Mindset Clearing Morning Routine｜Five Tasks Before Seven AM

I have to set my intentions. I need that time to myself. This blog is all about the five things that I do before 7AM and why this morning routine is so important to me. 

These are the five things that I do before seven a.m. Yes you read me seven a.m. I have a four-year-old, I have a spouse, and my day gets busy. Around 07:30 in the morning, that's when the household wakes up, people start asking me for stuff, looking for me, questioning all of it. Okay? And so this was inspired by a book that I read and I was reading the book Sell It Like Serhant, and Ryan Serhant literally said that he gets up at like 04:30 and does all this stuff, And he's like, I get it. You don't have time to wake up. Don't worry about it. 

But could you consider waking up early? I could. 

Okay. So I used to wake up at 07:15. And if you remember, I just said the household starts around 07:30. So I would jump up, fight or flight running. What do I need to do? Who needs to get this? Who needs to do that? Who's in the shower too long? Right? And so I was like, Kylie, you have to take control. You have to take control of your life. Take control of your routine. K? You don't go from 07:15 to 05:30. You go from 07:15 to let me set my alarm at seven and then 06:45, etc.

Until the next thing you know you're waking up at 05:30 and now you love it, right? The first thing I have to do to set this whole thing going five things before 7AM is that I decide to get up. That sounds silly but you wake up and it's winter and your bed is so warm and cozy and you got to walk to your office where it's not warm and cozy, that is hard. Or that alarm goes off and you did not go bed at 09:30 like you said you were, went to bed at eleven so now you've only slept for a few hours, difficult. By the time I am sitting in my office, I'm happy that I actually did get up. 

Second thing is I spend some time and I meditate with affirmation cards. Now meditation is when you focus on one thing, you let your mind wander, W A N D E R, your mind wants to go, it does not want to focus on one thing, it wants to be around. You set your intentions, your mind on one thing, and then you let your mind wander and you constantly bring it back. Meditation is constantly bringing your mind back. So there are multiple ways that you can do this. For myself, I have to use an affirmation card. So I got these affirmation cards from My Fab Finance, and so there's different colors on the cards but they have things on them that say things like I have more than what I need or another one I define me.

So I pull an affirmation card and I sit in my office and I stare out the window, meditating. I'm going to center myself on one thought and I can say it fast, can say it slow, I can say I am at peace with money. What does it mean to be at peace? What is the definition of peace? What is the definition of money? I am dissecting this for thirty minutes. I set my alarm and I set it to silently stop playing at the end so I don't have this jarring thing breaking me out of it. It's fun to see how your mind wants to go and when I meditate, I always have to have a notebook with me because I am at peace with money, I am at peace with money, I am at peace with money. No, you are not. 

You don't even have any money right now. Why did my mind think that? 

Then I will write down, you don't have money right now. You are in control. You control your mind, you keep bringing it back and then later on you sit there and you go through these notes, Well, why did I say I don't have any money right now? What is the evidence of not having any money right now? What did I mean? After I have meditated, I like to journal.

There are many ways to journal. I look at my two-month goals, my six-month goals, my one-year goals, or my five-year goals. Yes, it's a lot, but if you are going to do something, you pretty much need to have a goal and your goal does not have to be this huge, dramatic, lofty thing, but I do feel like you need to know where you are trying to go to get there. I will journal either about the prompt that I had for the affirmation or I will journal about something that came up when I was doing the meditation or I will just journal and think about the goals that I have. What is one thing I can do today to put me closer to that goal? What is one thing I can do today to get me closer to my five-year goal? Sometimes when I wake up, and my mind can't focus, I will just write the affirmation over and over. This one was I am worthy of my wildest dreams. Other times I will use a directed journal. So I have the Becoming journal, this is the one that accompanies the Becoming book by Michelle Obama and there are prompts in here. What activities did you previously pursue but don't have time for now? Five-minute meditation journal. Okay, this one is really good. Short, sweet, it'll give you the actual prompts and then you can just write about it.

So if you're not quite sure where you want to go and don't have time to free journal, you can use a guided journal, which is really, really good. The fourth thing I do in the morning is I read. Every single morning I read a chapter of the Change Your Paradigm, Change Your Life book. I will also read about three chapters. Sometimes I'll read one chapter multiple times of the 21 Habits of Self-Made Millionaires. And there are so many really good principles in there but I make sure I am checking that out and looking at that every single day. And I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy this. The last thing is that I stare at my vision board. My vision board will typically have my vision for the year. I've been looking at it, and the thing about a vision board is it's not woo woo. It's not oh my gosh, you put the picture up, and it happens. I did that in law school, faith without works is dead. Manifestation without action is just thoughts. And so you have to look at it. And so I will sit and I have my vision board posted in my office upstairs, and I will sit, and I will stare at it and I'll read some quotes and I'll look at the pictures. What did I feel when I put this on the wall? Why did this picture embody what I want to do in the future? I have to set my intentions.

I have to that time to myself. At first, it wasn't easy, and it felt indulgent because I wasn't used to giving myself that time. What are you here for? Really? Are you just going to sit here? But it's more than that. Actually, now I've learned to crave the time, because it's the only time I have before everything else in the day starts. It's like me before the daytime. It's like my own little carved-out place. This is before coffee and all of it. I'll have some water. This is the time for just me and I've definitely started to crave it.

I hope you learned something about the five things that I do before 07:00 in the morning. It's a lot, but once you get into it, it's really, really easy, right? It's not like there's a super-super schedule where, if I forget to read or do this or journal too long, I can't do the others. You know? In fact, some days, the family sleeps until eight in the morning, and then I have even more time to myself. But then, like, when people wake up and they start asking you for stuff, you don't feel like it's an inconvenience because you've already had time for yourself, right? That's the whole point, okay? Have a great day!

Until the next blog,

Kyla