241 The Miracle Morning: The Secret to a Productive Day?
Are you in search of the perfect morning routine? In this episode, I dive into the updates to the bestselling book "The Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod. Drawing from my own experimentation with morning routines and now teaching other women how to create their own, I explore the significance of morning rituals in setting the tone for a successful day. Reflecting on my initial skepticism toward the original book's approach, I share insights on why a one-size-fits-all routine might not work for everyone. Delving into the new additions to the book, such as the "Miracle Evening," I offer my thoughts on striking a balance between structure and flexibility in crafting effective routines.
In this episode, I cover:
- Overview of the updated edition of "The Miracle Morning" book
- Distinction between morning routines and morning task lists
- Incorporating evening routines to improve sleep quality
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www.megansumrell.com/masteryourmorning
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Answer me this. Are you a morning person? Maybe an afternoon person? Perhaps you're a night owl? Perhaps you feel like you never really get, get moving? Well, regardless of how you would classify yourself, you deserve to have a morning routine that serves you, that sets you up for success. Now, before you get, you start rolling your eyes and go, Oh, I've heard all about the morning routine stuff and all the things that we're all supposed to do and journal and meditate and yoga.
And I just don't have time for that. Or I don't like it. Guess what? That is not what I'm going to tell you. Instead, I am thrilled to tell you about my annual free event coming up called Master Your Morning. And over the course of five days, 30 minutes or less each day, I'm going to teach you how to create your own unique morning routine based on two things.
Your unique personality type. And secondly, the realities of your home life, right? You may not have a lot of time for a morning routine, and that's what this free workshop is all about. So if you want to come join, head over to megansumrell.com/masteryourmorning. And I promise you at the end of it, you are going to have a completely different relationship with yourself.
All right, friends, an updated edition of the book, The Miracle Morning came out. So obviously we need to have a conversation about that today here on the podcast. So let's do it.
Welcome to the Work+Life Harmony podcast. I'm your host, Megan Sumrell. I'm the creator of the top program and top planner, teaching all things, time management, organization, and productivity for women. I'm also a mom and wife, and just like you, I'm juggling hashtag all the things. While running multiple businesses and a family.
Guess what? You don't have to feel constantly overwhelmed, exhausted, and stressed out. There is another way when you have the right systems and tools to plan and manage your time. You can live a life of harmony. This is your show to learn from me and other amazing women, how to master your time, planning and organization to skyrocket your productivity.
So you can have Work+Life Harmony. If you're ready to stop feeling overwhelmed, this is the show for you. And if you're new here, I'd love to get you started with my work life harmony assessment. All you have to do is DM me on Instagram at Megan Sumrell with the word harmony and my team will send it right over.
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Work+Life Harmony. Today, I want to talk about a topic I have brought up before on the podcast and it is all around morning routines. And the reason why I wanted to revisit it here today. Is because I recently saw in a social media feed somewhere that someone was referencing updates to a book called The Miracle Morning.
And reading this book many years ago is what started me down the path of figuring out this whole morning routine thing. And I have shared many times that I actually don't, didn't care for this book, The Miracle Morning. And so when I saw that they had a new updated and expanded edition, I was like, hang on, let me go check this out.
See what I think about the new updates of the book and kind of sit with that for a little bit. So that's what I want to be sharing here today. Um, first I'm just going to talk briefly about why I'm so passionate about morning routines and why I would like for you to also be passionate about a morning routine.
Um, a little backstory on the first book of Miracle Morning. And then we're going to dive into what the new updates are in the book here and have a conversation about that. First and foremost, I always want to level set. What do I, I'm talking about a morning routine. So many women out there today will tell me when I asked them like, Hey, do you have a morning routine?
They say, yes. I asked them what it is and what they actually do is give me a morning task list. I get up, I feed the dogs, I feed the kids, I pack lunches and all these things that they are doing in service of others. And while that may be a routine, that's not what I'm talking about, nor is it what Hal is talking about when we're talking about morning routines.
Instead, I'm talking about a, or more than one, activity that you do to start your day that is not in service to others. All right. So that's what we're talking about with morning routines. And if you have ever done any Googling and searching on, you know, morning routines for productive people or whatever, you usually see a lot of suggestions that include some form of meditation, stretching, yoga, journaling, reading, et cetera.
All right. So years ago, I realized that how I was starting my day, which was with a morning task list Was really putting me in a bad mood before even 8 a. m. I was irritated. Everybody was annoying me. I'm like, it's not even 8 a. m. And when you start your day that way, when you're feeling that way that early in the morning, it's really hard to undo that and get to a place where you're feeling like ready for the day, right?
So I started doing my own investigating on like, how can I change this? Because this is not a great way to start the day. And before I became a mom, when I was a single woman, I did not start my days that way. But then I realized I would wake up, my apartment or house would be quiet, right? I could have a cup of coffee because demands were not coming at me first thing in the morning.
So I stumbled on this book, the first edition of it years ago called The Miracle Morning. And he, Hal, advises what his Miracle Morning is, it is a prescribed six activities. And it's an acronym of called SAVERS, S A V E R S. And they are silent, uh, meaning you're doing it, you're just in quiet so it can be a form of meditation, if you will.
Affirmations is the A, so saying or writing affirmations. Then visualization for V, the E is for exercise, R is for reading, and S is for scribing or journaling. So his miracle morning that he lays out, and originally he didn't list it as a six minute option, it was usually a good hour, would be to spend ten minutes on each of those six activities every single morning.
And at the end of the book, there's talk about if you just commit to doing this for 30 days, like you're, it's gonna set you up. All right. And the subtext on the book says the not so obvious secret guaranteed to transform your life before 8 a. m. I was like, dang, right? So I did the thing and I actually did it for 60 days in a row where I got up an hour early and I did the six activities for 10 minutes each.
And I found at the end of those 60 days, I was actually in an even worse mood by 8 a. m. than I had been before I had done it. As a woman, what do I instantly do? I instantly go to, I did it wrong. What's wrong with me? There must be something wrong with me because this is not transforming my life and it's actually making things worse for me.
So I wasn't ready to give up. So I started diving into more and more research and all the productivity experts out there were saying some form of journaling, meditation, yoga, all that kind of stuff to start your day. And the deeper I dug, I stumbled onto a research paper that had been done where they were basically debunking.
They didn't realize that they were debunking this. But what they were highlighting was it was a study done based on your Myers Briggs personality test. So if you're familiar with it, it's the one where you take the test and it gives you four letters. So you might be an E or an I, you might be a J or a T, right?
And it was showing that based on your Myers Briggs personality test, what activities you do first thing in the morning to serve yourself, again, not tasks, but activities, activities. It might be completely different based on your personality test. As I dug into this and started digging into the activities that matched my Myers Briggs personality test, it was like, Oh my gosh, all the light bulbs went off for me.
And I could see so clearly why the six things laid out in the miracle morning were not serving me in the morning. And they were creating a more anxiety and stress. And I was like, this is it. This is it. So that set me out on a path to create, and I do this once a year, a free workshop called Master Your Morning, where I teach what I learned from this study.
And then I created a five step process to help you create your morning routine based on two things. Your personality test and the realities of your life, right? Because maybe for you to get in a 60 minute morning routine before you're in service to others might require you to get up at 4 a. m. Because maybe you've got littles that are waking up at 5 a.
m. You're like, heck no, right? So we need to layer that in. And the good news is that at the time this podcast is airing right now, I'm about to hold my annual free master your morning event. All right. So you can go to megansumrell.com/masteryourmorning. You can sign up for free and you're going to learn how to create a morning routine the way I teach it.
So again, when I saw the updates to the book, I was like, hang on, let me go check this out because maybe it's been refreshed in a way that now like I can give the miracle morning a try. And so the book came to me, I'm holding it up here. And again, it says it is an updated and expanded edition. And there are two things that they said they've included, which is the Miracle Evening and the Miracle Life.
And I'm going to touch on those in a minute. And then there were some questions that he highlighted that people have had after trying out the book, the first version of the book. And so we're going to touch on three of those questions here as well. So first let's talk about the addition of the Miracle Evening in the book.
I really liked the addition of the Miracle Evening. Because what it is really centered on is that are, are really focusing on what you can do at night to help you get better sleep. Now, the only thing I don't love about it is again, it's prescribed activities, but unlike the miracle morning where it's the silence affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, scribing.
It's stuff that is, a couple of them are really great, such as no blue screen an hour before bed. And I love that he's putting a focus on ending your day in a way that supports a really productive sleep. So I, I love the addition of the miracle evening, but again, I don't like things that are super prescriptive of how long and, and what we need to do, but a lot of good things for you to think about there.
Now let's dive into some of the, the questions that he's covering. So one of the first questions is, what if I've never been a morning person and don't believe I can become one? And that's something I get all the time. People are like, man, I am not a morning person. And I'll be honest, when I saw that this book was adding in the Miracle Evening, I thought he was gonna be talking about evening routines as a replacement for morning routines, because that is something I teach and master your morning.
But. In the book, he's more or less saying if you feel that you've never been a morning person, he's basically saying, if you do this for 30 days, it will make you enjoy being a morning person. Um, and I struggle with that a little bit because I've been a, and I consider myself ish a morning person, but I personally have been doing morning routines for myself now for over 10 years where I am.
intentionally getting up earlier than I technically need to in order to have that time for myself. And every single morning when my alarm goes off, I groan. I, I have never gotten to a point in 10 years without alarm goes off and I'm like, Oh yeah, morning routine time. Ever. I just want to be perfectly honest with that.
But I've been doing this long enough that the thought that goes through my head says, Megan, if you don't get out of bed, you are, you're setting yourself up for probably a pretty ugly day because I know I need a space for a morning routine or else it's just not good for me, nor is it good for the people that I live with.
So I'm not sure that you'll ever become a morning person, but I do believe that you might see the value in even getting up five minutes earlier than you do right now. Now another question that he covers in here, it says, what if I'm not motivated and already feel so overwhelmed that I can't imagine adding anything else to my schedule or life?
And friends, I feel that in so many of the women that come in and find me inside of the top program are in that exact place, right? Like I don't need another thing to add to my to do list. I'm drowning. I need a light boat, right? And his solution to this is to say, Hey, you don't need a 60-minute morning routine, but you could do six minutes.
You could do each one of those activities for just one minute. I love his angle of it doesn't need to be an hour. I agree with that a hundred percent, which is why I said, maybe all you need to do is get up five minutes earlier. But I know from personal experience and from speaking with now, Oh, I think we've had over 10, 000 people go through master your morning over the last three years.
What people don't need when they're in the state of complete overwhelm is prescribed activities that feel like something on a checklist, right? Okay. I did my journaling check. I did my exercise check. That's not what we need. And so if you are in that place, maybe what your morning routine is. Is that you get to go downstairs and actually have a couple sips of your coffee while it's still hot and your house is silent, right?
And that alone, that does not feel heavy, if not something else on our task list or another to do to accomplish. I just want to highlight that because if you were in that place right now, you're like, the last thing I need is more crap to add to my list of things to check off for the day. I encourage you to come to the free master your morning event because I'm going to help you come up with things that don't feel burdensome or something else you have to check off that might serve you exactly where you are today.
I know when my daughter was very young and I was trying to figure out a morning routine for myself, what I realized I needed. Was to not hear the word mom for the first 10 minutes that I was awake. It just desperately needed that. Didn't matter what activity I was doing. I just needed to not hear the words mom from the first 10 minutes of me being awake.
So I love that he's bringing that question up, but again, we might need to start somewhere just a lot simpler than jumping into six tasks for a minute. I don't want to start my day setting timers and doing, making sure I'm doing six certain things that I'm checking off for a minute. Now, a third question that I wanted to bring up that I thought is a great one is one I hear as well.
It says, what if I'm not motor, sorry, I just did that one. What if I've been doing the miracle morning, the prescribed routine for a long time and it's starting to feel stale? How do I make it exciting again? And this is, and he gives some great suggestions in here of changing up. He still keeps the six things, the savers, but he's maybe with exercise, maybe you're doing a different form of exercise, or maybe you switch up the order that you're doing your six things, but it's still the same six.
Now, what's interesting is I would love to, to meet the people that ask that specific question, because one of the things in the, uh, personality assessment around morning routines. Is you may have a certain personality type where that kinds of rinse and repeat is an absolute news fest to you. And so one of the things that I encourage people, if that is them inside of Master Your Morning is to create a number of different flavors of morning routines, pick and choose what feels good, right?
What we're not after here is a prescribed thing that you now have to do for the rest of your life, because that may be the polar opposite of what works for you. And your personality and or the realities of your life. We have to be able to adjust these morning routine. I have had stages of life where I got my entire morning routine done and I would spend a full hour on it.
I've also been in seasons of life where my morning routine is a whopping 20 minutes. Right now, that's where I'm at. I have about 20 minutes of a morning routine and then I have to do some tasks. Because I choose to not wake up any earlier. Now there's one other thing that comes up in the book that I found really interesting, and it's around this idea of what if when he was addressing me, what if I'm not a morning person?
And he has a long conversation around how much sleep do we really need? Because you may be saying, and I'm totally paraphrasing his words here, but let's say you are currently getting eight hours of sleep and you're like, I need eight hours of sleep. And he gives a scenario of how we can basically trick our brain into and our body into needing less sleep.
So that if we just start making affirmations around, I thrive on six hours of sleep, and we go to bed saying that to ourselves, and we wake up saying our, saying that to ourselves, that we will get to a place where maybe we can wake up early enough for these morning routines and not get a certain amount of sleep.
Now, I love that idea, but I personally have never experienced that, and especially shout out to women going through perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause. I don't think, I personally don't believe, I have no science to back this, but I personally do not believe that we can trick our menopause bodies into saying, I can thrive on six hours of sleep.
So that's the one thing I was, I really, I just would love to see actual scientific evidence. That anybody, regardless of their sex, age, et cetera, could trick themselves into needing a lot less sleep than what their body is telling them that they need. So at the end of the day, here's what I wanna leave you with as it relates to morning routines and the Miracle Morning, and for you to decide if the Miracle Morning might be a good fit for you.
Now, remember that the tagline at the bottom of the book says, the not so obvious secret guaranteed to transform your life before 8 a.m. If you are in a place where you are looking for a morning routine that you're really looking to transform your life, meaning you are trying to reconnect with yourself, you have big goals, dreams, all of that.
Maybe the six activities, his savers, might be a good fit for you because there is a common theme out there of the importance of visualization, exercise, affirmations, reading, journaling, all of that, right? But if you are in a season of light or just you are someone that is saying, you know what I want from my morning routine?
Maybe I'm not looking to transform my life. Maybe I'm looking for a way to start my day that serves me, that fills my cup, that brings up my energy stores, that allows me to show up for myself, for others, the best way that I can be. And these six activities don't sound like they're going to do that for you, then maybe you ought to come check out Master Your Morning and create a morning routine designed around your personality type and the realities of your life.
I am not here to say that his six activities are terrible activities. I actually, I, I attempt to practice some form of meditation and I do exercise and I do scribing, but I have found, and now I know why, because that study with my personality type, doing those first thing in the morning, with the exception of exercise, I do like early morning exercise, but, um, journaling, affirmations, meditation, all of that, I can't do them.
I could do them first thing in the morning, but they don't serve me. All they do is add stress. Whereas if I move them somewhere much later in the day, and maybe I'm not doing them every day, they add a ton of value to my life. So, I think those activities are great, but maybe They don't need to be jammed into your morning.
So if you would like to join me and thousands of other women here going through the free master your morning workshop, head on over again to megansumrell.com/masteryourmorning. You can join the workshop for free. It runs for five days. 30 minutes or less each day. Yes, the replays will be there for you to come back if you can't join me live.
And it is always a blast to see what the different morning routines are that people create that serve them so, so well. And for some of us, it gives us neat ideas of things to go check out too. All right. I hope you have a great rest of your day and hopefully for you. You can start serving yourself first thing in the morning instead of jumping right into being in service to others,
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