Before 8 A.M Starts: What Powerful People Do Before 8 A.M

Life is demanding. It is way too easy to get lost of yourself in your immersion of daily routine. You think, you yourself can effortlessly handle your full-time job, fostering relationship with important people, taking care of your body regularly?

Think again.

Every so often, it can feel difficult for you to move toward your dream. Time is just not your best-friend. No matter how much time you dedicate to every day, it will always feel like it is not enough to take care of everything at once.

And how do we solve this problem?

Wondering where all the time went will not result any change in your life. Whether anyone likes it or not, we need to consciously slice a chuck of our time to progress and improve.

“You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.” – Harold Hill

Someone ever taught me that, we need to rethink our entire approach to life. We are going to go back to the fundamentals, and learn to simplify activities. The sad thing is, we have a fondness of filling our lives to brim with inessential and trivial things, that we don’t have any luxury to build something meaningful. Imagine ourselves as a peanut-butter, and as we scrap over ourselves to a bread, our capacity and our time are slowly fading as we are dispersed to the other side of bread. The funny thing is, the bread usually is not even our own, but someone else’s, and to make matters even worse, the bread is multiplied!

Somehow I have been contemplating of this: Since we were infants, we have always been taught to study as hard as we can, in order to settle in a good job, and retire abundantly. We were inculcated to be competing with the students of our likes, to snatch away a trophy of being the smartest in a class-room, and proceed to be the most ‘’capable’’ in the work environment. We were forced to learn math, to learn algorithm, to learn work-ethics, all for the sake to maintain someone’s business.

Do you think that you have lived every moment of your life on your own term? Or are you just living day to day, pay-check by pay-check, to aid CEO purchase his new beach house? Always remember that, your destiny is carved by none other than you. It is purely your responsibility to take care of it, to ensure you actually live your life to the fullest. You get to decide, or I mean, you must decide! Decide that you are willing to take an entire control of your life.

I think I have gone out of topic..

Let’s cut to the chase: With this short morning routine, your life (at least mine has) will change to the positive:

1. Get A Healthy 7+ Hours of Sleep

Sleep is the best investment of your whole life.

Sleep is JUST as important as eating and drinking water.

Despite the fact how sleep is desperately needed for a well-functioning mind & body, still, many people just do not sleep enough and end up ruining their health.

A survey run by The National Sleep Foundation, reveals that at least 40 Million of Americans suffers more than 70 sleep disorders. To make things even worse, 60 % of them of adults & 69 % of children undergo one or more sleeping problems on several nights in one week.

Let’s talk about it realistically. As what the introductory paragraph of this article described, it is hard to follow our sleep schedule in these days, where thousands of unpredicted events show up when we try our best to follow the to-do-lists we made on the early morning.You know stuff like traffic jams, people not being punctual, you name it. But hey, following a regular sleep-schedule will be totally worth it, because a healthy amount of sleep (7+ hours) is linked to:

• Increased memory, creativity, attention, and focus.

• Longer life

• Decreased inflammation

• Increased creativity

• Increased attention and focus

• Decreased fat and increased muscle mass with exercise

• Lower stress

• Decreased dependence on stimulants like caffeine

• Decreased risk of getting into accidents

• Decreased risk of depression

Now that you know the benefit, have you started making sleep your priority? If you didn’t, then the rest of this article will be worthless.

The goal needs to be long-term sustainability.

2. Simple Act of Expressing Gratitude

The morning you wake yourself from a healthy & quality sleep, you can move on to the exercise of gratitude. Gratitude will never fail to strengthen your faith and renew your purpose. Gratitude has been called the mother of all virtues for a reason; Thus, the more you put yourself in gratitude, you will attract more positive and good. People say that when you think abundantly, the world is your oyster. By being grateful, you simple will end up having more.

3. Reguler Physical Activity

Some people say that making time even for short exercise is hard during a day.

I would say that’s just purely an excuse.

We’ve been taught about the endless evidence how exercise promotes a better quality of life, but what do we see here? Only one-third of American men and women engage in physical activity according to the Center for Disease Control’s National Health Interview Survey.

Exercise doesn’t necessarily need to be done in long hours, there are series of exercises which you can conveniently do it whenever you want, but still give amazing effect on your body. Just so you know exercise is so beneficial that it is proven to be decreasing the chance of depression, anxiety, and stress! Thousand articles of self-improvement always quote how exercise improve many aspects of your life for example your confidence, your productivity, and many more. Treat your body as a temple, they say.

4. Consume 30 Grams of Protein

Foods rich of protein are able to keep your belly full significantly longer than any other foods, and don’t forget about how protein keeps your blood-sugars steady.

A professor of nutrition at The University of Illinois stated that consuming at least 30 gram of protein for breakfast will help you to decrease your bad carbohydrate cravings (White bread, simple sugar, donuts). For getting an adequate amount of protein, you can try these methods:

1. Eat protein about 40% portion of your breakfast

2. Protein shake! What could be better? I blended strawberry and several cubes of ice with two scoop(s) of chocolate protein powder, and that tasted heavenly.

3. No protein powder? No need to fret, you can have whole eggs instead. Two or three whole eggs might supply you with 18 g of protein (About 6 g of protein on each egg).

4. Turkey bacon, organic pork bacon, cottage cheese, chicken breast.. Feel free!

5. Take a Cold Shower

Why is Cold Water?

That sounds funny, why should all of people take a cold water every morning if they have access to hot water?

A research study found that, taking cold showers routinely will help to cure depression even better than prescription medications. Cold water triggers a mood-boosting neurochemicals, which make you happier and more energized. Don’t forget about how regular cold water immersion every morning facilitates physical and mental wellness as it promotes improvement on your body’s immune, digestive systems, and air circulatory. Are you over weight? It also boosts metabolism just so you know.

I immerse myself in cold water every morning. Without cold shower every morning, a day just doesn’t feel right. It does increase my will power to get on through the day.

6. Read Informative & Knowledgeable Content

It is just so common that reading is so beneficial and many successful people read every day. Ordinary people will seek entertainment. Extraordinary people constantly learn by reading book or to be in the field learning how things work.

During your commute, or during your pleasure time, you can dedicate yourself to read a resourceful media, so that you can be put in the zone to perform at your highest. Sum all the time spent you reading stuffs during your no-work time, you will be knowledgeable on several topics, you will see the world in different perspective, and you begin to make senses your surroundings even more.

7. Your life vision, your goals..Review it!

Have you put any thought to list down your goals? Be it long-term or short-term?

List down all your long-term goals in a black paper, and read them every day. They will stay in your mind every day that you unconsciously will spend your days working toward them. Slowly but sure they will manifest to the real thing.

People say achieving goals is a science. Just follow a simple pattern or mind maps, do every small step perfectly and someday you will be there. No matter how big you are, as long as you don’t get off from the track, you will be there someday.

8. Do first the hardest thing in your to-do list.

Just like a muscle; The more your exercise your will power, the more it begins to strengthen. Because it also can fatigue over time, the more you think and make decisions in one day, the more your will power exhausts. That’s perfectly why you need to do the hardest task during the first sunlight of the day.

If you put the hardest task on the latest, you will be exhausted at that time that there will be a tendency to put it off for the next day.

And ‘’ I will do it tomorrow ‘’ will just remain nothing.

The worst comes first, how should I say it, deal with the hardest task so the remains will come easy. Take just one step toward your goals every day, and you will not realize your goals aren’t that faraway.

Conclusion

The simples steps are not be done over-night. But by executing small steps, you can practice these tips slowly. Practice the Kaizen, the act of small yet continuous improvements. After-all, Eiffel Tower wasn’t built overnight.

Do all these things, and you will show up better in life. Better in job, better in relationship, or maybe even more important, you will be happier by result.

Tell me your progress on comment box below. Had any troubles practicing these? Let’s talk about it.

Cheers and happy Sunday.

Vincent Lee