When do you wake up? What do you do before breakfast? Do you know what successful women do?
All these questions were in my head for quite some time and after reading Tony Robbins, Bob Proctor, Lisa Nichols, Robin Sharma, Vishen Lakhiani, Kevin Trudeau, Les Brown and last but not least Laura Vanderkam i managed to come up with my own version of what successful women should do before breakfast in order to become or stay successful. You will see that these new habits are so simple, yet so hard to follow. And this happens not because we are not prepared or smart enough, but because we don’t want it bad enough. We like our comfort zone, but keep in mind “A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.”
1. WAKE UP EARLY
Yes, you heard me right. I know it is hard and i know you don’t want to because it is so cosy and warm underneath your silky perfect sheets, but sleeping till noon or 30 min before having to leave the house it is not the best thing. Why? The first time i have listen to Arnold Schwarzenegger Commencement Speech, i heard these words loud and clear “It is important to have fun in life, but when you are out there partying, horsing around, someone out there, at the same time, is working hard. Someone is getting smarter and someone is winning. Just remember that!” and these “I’ve always figured out that there are 24 hours a day. You sleep six hours and have 18 hours left. Now, I know there are some of you out there that say well, wait a minute, I sleep eight hours or nine hours. Well, then, just sleep faster, I would recommend.”
These words marked my behavior, because that was the moment when i became aware of the fact that if i want to stand out from the crowd, if i want to be able to fulfill all my wild dreams, then i cannot do what everyone is doing. Also, Les Brown said “If you want to be successful you gotta be willing to give up sleep. You gotta be willing to work off of 2-3 hours sleep. Some days you may have to stay up three days in a row, because if you are asleep you may miss the opportunity to be successful!”
Pause for a moment and just think about how many hours you sleep everyday and how many hours you work on your dreams everyday. It would be perfect to work more on your dreams than to sleep, but the truth is, most of you out there work less than 1/4 on their dreams than sleeping. I am asking you this: How bad do you want to be successful? As much as you want to sleep or more?
2. BE GRATEFUL
Everyday, after i open my eyes and turn off the alarm clock, i start giving thanks for all the things that i’ve had, i have or will have. After my 5-10 minutes of gratefulness, i am filled with such joy and happiness that i cannot describe in words, you need to try and feel it too. It is so important to analyse your life and realize how blessed you are for so many reasons.
At the same time, i finally understood (i am currently reading Conversations with God – an enlightening book) that you cannot just ask God/universe for things, you need to know they will be given to you and be happy and thankful for receiving them, even if they don’t exist in your present. It might be difficult to grasp this, but i challenge you to read more into it and experiment on yourself. I do it and the results are visible in my life.
3. EXERCISE
You have heard it over and over again because it is working! Stop making excuses for why you don’t have the body you want. As long as this is not a priority, you will never have the body you dream of. And there are so many people (including me) who really want to excise but they always push it to the end of the day. Guess what happens next? Most of the time you are too tired to even move, moreover to exercise. And it is normal, you cannot expect your body to fully support your workouts after 12 hours of being awake.
That is why, if you exercise first thing in the morning you will have more energy throughout the day, you will get the body you want and you will have more time in the evenings (if you wake up an hour earlier to run/jog/ go to the gym, you actually gain one hour in the evening). During the summer, i used to wake up around 6:30 am and be on the beach at 7 am to run for a mile.
It was hard at first, but the energy from the sun, the water, the exercise itself, made me go to work being fully awake and bursting with energy. My coworkers always asked me “How can you have so much energy and wake up so early?” Now you know the secret.
4. MEDITATE
I am happy to see a trend in having more people who practice meditation, thanks to the successful leaders out there who set out an example. I found it very hard at first, staying still for 5 minutes was the hardest thing of the day, especially for me – a woman (you all know we think more than men, because they have periods of time when their mind is completely empty, thing that never happens to a woman). But give it time, read into it (I suggest the book: Why Meditate?), learn from people who do it daily and just practice. You cannot stop the thoughts in your mind, but you can control on which to focus upon. There are countless benefits, i choose the main ones:
- Decreases blood pressure and hypertension
- Loweres cholesterol levels
- Reduces production of “stress hormones,” including cortisol and adrenaline
- You get more efficient oxygen to use for the body
- Increases the production of the anti-aging hormone DHEA
- Improves the immune function
- Decreases the anxiety, depression, and insomnia
5. PLAN YOUR DAY
This is my favorite part, because i love planning and organizing and having everything scheduled. “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” “I don’t much care where –” “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland If you do not know what you want to accomplish each day, you cannot be able to accomplish anything.
I usually make a plan for the whole week on Sunday and then each morning i revise the things listed, i sort them out to prioritize them, and sometimes i add some more things. But i do this everyday, no excuse. When you cross off all the things done, you get so excited and so proud of yourself that you don’t need any other motivation to push you forward the next day.
