“The Miracle
Morning is amazing. It has provided new levels of
clarity, focus, and energy to my life. What’s great is that it can
be a different routine for each person, depending on your goals and
schedule. For me, as a business owner and mother of a one year old,
it has been a time to reflect, pray, focus on my goals and dreams,
exercise, and de-stress. It also gives me valuable time to be
thankful for the people, events, and blessings in my life. We all
have the same 168 hours in a week; so start using The Miracle Morning and you’ll find miracles in
your life that you never knew existed!”
—Katie Heaney, owner, Hedgehog Group (Saint Louis, MO)
Up until this point, we’ve primarily been focused on the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. model to accelerate your personal development during your Miracle Morning. However, The Miracle Morning is 100% customizable. Everything from your wake-up time to the total duration of your Miracle Morning to which activities you do, as well as the duration and order of each activity—there is no limit to how your Miracle Morning can be personalized to fit your lifestyle and help you achieve your most significant goals, faster than ever before.
Here I’ll cover all of the above, as well as when (and what) to eat in the morning, how to align The Miracle Morning with your major goals and dreams, what to do on the weekends, a tip on overcoming procrastination, and much more.
This may sound completely counter intuitive, but stick with me. You don’t actually have to do The Miracle Morning in the morning.
Huh?
Of course there are undeniable advantages to early rising and getting a proactive start to your day. However, for some, their unique schedule and lifestyle simply may not allow it. Obviously, someone who works the graveyard shift, or even late-nights, is going to have a different wake up time than someone who is in bed by 9:00 p.m. every evening. Considering that different people have different schedules, the essence of The Miracle Morning remains that you simply wake up earlier than you normally would (typically by 30-60 minutes), so that you can dedicate time every day to improving yourself, so you can transform your life.
Up until this point, you may have been wondering when the heck do I get to eat during my Miracle Morning?! I’ll cover that here. Besides when you eat during your Miracle Morning, what you choose to eat is even more critical, and why you choose to eat what you eat may be most important of all.
When To Eat - Keep in mind that digesting food is one of the most energy-draining processes the body goes through each day. The bigger the meal, the more food you give your body to digest, the more drained you will feel. With that in mind, I recommend eating after your Miracle Morning. This ensures that, for optimum alertness and focus during the Life S.A.V.E.R.S., your blood will be flowing to your brain rather than to your stomach to digest your food.
If you feel like you must eat something first thing in the morning, make sure that it’s a small, light, easily digestible meal, such as fresh fruit or a smoothie (more on that in a minute).
Why To Eat - Let’s take a moment to discuss why you eat the foods that you do. When you’re shopping at the grocery store, or selecting food from a menu at a restaurant, what criteria do you use to determine which foods you are going to put into your body? Are your choices based purely on taste? Texture? Convenience? Are they based on health? Energy? Dietary restrictions?
Most people eat the foods they do based mainly on the taste, and at a deeper level, based on our emotional attachment to the foods we like the taste of. If you were to ask someone, “Why did you eat that ice cream? Why did you drink that soda?” Or, “Why did you bring that fried chicken home from the grocery store?” You would most likely hear responses like, “Mmm, because I love ice cream! I like drinking soda. I was in the mood for fried chicken.” All answers based on the emotional enjoyment derived primarily from the way these foods taste. In this case, this person is not likely to explain their food choices with how much value these foods will add to their health, or how much sustained energy they’ll get.
My point is this: If we want to have more energy (which we all do) and if we want our lives to be healthy and disease-free (which we all do) then it’s crucial that we reexamine why we eat the foods that we do, and—this is important—start valuing the health benefits and energy consequences of the foods we eat as much as or more than the taste. In no way am I saying that we should eat foods that don’t taste good in exchange for the health and energy benefits. I’m saying that we can have both. I’m saying that if we want to live every day with an abundance of energy so we can perform at our best and live a long, healthy life, we must choose to eat more foods that are good for our health and give us sustained energy, as well as tasting great.
What To Eat - Before we talk about what to eat, let’s take a second to talk about what to drink. Remember that Step #4 of the 5-Step Snooze-Proof Wake Up Strategy is to drink a full glass of water—first thing in the morning—so you can rehydrate and reenergize after a full night of sleep. Next, I typically start my Miracle Morning by brewing a cup of Bulletproof Coffee. I actually set my alarm 15 minutes earlier each day, to give myself time to make my coffee without intruding on my Miracle Morning time.
As for what to eat, it has been proven that a diet rich in living foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables will greatly increase your energy levels, improve your mental focus and emotional well being, keep you healthy, and protect you from disease. So, I created The Miracle Morning Super-food Smoothie that incorporates everything your body needs in one tall, frosty glass! I’m talking about complete protein (all of the essential amino acids), age defying antioxidants, Omega 3 Essential Fatty Acids (to boost immunity, cardiovascular health, and brain power), plus a rich spectrum of vitamins and minerals... and that’s just for starters. I haven’t even mentioned all the super-foods, such as the stimulating, mood-lifting phytonutrients in Cacao (the tropical bean from which chocolate is made), the long-lasting energy of Maca (the Andean adaptogen revered for its hormone-balancing effects), and the immune-boosting nutrients and appetite-suppressing properties of Chia seeds.
The Miracle Morning Super-food Smoothie not only provides you with sustained energy, it also tastes great. You might even find that it enhances your ability to create miracles in your everyday life. You can get the recipe free at www.TMMBook.com.
Remember the old saying you are what you eat? Take care of your body so your body will take care of you. You will feel vibrant energy and enhanced clarity immediately!
Most Miracle Morning practitioners and high achievers use their daily practice to enhance their focus on their immediate goals and their most significant dreams. This is especially true for those they’ve been putting off, or haven’t been making time for—such as starting a business or writing a book. The Life S.A.V.E.R.S. are ideal for improving your ability to stay focused on your goals and accelerating the rate at which you make progress towards your dreams.
For example, when you create your affirmations, make sure that they are in alignment with your goals and dreams, and that they clarify what you will need to think, believe, and do to achieve them, so they reinforce your unwavering commitment to follow through. Reading them daily will keep you focused on your highest priorities and the steps you need to take to achieve them.
When you are doing your morning Visualization, visualize yourself effortlessly enjoying the process of achieving your goals (like I did while writing this book) and keep a clear picture of what it will look like once achieved. Remember to involve all of your senses—see, feel, taste, touch and even smell every detail of your vision and your ideal outcomes. The more vivid your vision is, the more effective it will be in increasing your desire and motivation to take the necessary steps towards your goals each day.
One of the most effective strategies for overcoming habitual procrastination and maximizing your productivity is to start working on your most important—or least enjoyable—tasks, first thing in the morning.
In his bestselling book Eat That Frog, the legendary productivity expert Brian Tracy shows how getting things done in the morning leads to mental rewards that can take us to great heights in our lives. It is the idea that doing the hard task first (“frog eating”) and getting it out of the way creates momentum and makes the rest of the day more productive.
The purpose of The Miracle Morning is more about waking up with purpose—combining the benefits of early rising and personal development—and isn’t so much concerned with which activities you do, as long as the activities you choose are proactive and help you improve your inner world (yourself) and your outer world (your life).
In this short chapter I’ll give you some ideas and strategies for how you can design your Miracle Morning and adjust it to fit your lifestyle so it adds value to your life and helps you achieve your most important goals. I’ll also include examples of different real-life Miracle Mornings, designed by individuals—from entrepreneurs to stay-at-home moms, to high school and college students—to fit their unique schedules, priorities and lifestyles.
“Waking up early on Saturday gives me an edge in finishing my work with a very relaxed state of mind. There is a feeling of time pressure on weekdays that aren’t there on weekends. If I wake up early in the morning, before anybody else, I can plan the day or at least my activities with relaxed mind.” —Oprah Winfrey
I couldn’t agree with Oprah more. When I first created The Miracle Morning I only did it Monday through Friday, and I took the weekends off. It didn’t take long for me to realize that every day I did The Miracle Morning I felt better, more fulfilled and more productive, but every day that I slept in, I woke feeling lethargic, unfocused, and unproductive.
Experiment for yourself. You may start, as I did, by doing The Miracle Morning during the week and try taking the weekends off. See how you feel on those Saturday and Sunday mornings, sleeping in. If you feel, like many people do, that every day is better when you begin it with The Miracle Morning, you might just find that weekends are actually your favorite time to do it.
Over the years, my Miracle Morning continues to evolve. While I still practice the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. daily and don’t foresee any reason I would ever stop needing the benefits of those six practices, I do think it’s important to mix things up and keep variety in your Miracle Morning. Like a relationship, you always want to keep a little fun and excitement in the mix, so things don’t get boring or stale.
For example, you might change up your morning exercise routine every 90 days, or even monthly. You could try different meditations, either through a simple Google search or by downloading various Meditation apps on your phone. You could create a vision board and update it regularly. As I mentioned during the section on Affirmations: you should always be updating your affirmations to stimulate your senses and to be in alignment with your always-evolving vision for who you can and want to be.
I also adjust my Miracle Morning on the fly, based on my changing schedule, circumstances, and projects I’m working on. When I’m preparing for an upcoming speech or seminar that I’ll be presenting, I allocate more time during my Miracle Morning to practice and rehearse my performance. When I’m traveling, to give speeches for colleges or corporations, and I’m staying in hotels, I adjust my Miracle Morning accordingly. For example, if I’m scheduled to give a late night keynote or workshop at a conference, I will move my wake up and start time a little later.
Another example of making adjustments based on my current projects has been during this past few months, as my Miracle Morning has ironically been heavily focused on completing this book. I’ve still maintained the Life S.A.V.E.R.S.—I’ve just done a shortened version, so I can focus more of my time on writing.
As you can see, you can always design and customize The Miracle Morning to fit your lifestyle.
Humans need variety. It’s important that you keep your Miracle Morning feeling fresh and new. As one of my first mentors once told me whenever I complained about my work as a sales rep getting boring, “Whose fault is it that it’s boring? And whose responsibility is it to make it fun again?” This is a great lesson that I’ve never forgotten. Whether it’s our routines or our relationships, it’s our responsibility to actively and continuously make them the way we want them to be.
Remember, the moment you accept total responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you claim the power to change anything in your life.