What does a successful person's morning routine look like?
The answer isn't so simple. Everyone has different routines and habits that make them the entrepreneur, leader, or philanthropist that they are. But I can tell you that there are 10 morning habits that many successful people have in their morning routines.
It's important to realize that implementing these habits into your life will not automatically make you successful; but, looking at successful people and trying to implement what they do in our own lives does raise our chances of becoming successful like them. Here are 10 habits of successful people.
10 Morning Habits of Successful People
- Creating a to-do list
- Energizing
- Scheduling
- Waking up early
- Affirmations and visualisations
- Gratefulness
- Bonding
- Cleaning from the night before
- Silence
- Reading what happened the night before
1. Creating a to-do list
Successful people make a to-do list in the morning. These are really important because if you don't have a goal of what you're going to do today, you're going to go through the day aimlessly and you're not going to get everything done.
Your to-do list needs to have actionable things Something like, “I am going to work on a website” is too vague and might leave you demotivated. Instead, you need to write down concrete actions such as, “I am going to implement a new page and write 1000 words of content,” or "I will mow the lawn by 3:00."
2. Energizing
When successful people wake up, they do something to energize themselves. This could be anything from going for a run to doing a 30-minute yoga session, to stretching for 10 minutes. If you don’t feel like moving around so much, you could drink coffee or take a cold shower. Just do something that will make your blood start flowing faster to all of your inner organs, as that is a great way to wake up.
3. Scheduling
It's not enough to create a to-do list… you also want to have a schedule of the time when you will complete certain things on that to-do list. Say you might have to cut the lawn, create a video, and cook dinner. You can say that you’ll have all these things done by three, and it'll feel great when you check each one of those off of the list.
Successful people turn this into a habit, saying, “I will cut the lawn by 10 in the morning. I will create a video by one in the afternoon. I will fix dinner by six tonight.” This assures your peace of mind while working since you know that you have a specially designed time for that activity only. This helps you to avoid procrastinating your to-do list for the entire day.
4. Waking up early
What time do successful people wake up?
Some successful people stay in bed until 1:00 in the afternoon. But most people who are extremely successful - people like Sam Walton, who built a huge business, people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and people like Aaron from Alpha M. - wake up really early (I mean early-early).
Some people wake up at six and that's early. But if you get up at five, that gives you another hour. That gives you an extra hour of your day to get more done. Note that it's also important to get enough sleep, so do make sure that you get enough rest as well. If you wake up really early, you could take a nap at noon or you can get to bed one hour earlier in the evening when your brain has become too tired to be productive anyway.
5. Affirmations and visualization
These are two completely different things, but I put them in the same category because they mesh really well. Affirmations are when you tell yourself what you're going to do today: “I will become successful. I will do the dishes. I will make 50 dollars today by selling a product. I will finish the last 60 pages of this book.”
Visualization is when you imagine the things that you look forward to. You can imagine how that website will look like when finished, how good the kitchen will be with all dishes clean and everything put into place, and how great you’ll feel once you make a sale of your product. Visualizing the outcome of your work and efforts acts as a strong motivator.
As long as you can visualize these things, they will help you set the stones down so that you can walk across them and get to the goals you listed in your affirmations.
6. Gratefulness
Being grateful for something when you wake up every day has a lot of benefits. It sets your mind on a positive note for the day; from the start of your day, you have a positive feeling that can translate into everything that you do that day. When you wake up, you can be grateful that you get to take a cold shower. You can even be grateful for all kinds of other things, like having your eyesight, or all of your 10 fingers. If you don’t have 10 fingers, you might have eight - and you can still be grateful that you have eight fingers and that you can do all sorts of stuff with them. There's a lot of things that you can be grateful for; you just need to put your brain in the gratefulness mood because that will trigger you to feel positive.
Working to do this every day will eventually create a habit that will improve your life. When people see you and they think of positivity, they will want to work with you, spend time with you, and help you in all sorts of ways.
You can view gratefulness as the foundation of a great day: if you are grateful in the morning, you're going to have a wonderful day. It's going to take a lot to ruin a day where you woke up and thought, “Man, I'm so glad I get to stand up. I'm glad I’ve got toes on my feet and that I can see clearly. It's just amazing. Even if I can't see clearly, I'm glad someone invented glasses and contacts to allow me to see clearly.”
7. Bonding with someone early on
Human affection is really important, and it’s even more important if you're living with someone. If you're living with someone, one of your first morning habits should be to show them affection. This could be hugging them, making them coffee, or cuddling, which releases a lot of oxytocin (a hormone directly linked to human bonding, increasing trust, and increasing loyalty).
Doing these things that early in the morning really just boosts you up. You’ll think, “Wow, I love this person. I love being around this person. I'm so glad this person is in my life,” which is a great morning habit to develop because it will strengthen that relationship and set up your day for success.
8. Cleaning from the night before
If you're like me, you might get a lot of work done right before you go to bed - especially if you're an entrepreneur. If you did this, your desk might have ended up getting quite cluttered (and even if you didn’t stay up late, sometimes that still happens). You can make your life easier if you just clean it up in the morning. Usually, when it's later in the day, your decision-making process is not the best. So in the morning, when you’re fresh and ready to start the day, it’s easier to say, “All right, now I have the discipline and willpower built up in me because I got enough sleep, so I can clean my desk.” It’s much more difficult to do that at the end of a work day when you’re already tired and all you can think of is going to sleep.
9. Silence
Silence is important, especially if you’re an introvert and you need silent time alone to recharge. One way to find some silent time is to wake up early to drink coffee and have an hour of peacefulness when nobody else is awake.
This is a good way to see your vision for the day so you can get a ton of work done. This may not work as well for extroverts, as their brains need a little more stimulation to recharge, but it’s definitely great for introverts. Morning silence helps you clear your thinking and understand what you're going to get done throughout the day.
10. Reading about what happened the night before
This will benefit a lot of people if they implement it in their morning routine. There may have been things happening while you were sleeping: things might have happened overseas, amazing news may have broken, or something may have happened at work if you have a 24-hour job. Reading about what happened while you were asleep is a good way to keep yourself in the know and make sure you’re ready for the day.
Keep in mind that you want to stay away from things that are irrelevant or negative. There can be a lot of negative news such as “24 people killed last night," which is important, but could affect your productivity in a negative way. There's also irrelevant news, like if someone won a spelling contest. That’s nice, but unless the winner was your child or friend, it’s not really going to boost you up in your success. Instead, look for news relevant to your work and success, such as a new discovery in your field or something that happened at your workplace.
Those were the 10 morning habits of successful people. If you already have some of them in your schedule, great! You’re on the right path. If not, try them out and see what works best for you!
