books

If you remember, last month I wrote about the book The Miracle Morning by Hal Erod. I took on his 30-Day Challenge and tried to do the routines every day for 30 days. Over a month has flown by already! Below are the results on how I fared.

Quick recap first: The Miracle Morning routine consists of these 6 activities. You can do them for as long or as short as you’d like, but you’re supposed to do all of them each morning.

S – silence
A – affirmations
V – visualization
E – exercise 
R – reading
S – scribing (also known as writing or journaling)

The Last 30 Days

I tracked all of it in a spreadsheet, or sometimes on paper in my journal.

As you can see, there are a bunch of gaps in odd places. Some days, I did none of the activities, usually days when I had a meeting early in the morning. I traveled one weekend, so that was completely blank. But for the mornings when I had nothing immediately pressing to do, I was able to get through (most of) the SAVERS activities.

You’ll also notice that my biggest weak spot is exercise. Often it’d be easy to do the 5 other tasks, but then I’d procrastinate and then not exercise.

Despite the inconsistencies in my routine, I still feel like I practiced each activity enough times to gain some new insights which I share below.

Silence

Prior to this challenge, I never had the time or discipline to sit in silence for a few minutes, but now I look forward to it! I crave that silence sometimes. It’s a moment to feel at complete peace and to be receptive to whatever God / the Universe has to offer you.

I’ve heard of it described this way. If prayer is asking God for something, then meditation (or silence in this case) is listening for the response.

Hence, I would clear my mind and try to listen. Oftentimes, a phrase or word or some sentiment would pop into my head. Then I would immediately write it down in my journal so I could remember it.

I would “hear” things like: Trust and soften your heart. I have everything I ever wanted. Let my heart sing. Unwaver. And so on. Sometimes I’d write these early morning thoughts on my Twitter account.

Affirmations

Another good habit! I initially started reading aloud affirmations from lists that other people created (Louise Hay or T. Harv Eker). I didn’t know how to come up with my own affirmations nor had the energy to do so.

But then as I started reading more self-improvement books and watching videos, I started to come across empowering sayings that I wanted to capture and keep repeating to myself. So I started creating my own list of affirmations that are relevant to my life. Things that may feel uncomfortable to say because I didn’t feel that confident about them being true yet. But that’s a sign you’ve got to keep repeating it!!

Here are some examples of affirmations on my personal list:

• I will lead people to their destiny.
• I will be all that I can be.
• I have laser focus. 
• I have immense self discipline.
• I will never give up. 

Here’s one I heard in a video from JLo that I added to my list too. She ages backwards, so I think I’ll give it a shot! 😉

I am youthful and timeless at every age. I am ever evolving and my life is full of joy and adventure. 

Jennifer Lopez

Visualization

I do one of two things here: 1) I look at my vision board and just read it and take it all in. Or 2) I close my eyes and visualize the day unfolding beautifully. I envision the meetings and people I’ll be meeting and all of those things going smoothly.

Visualizing good things happening in my day does make the tasks I have to do that day less scary. It’s not a bad thing to visualize things working out well!

Exercise

Ahhh I just cringe when I think of this one. That’s probably the problem right there, ha! Anyhow, I have to say that I’ve exercised more in the past 30 days than before, so that’s a good start.

Other than that, I know I could’ve done better. I am just being too lazy. *Facepalm*

I did experiment with different types of exercise (dance, strength training, yoga, pilates, stretching, treadmill, stairmaster), and even different time durations. Hehe yes, I did 1 minute exercise days and that even counts. (Hal Erod says so himself!)

So if you really need some motivation, you could do 1 minute of jumping jacks or a 1 minute plank. Or you can move up to 10 minute yoga exercises that you can find online. Or sometimes I’d walk to do errands like grocery shopping. The fresh air does a body good!

I’m going to need to keep experimenting. This is something I’m going to need to conquer!!

If you don’t make time for exercise, you will have to make time for illness.

Unknown

Ouch, yes.

Reading

Oh I like this one! Reading is a luxurious time for me. Sadly, I can’t just sit there and get absorbed into a book for hours when I have a full day ahead of me. But reading a few pages picks my energy up. It makes me feel great that I’ve learned something new before even getting out of bed!

I usually have multiple books I’m reading at once, and I don’t finish all of them. And I have an audiobook or eBook on hand as well. So I choose from any of those books.

Reading books is an old love that I’ve returned to as an entrepreneur. Back when I was in the corporate world, I had no time to read books! My only advice: make time by getting off your phone! LoL

Scribing or Writing

I love my writing time as well. It’s a time to pour out all my ideas and worries and frustrations onto the page and then let it all go. Sometimes I spend a little too much time on this one compared to the other activities!

I usually start with 3 things I’m grateful for in my SELF journal. Then I move onto my notebook for freehand journaling. I like to rewrite the same list of goals on a regular basis as well.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve filled up many many notebooks with my random thoughts.

Ripple Effects

Going forward, I’m going to keep doing these miracle morning activities. I find tremendous value in silence, affirmations, and visualization and they are very quick to do. I think they made the most difference in my life because I hadn’t done them before. Reading and scribing take a little more time, so I can’t do them if I’m in a rush.

This is literally the beginning of having a routine in my life. I had no structure to my life prior to this. So I’m going to piggyback off this routine and start to add other healthy habits that I want to do. For example, writing my blog or checking my finances or anything else.

I heard that once you have ONE thing that you do every day, then you can use it as a trigger so that once you do that thing, then you immediately do a second activity. And by repeating that with additional activities, you slowly build up a whole day or whole life of healthy habits and routines that take less willpower to get through. *Crossing fingers* That’s the hope, people!

Here’s The Miracle Morning book if you want to check it out.

Other recommended books by Kat:
Managing Energy Not Time
No B.S. Time Management
The Most Soul Baring Book I’ve Read

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Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. And of course, I would recommend this book regardless.