Gratitude Journaling
If you’re reading this and you live in Australia then you have so much to be grateful for. I won’t go into details on the plethora of things, relationships, actions, circumstances you could be grateful for but keep gratitude journaling simple and easy. Even be grateful for things that may seem insignificant at first.
‘Sometimes the smallest things, take up the most room in our hearts’– Winnie the Pooh
- Visualisation
We have three things in life that we have COMPLETE control over.
- The thoughts you think
- The images you visualise
- The actions you take
Once again, by removing screen time before bed this is a massive step to a better visualization technique without actually “doing any visualisation”. Simply removing the negative visuals from screens could be a nice place to start. As Napoleon Hill, author of ‘Think & Grow Rich’ put it, ‘If the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve’. Begin to visualise what the next day, week, month, year, decade looks like. If you visualise on something with deep focus and intent you’ll notice remarkable outer body experiences and start seeing it unfold in real time.
Consider this… why is virtual reality (VR) taking off so massively? Because during a VR experience your mind believes it to be real. And if you mind believes it real then you’ll experience the real sensations to the body. Powerful stuff right? So let’s start focusing and imagining what we do want and not what we don’t want. You’ll be surprised at the results.
All this may be a lot to take in and may seem overwhelming because you see some big adjustments that need to be taken. I have two views on this – If you’ve been reading this blog this far then your serious about making a better life for yourself…so just do it. “DO IT NOW” as Napoleon Hill puts it. DO IT NOW and start feeling amazing!
Or you can take bite size chunks at first. For example, you could go every second night with no screens. You could reduce the screen time in half each night. Or commit for 21 days with no screen and track your energy. Here’s another blog I wrote about this subject involving the TV series “Sons of Anarchy”
The key to success in this is to have enough self-awareness to notice and monitor the difference in performance the following day. If you’re present enough mentally and physically to be aware of this and witness the changes, then I’m positive you’ll make a commitment to this for the rest of your life.
Hope this helps bring on better sleep, a positive subconscious mind and better performance.
Coach and Co-Founder Jason Clark