How do you start your day?
What do you do before breakfast each day? That is, if you are sure to have breakfast. Eating breakfast is not the purpose of this particular blog post. The post is about how my life changed, allowing me to focus on achieving my grandest goals, when I started applying the 5 A.M. miracle. Before I continue, though, I encourage you to make breakfast a priority. (smile)
Now that I am done wagging my finger at you about skipping breakfast, I want to tell you about a book I have been reading. At a high level, the book is about making the best use of your time in order for you to achieve your grandest goals.
I asked you what you do before breakfast because of the title of a book, The 5 A.M. Miracle: Dominate Your Day Before Breakfast.
Why 5 A.M. Miracle?
Why am I reading the book? One reason is because I am a self-help junkie. Another reason is because I have grand goals. I want a well defined body (apparently I am also obsessed with challenges), I want to be a professional speaker, and recently I decided I wanted to write a book about how I managed the eating component in my journey to losing 75 pounds, with the goal of keeping it off.
I knew, however, that there were areas of my life blocking me from those goals. My trending back to poor eating habits and my bad habit of wasting valuable time.
Feeling overwhelmed: I had become overwhelmed with all that I was trying to accomplish, all while working a full-time job! My mind felt like it did not have the capacity to do even the simplest of tasks. Eventually, I became anxious. I started picking up old bad habits of seeking out comfort foods that have no nutritional value, such as potato chips and candy, and I was both mentally and physically exhausted.
Wasting valuable time: Each morning when the alarm sounds (4:45 A.M.), I swipe it off, then say my prayers. You are probably familiar with what happens between my prayers and my workout. There is the checking of email, Facebook, or news apps, or simply lying in the bed thinking about staying in bed, or doing all of those.
In need of a miracle: To increase the chances of me achieving my grand goals, I needed to no longer feel overwhelmed and I needed to make better use my time. Specifically, for me, I needed to make use of my peak performance time, in early hours of the morning before breakfast.
Are you in the need for a miracle to help achieve your grand goals? If so, keep reading to learn what has happened for me after some simple modifications that I learned from The 5 A.M. Miracle: Dominate Your Day Before Breakfast.
Water and Green Smoothies
Drink a liter of water: I now do like other high achieving people do: I start the day drinking a liter of water. Doing so wakes up my system after a night's sleep and let's just say it also helps to get bodily functions moving.
Have a morning green smoothie: Since I did not like how sluggish I had become, I followed the smoothie recipes from JJ Smith's 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse: Lose Up to 15 Pounds in 10 Days! for five days. My goal was not to lose weight. I wanted to knock out my bad for you food cravings and to put a halt to my three a day macchiato addiction (saving me $12 a day!). The caffeine withdrawal was wicked bad the first two days, but the cleanse did what I wanted it to do.
Since the cleanse ended, I have continued drinking green smoothies as part of my morning routing. As Jeff mentions in Chapter 6, Powerful Lifelong Habits, green smoothies are what high achievers use to start their morning routine with quality nutrition.
Result: After adding drinking a liter of water and drinking a green smoothie to my morning routine, I am energized throughout the day and my mind is clearer. That is not the only reason why I am feeling more energized and my mind is clearer. That comes next.
Grandest Goals
List your grandest goals: In Chapter 4 Jeff encourages us to write down ALL of our grandest goals. He suggests that we think like a kid again.
Narrow down your grandest goals: By Chapter 5 Jeff is guiding us through the Quarter System. This is where I chose my three grandest goals that I mentioned above.
Write down (or type, as in my case) your top two to three grandest goals: I then added them to Evernote, one of my favorite applications, as Jeff prescribed. I highly recommend Evernote. I have been using it for years.
Result: This exercise alone helped me immensely. Getting my goals down (on digital paper) released me of all the thoughts that were in my head. That got rid of my feeling of being overwhelmed, which in turn gave me the energy and clarity I needed to focus on the processes that will lead me to achieving my goals. I will focus on the process next.
The New Vision Board
Create a (NEW) vision board for each grand goal: You are probably familiar with the concept of vision boards. The book The Secret speaks of the law of attraction and the concept of vision boards. Steve Harvey mentions using a vision board in his book Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success. Jeff calls it the new vision board because the vision board goes beyond images of what you want. The vision board includes the process you will use to get to your grand goal.
Result: Thinking of my vision as a process worked well for me. It allows me to break my grand goal into doable chunks. Rather than the vision being about dreams and wishes, it is about possibilities and opportunities. It also allows me to reward myself as I reach milestones within the process.
I am still working on my new vision boards. Above is the first one that I completed. Even when my board is not before me, I think of the body I desire, which reminds me to focus on the process of getting there. In doing so I eat and do what is necessary to reach my goal.
Kill the Snooze Button
Jeff is in my head: In The 5 A.M. Miracle, each chapter has a section called “Kill the Snooze Button: Pitfalls, Mistakes, and Problems to Avoid.” I starting calling it the “Jeff is in my head” section. Now I want to get in your head.
I am a night owl, I work odd hours, or I work the night shift: I am a morning person. I do not function well after 2:00 P. M.. That is why I do all of my heavy lifting thinking by lunch time. My sister is the complete opposite. Her peak thinking time is when I have been sleeping for two hours. If you are a night owl or do not work hours that allow you to work on your goal at the time suggested, this book will still work for you.
Like with how you already make adjustments to deal with your schedule, I recommend playing around with times that work for you. Remember this a process. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Use trial and error to help you reach you goals. If they are important enough to you, I know you will work it out.
Who will benefit from The 5 A.M. Miracle?: I read where Jeff said, “The 5 A.M. Miracle is a resource guide for high-achievers. It is for anyone who has a wild passion for life and is in search of a structured system that will hone those passions, clarify their big goals, and produce real, amazing results.”
In my review of the book on Amazon (Yup, I wrote a review. Yay me!), I wrote, “I recommend this book to anyone who is not using their time wisely, who desires to have a workout routine, but has yet to implement it, who has a vision, but has yet to write it down and start living it, and who wants to achieve more in life than they have to date.”
The 5 A. M. Miracle
I have only implemented a small fragment of the book, but my life has already changed because of the guidance from The 5 A.M. Miracle. I am no longer overwhelmed. I do not feel as tired and run down.
I admit, popping out of the bed as soon as my alarm goes off is still a work in progress. I am confident I will get better there too.
As I progress more with the book, I look forward to reaching my grandest goals, thus helping me live my miracle.
My advice to you: Buy the book. Read it. Act on it. Live your miracle.
Start the discussion: What are your grandest goals? What will you start doing to start dominating your day before breakfast? Share in the post comments, on Facebook or Twitter.