KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- Listen to your body and take it easy when it’s telling you need a break.
- Set your alarm as early as you can. Use Mel Robins five-second rule and as soon as you get down to zero on your five-second countdown, get out of bed. If you struggle, put your phone in a different part of your room so you have to get up to turn your alarm off.
- Once you’re awake, leave your bedroom as soon as you possibly can. Whether this is heading to the bathroom to splash water on your face or going downstairs for your morning coffee, make sure you’re staying away from your bedroom.
- The next thing you need to do is journal. Write down ANYTHING that comes to your head, whether it’s your goals, what ideas you’re thinking or your to-do list for the day. You could also use it to write down an issue you’re having, writing down as many possible solutions as you can around it.
- If you enjoy journaling, you may find it helps to journal at the end of the day too. It’s a great way to pour out all of your thoughts from the day, as well as set goals for the day ahead.
- There are so many benefits to meditating in the morning. Whether it’s closing your eyes and focussing on your breathing or using a guided meditation, meditation can lower your blood pressure, promote sleep and improve your mindset. Depending on how you’re feeling, you may want to do different routines.
- As you start your morning, think about these three things:
What can you be excited about today?
What might trip me up and cause stress? How can I respond to that?
Who can I surprise today with a thank-you, a gift or a moment of appreciation?
Although it doesn’t have to be much, spending some time reading each morning can be incredibly beneficial.
Try and stay away from social media and emails until you have completed all of your morning routine.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
When it comes to mindset, you need to think about what you’re grateful for and what you have achieved. If you’re thinking about negative things, this is what you will bring to yourself. If you think you’re going to fail, the chances are you will. Being positive and trying to bring more joy into your life can only be a positive thing.
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS
- Set Your Alarm Early – 06:09
- Leave Your Bedroom – 09:20
- Spend Time Journaling – 09:53
- Meditation – 14:00
- Finding Your Joy – 17:00
- Using Your Mornings to Exercise 22:20
- Reading – 24:15
- Planning Your Day and Setting Your Intentions – 26:28
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE
- Episode 47 James Wedmore
- Mel Robins Five Second Rule
- Shawn Stevenson Sleep Smarter
- Brooke Castillo Life School Podcast
- Tony Robbins Mediation
- Deepak Meditation
- Headspace App
- Brendon Burchard Meditation
- Hal Elrod Miracle Morning
Transcript below
Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. And as always I am your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. How are you doing this week? Okay so straight off the bat, I’m going to tell you that this week’s episode is gonna be a little bit different. First off, I’m not doing an interview and I know that previously I’ve been doing one week me one week interview which I still intend doing but I’ve just come to a point where I had a few episodes that I wanted to do so I thought I’d mix it up a little bit. So hopefully you don’t mind that but today’s gonna be a little bit different. But I don’t want you to tune out or switch off and think, ‘I don’t want to hear about this’ because I really think it’s going to help and I think you’re going to like this episode.
So today we’re going to be focusing on how you make sure you have a great day every day which sounds a little bit cliche and a little bit woo woo. But I promise you it’s not. It’s all about how do you set up your mornings to make sure that you’re productive. And we’re going to touch on mindset and I’m going to talk you through some of the books that I’ve read that have really had an impact on me and how I manage myself and the business and the reason this is so important and the reason I wanted to do this episode today was because and I have mentioned this before when I interviewed James Wedmore which I will put a link to in the show notes. But the fact is, when I started my business I honestly stupidly thought ‘How hard could it be?’ Like what an idiot.
But honestly I sat there thinking ‘I know what to do. I know marketing I’ve worked in marketing 15 years. I am good at what I do. This is gonna be a breeze’, and I didn’t stop and think about actually running the business and I don’t just mean doing the finance bit. Sorting the tax bit out, making sure you get your insurance and all that kind of fairly dull stuff. I mean my mindset what happens on the days where I get up and go ‘I don’t know work today, I want to sit on the sofa and binge watch Netflix and eat popcorn’ or ‘I’ve got something emotional going on at home or with the children or family and my head ivs not in the right space’ so I’m not gonna get too deep on that don’t worry, not too emotional but I just want to address the fact of as an entrepreneur when you work for yourself and especially if you work from home or you don’t work in an office full of people sometimes getting motivated in the morning or getting going or being productive can be a super difficult thing to do. So in today’s episode I’m going to be covering off my morning routine. Now, there’s going to be a huge caveat: I do not do this every single day. I try really hard to do this every day. Some days I succeed beautifully and other days I fail dismally. But the point is, I try and I do have to try at it. This is not natural to me and therefore I am hoping you will be able to listen to this and think, ‘you know what Teresa? I’m going to give it a go because you obviously struggle with this too’.
Also there’s some things that I’m going to suggest go in your morning routine but I outright don’t do and I’ll talk about that and explain why I don’t do it. But I want to go through some of the things that I’ve learned that I’ve actually made a big difference to me in my business so hopefully like I said you’re going to enjoy this episode as much as I enjoy talking about this stuff and I’m going to give you some really nice tips and tricks that you can use in terms of getting yourself ready for your day and making sure it’s as positive and productive. And you finished the end of the day thinking, ‘Awesome’ rather than finishing the end of day which I do sometimes thinking, ‘What on earth have I done today?’ And I feel like I’ve wasted so much time because I’ve just tried to force myself into doing some work when maybe my head wasn’t in it. Now before I dive into the routine there’s a couple of things that I want to just tell you first.
The first thing is I never used to do this. This is not something that I’ve done forever. This is not something I ever thought about. And this is definitely something that I have done since having my own business. Now I’ve joked before that the woo stuff like you know some of the stuff I have things I like now. I never even thought about it didn’t cross my mind. I worked in a corporate world for 10 years and quite honestly if you even mentioned anything about what your morning routine I think they would have laughed you at the office. So for me this is not something that I’ve been doing a long time which is why I find it really interesting and I want to talk about it. The second thing I also want to let you know is I’ve got a lot of these new ideas and tips and tools from books that I’ve read. Again I’ve talked before about the fact that I love books. I love learning. I love podcasts. I listen to a lot of books and therefore I’m going to mention a couple of books during this podcast that I’ve kind of steered my way in terms of the morning routine that I try and have now. But also I’ve decided to put together a free download for you alongside this podcast with the recommendations of some of the books that I absolutely love and my very honest opinion about them because some of them, I adore. But I find really difficult to read or I struggled with or whatever so actually you know if you are into reading if you like reading and you want some good recommendations, then head over to teresaheathwareing.com/61 the number and you’ll be able to download that list of all the good books I read including the ones I’m going to mention on that that you can then take a look at and maybe put onto your reading list, if you like reading or if you like listening to audible. Okay so let’s go. Let’s start with my morning routine.
So the first thing is I try and set the alarm fairly early. Oh I also need to tell you quickly that obviously I have a daughter now my daughter spends one week with me and then one week with her dad. So my morning routine obviously differs depending on whether I have her or not but I do try and follow the same path, just so you know. So I’m not sitting here doing this amazing morning routine without having to run around make breakfast do school run and all that as well. It just makes a difference to the time I wake up normally. So yes the first thing is I do try and set my alarm fairly early. Now I used to be amazing at this. I used to be like a 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. riser. Craziness because honestly if I’m up before 6:00 nowadays that is a miracle in itself to be quite honest. So I do try and get up quite early because the problem is if I don’t, I literally waste away my day and I’m going to get much stricter with this. With all the travel I’ve been doing, I find myself sleeping in and honestly because I’m a very honest person and I just say these things that the other day I was in bed until eleven o’clock on a workday. And that’s not great. That is not productive. It’s not effective. It’s rare. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not doing it every day but I’d been travelling, my jetlag was kicking in and I was exhausted and sometimes I truly believe you have to listen to your body and take it easy when it’s telling you to. But, if I’m not careful I could be super lazy because I love my sleep and I love my bed and I could just stay there.
So the first thing is I set an alarm and I set it for quite early. Now one of the first books that I read was Mel Robins’ Five Second Rule. It’s such a simple concept and yet transforming and it basically says when you have a decision to make like getting out of bed in the morning you give yourself a five second countdown and on zero you do the thing that you are counting down to because her science and thought around this and do read books it’s fun. It’s really really good. But her science of thought around this is that if at any point we pause and allow our brain to make the decision, our brain is going to go ‘Oh I don’t want to go out of bed. Now I’d much rather stay here it’s much nicer and warmer and cozier’ and or I will snooze. And again there is loads of science around if you snooze your alarm then you fall into a different sleep and if you then try and wake up again it’s then a horrible sleep to wake up from. There’s another book I link up to called Shawn Stevenson’s Sleep Smarter. He talks a lot about a lot of science around that which is fascinating.
So anyway the first thing I do is set your alarm if you can get up immediately then great. Another trick you can do is obviously put your phone somewhere else in the room or your alarm clock somewhere else in the room so that you have to physically get up to turn it off. That’s also helpful. But if you do struggle with wanting to hit the snooze button you literally in your head as your lying there go five four three two one and on one you get up out of bed. So that’s the first thing.
Then normally what I do is I will get out of the room because if I stay there, I want to go back to sleep and I’m normally pretty tired by thee. Now one of the things that Mal recommends is going in and splashing some water on your face. I’m not a big fan of that if I’m honest. That doesn’t seem to make a huge amount of difference to me so I tend to just go straight into my routine and I could go downstairs and I probably make myself a coffee straight off because I’d like a coffee that time in the morning. I do try and drink water as well so do try and drink a full glass of cold water to kind of wake yourself up a bit.
But like I said I’m not going to lie to you I sit there with a coffee as well as my water and then the first thing I do is journal. Now if you don’t journal, you might be sat there thinking ‘What on earth are you talking about Teresa? Why would I waste my time getting up at 6:00 in the morning to write in a journal?’ But honestly, I can tell you it’s one of these ways in which I keep my head really clear because I have a real problem of overthinking. Generally in life and about things but also about the business and when my head is full of stuff and full of ideas and full of worries and full of concerns and full of amazing goals, I can’t think straight and I can’t work straight and I’m not very productive. So getting up in the morning and writing down in your journal whatever comes into your head and it doesn’t have to be neat and it doesn’t have to be exact. And I have the worst spelling ever and I promise you I’m sure if you saw my journal, not that anybody doe,s you wouldn’t be able to read it even if you saw it because my handwriting is so appalling. But it’s more the action of writing for one physically writing which is nice I like that. I know it sounds silly but in a world of digital stuff I actually really like to write and secondly just pouring out a load of stuff.
So some of the things I journal about are like I said getting the stuff out of my head that’s in my head of what I’m thinking about ideas and goals and objectives and concerns. The other thing I do which could be slightly woo woo I guess but I actually find it really helps is if I’m struggling with something. If I’m struggling to come to an answer or write something or coming up with an idea of about something is I will literally write the question or the problem on my journal. I will literally write. How do I do this? What name can I choose for this? And then I just try and start writing down whatever comes into my head. And again there is something different about the physical writing that enables you to come up with ideas differently and you know what it might not even come straight away. It might be the following day when your journaling something jumps into your head. But for me I really enjoy the journaling bit.
Also the other thing that I find it useful for and I’m being very honest here is you know when there are times in your life that you have an argument with someone or you fall out with someone and you know you should be being a little bit more sympathetic or thinking it from their point of view. Well actually those are times where journaling for me really comes in handy. I’m glad it doesn’t happen very often but sitting down and writing about how they might feel and what they might think and why that might have happened or how you reacted and was that okay, it actually just gives you another perspective, it just gives you another way to think about it and it’s a calmer way. And therefore often at the end of that journal when I’ve been writing about it I’ve then literally turned around and gone you know what I’m sorry, thinking about it this is what I should have done or should’ve said or how I should’ve reacted. So for me, having that space to write back can really help.
Now there’s another podcast I listen to by Brooke Castillo. Hers is the life school podcast, I put it in the show notes again and she also talks about journaling at the end of the day. So downloading your brain is the way she puts it. So after the end of the day and you’ve had loads of things to think about and you’ve done lots of things, literally do a download on some paper of all the stuff in your head and she says it really helps us sleeping better. Now if I’m totally honest my evenings always go a little bit awry with either, I just want to zone and watch telly or on a drink wine and gin and tonic and then I go to bed and I forget about it but I am going to try and stop doing that journaling in the evening because I do understand what she’s saying and I think I would sleep better if I’m having the opportunity to kind of just pour out anything that’s been in my head that day and think I didn’t achieve that I maybe wanna achieve tomorrow. So journaling for me is definitely a morning routine and that’s normally one thing I’m very good at doing.
Now the next thing I do in the morning which I am very good at doing because I love it is meditation. Ah right. I’m going to be totally honest that it’s basically the fact that I can sit there with my eyes closed and not move for about 15 minutes. That is the best thing about meditation. I have gotten much better at it over time. Again it’s something that has taken time off from been doing it a couple of years now. And not consistently. I’ve probably more consistent in the past 12 months but actually there are loads and loads and loads of health benefits to meditating and it doesn’t have to be what you imagined it to be. You don’t have to be sat cross legged umming and arring. That’s not it at all. In some cases I’ve done stuff like that but a lot of the cases it’s just closing your eyes concentrating on your breathing. And normally I like a guided meditation so I like to hear someone saying something to me. It helps me to keep focused because otherwise my brain goes off in every direction and starts thinking about everything. But like, I said the health benefits are massive. It’s things like lower your blood pressure, your brain activity increases, it promotes sleep and concentration. It really does have so many positive benefits. And like I said it’s something that I have to work harder. I do really enjoy meditating and I tend to do different ones depending on how I’m feeling so there’s a Tony Robbins one that I listen to on YouTube. That’s a really good one. If I want to feel more grateful and positive and get ready for a great day. If I want to relax and do some sleeping ones that I have different ones that I do there. Other people like Deepak if you search Deepak and meditation he has got some great stuff right there. Also there’s an app called Headspace which I’ve done a few off there. They’re quite nice and again quite simple and a good starting point actually. And Brendon Burchard who I’m going to talk about a bit later, he also has his own meditations as well. If you just google Brendon Bouchard meditations into Youtube then you will find some stuff there so there is definitely lots of different meditations that you can do depending on how you feel. But it’s so worth trying. And like I said in all honesty in the craziness of life, I just like the fact that I get to sit and relax for a little bit. And I get to try and quiet my brain because it does work overtime a lot of the time.
Now one of the books that inspired me to meditate and also to look at my morning routine was Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. Great book, great back story actually and has a lot of personal triumphs and challenges which as been you know hard work for him that he’s overcome and he has talked about what he does on his morning routine and also talks about the benefits of those things and meditation is a big part of his.
So like I said I read his book. Love that book, definitely recommend it. But it was one of the ones that helped me think I need to take the meditation bit more seriously. So those are the first two things I do. And like that I do them with ease. They are not difficult to make. I really enjoy them.
Now the next thing I’m going to start doing is due to a book that I’m just reading at the moment. And this book is by Brendon Burchard and it’s called High Performance Habits and it’s talking about how people come become extraordinary and the really high achieving people, what do they do differently to average people I guess. And it talks about all the various things that they need as high achievers to be able to be high achieving. And one of the areas it talks about is joyfulness which actually sits quite nicely when we’re talking about being grateful as well. Now these sound like quite fluffy and woolly things to concentrate on or to think about or to put into a morning routine but actually they are so so powerful in terms of, if your mindset that if you can at a bed and think ‘I have a rubbish morning. I didn’t sleep very well and really fed up. I’ve got a full on horrible day today’ and you’re feeling really negative about things, all you’re going to bring for your day is negativity. You are literally just going to have a self fulfilling prophecy of a terrible day. However if you can change that mindset or if you can focus your mindset in the morning about being really grateful for where you are and what you’ve achieved and what you’ve got right down to the really basic stuff and again I don’t want to sound cliche and I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to preach this you know I don’t know this kind of way through life too but I’m just saying some of these things have really genuinely helped me. And you know what? these weren’t things that I was brought up with and the complete opposite in fact. To be honest. So this was never a part of my life that I looked at until I started the business. But actually being grateful, being positive trying to bring more joy into your life is only a good thing and who doesn’t want to be happy? You know,who doesn’t want to be happy on a regular ongoing basis? So one of the things that Brendon recommends in his book and I’ve read his book and I would highly recommend it it’s a really good one is that he starts every morning while he’s in the shower thinking about three things.
The first thing he asks himself is ‘What can I be excited about today?’ Which is a really nice one actually because that excited feeling is a really nice one. It reminds me of like Christmas and being a kid or going on holiday. So sometimes when we’re grown ups and maybe we do things fairly regularl,y go out for dinner and go travelling or whatever. We get a bit ungrateful about it and we get a bit used to it and sometimes I think we need to remind ourselves, ‘This is really exciting. How lucky am I?’ So I love the fact that every single day he tries to think about something that’s exciting. So today for instance my stepson’s birthday is coming up and we’re actually away which we feel terrible about and he’s making us feel terrible about it but we’re away for his actual birthday. So today we’ve had a pretend birthday for him because we fly tomorrow and we’re taking him out for dinner tonight at a really nice state restaurant in where we live. And I love this restaurant. The food’s amazing. So I’m genuinely excited about that for later. So again just helping me think about what can I get excited about today.
The next question he asks himself is, ‘What or who might trip me up or cause stress and how can I respond to that in a positive way from my higher self?’.
Again I love this. So if there is something that’s gonna be happening today that you think ‘I don’t want to make that call or I don’t want to do that bit of work that I’ve been putting off or I don’t want to go and meet those people or whatever it might’ be then think about that. At that point and think to yourself, ‘How can I make this work?’ You’ve got to do it with grown ups you’ve always got to do things that we don’t want to do. I tell my daughter that all the time. But how can I make it work for me? How can I have a more positive spin on that? What can I take from that? So again I really like that that also you’re not telling yourself a lie that it’s going to be a beautiful amazing day every single day. You’re actually getting ready and thinking how will I prepare if something comes up? If I’ve got to do an activity I’m not keen on and what can you do to prepare for that.
And then the last question he asked himself is that I love this, ‘Who can I surprise today with a thank you a gift or a moment of appreciation?’ Isn’t that lovely? Like if we all went round in our life and did that wouldn’t it just be a nicer life? Wouldn’t it just be like a pretty cool place to be?
So again I really really liked that and would like to start thinking of those three things every morning when I’m taking a shower and you know or when I’m journaling or whatever it might be and just try and bring a bit more of that into my life.
The other thing I try and think about as part my morning routine is things that I’m grateful for. They sometimes I write this down in my journal, sometimes I just think about them. And again I can think of big amazing grateful bits and I can think a teeny tiny. My husband brings me coffee in bed every day that he’s home which obviously as I said before he works away a lot. He’s in the military but when he is here he always makes me a coffee. Like I’m so grateful for that. That is so very kind of him. So again think of the big and the small things and just sit for a moment and think yeah. That’s cool. I’m happy and grateful for those things.
Okay so moving off the woo woo stuff slightly. The next thing that I recommend you do in your morning routine which hand on ha I absolutely do not I had spells of which I tried and unfortunately for whatever reason, I am not motivated to do this is exercise. Now I know I know I should and it it’s something that is really important and I work at a desk so therefore I don’t get much exercise throughout the day either. I have a dog but I don’t walk him a lot. He gets walked by my husband and I really really should. But in all honesty and I’m not going to lie to him pretend I do. I am not keen on it. I don’t like it. I like dancing like mainly after I’ve had a drink but are not keen on exercise. So this is a constant battle in my morning routine. Also I look at the fact that we live in the UK and often in the morning the weather’s terrible and it’s raining right now as I record this. And quite honestly, that does not motivate me to leave the house and go and do some exercise. And again I know there are a million things I could be doing. I could be watching YouTube videos and doing it. I could just be dancing around my house. But honestly the problem is I don’t prioritize this and I totally totally should. So this is something that I’m working on but again in Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning, this is a big part of what he suggests you do every morning so movement of some sort has so many good benefits to it. And it gets in the way and I’m sat here telling you all the reasons you should be doing it trying to convince myself but being very honest with you and telling you I don’t manage to get that in my morning I prefer some of the other things. And time is of the essence. So but I’m making excuses complete excuses and stop talking right now because I’ve told you it should be in Miracle Morning or in your morning routine and I’m just not doing it. So that’s on my list of things to work on.
Okay then one of the other things I do is read. Now it doesn’t have to be loads. It doesn’t have to pages and pages it can literally be a couple of pages. Now I told you already that I like audio books and I listen to lots of books and podcasts but apparently there is definitely some benefits to physically reading than just listening to audio books. So I try really hard to read just a couple of pages every morning of a book. There are some books that I’ve listened to on audio which I will put in the download that I’ve put together for you where I listened to them on audio and then I had to buy them because actually there was so much good stuff in the book. I knew I would want to do the exercises as I went through it. I’d want to go through a little bit slower and make some notes so the reading thing in the morning again is a kind of crucial thing for me and I’m I’m pretty good at doing that. That’s not a difficult thing for me to do and I don’t beat myself up if I’ve literally just read two or three pages or if I read a whole chapter it makes no difference as long as I do it I’ve done it. So that’s cool.
And then the last thing I do is I plan my day and I normally I do all that other stuff before I get ready. Then I get ready. Do the school run sort breakfast or whatever whatever. And then I tend to do the planning my day when I sit down at my desk to start my day. Another thing I should have said straight off is I try. This is a big try because it doesn’t always happen. I try super hard not to look at social media and not look at my emails before I’ve done all that stuff because the problem is you start looking at stuff and then you well you know what it’s like I don’t need to explain yet taken down a rabbit hole and you suddenly see something that’s come in overnight that I think I better just sort that first. So really you want to start your priorities before anybody else. So you want to focus on you before you start with anybody else. The same way as if my daughter’s here and I’ve got to get up to take her to school that I need to get up earlier and I need to do these things before I take my daughter to school. So like I said, try not to get distracted by those things. That’s why I try not to look at them before I’ve done all those things but then I sit down and plan my day and I try and plan it by what are the key things I’ve got to achieve today and I will block out time in my diary for that. Or where am I due to be or what do I need to do. So this morning I sat down and knew between 10 and 12 I was recording two podcasts so I could focus on that and know that some of the other important things I’ve got to do they’re going to be done. But later on in the day so that’s absolutely fine.
The other thing that I do a little bit of but not always is try and set an intention for the day or look at my big goals. So sometimes you know when you’ve got these big things that you want to achieve but the everyday rubbish just gets in the way. I try and look at those big goals and give myself one or two little things that I can do that day to move that goal forward. So every single day I am moving it forward. And even if it’s just a case of today going to put a message in forums ask what is the best platform to use for this or I’m going to contact my designer to see when he can next work on bit of project even if it’s small tiny stuff like that. It’s super achievable because it’s like two minute job but you’re moving your project forward every single day so when I’m planning my day I make sure I plan those bits in as well. And you know what? After I’ve done all that I feel proper smug. I’m not going to lie to you. I feel proper pleased myself and I feel like I’ve given myself a really good start to the day and I feel like a proper entrepreneur. I feel like the people that I look up to. And it sets my mind in such a good position and then I can be super productive all day. I’ve planned on what I’m going to do. My mind’s in the right mindset. I feel in a good space, I’ve cleared my brain, I’ve meditated a bit. I try and plan meals. I’m not very good at doing that bit. I’m not very good looking after myself. Hence I didn’t do the exercise but I try and schedule time and to eat as well. And then by the time I finished my day I can actually feel like, you know what? I had a really productive day today and I got loads done. So I know this was a little bit off our normal kind of podcast episode. But for me honestly this is one of the key things with running my business. I could you know give you all the strategies and tools and everything you need on how to do social media and digital marketing. But if your head is not in the right place then it isn’t going to happen. So for me getting my head in the right place was key when running my business. So like I said I really hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. I’d love to know what you think about it. I’d love to know what your routines are and what you do in the morning that really sets you up. So please come and tell me. Drop me a DM on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or wherever you are. And then also I would love to hear your recommendations. Like I said, I am a big book fan. I’ve put together this download for you but I would really like to know what recommendations have you got for books that have made a big big difference to you. So please come again tell me those books I’d love to share that with my audience. And if you do an insta story or something I will share that with my audience. So I would love to hear. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and I will see you next week.
