The Benefits Of A Morning Routine: Get Ahead Of Your Day Before It Gets Ahead Of You, With Simple Meditations, Affirmations & Visualisations

I'd always rolled my eyes at the thought of a morning routine. I mean seriously, who has the time and how does it even help?

And then I came across Hal Elrod, the author of the Miracle Morning Routine. In his podcast interview with Rachel Hollis (linked below) he explained how he had developed the Miracle Morning Routine and how it  worked. I was intrigued. So intrigued that I bought the book (also linked below) and a few days later I started my very own Miracle Morning Routine. 

Nearly 40 days in now and I LOVE it!

In this episode I share what it looks like in practice, how to tweak it to fit your day and the benefits it has brought to my life. It really has been life changing.  I hope that if you're feeling a little unsettled and you're searching for a practice to help, that this might offer some comfort.

Oh and before I forget! Here's the link to the retreat that I'm running at the beginning of October 2024. I've prepared a brochure which answers and explains all that you should need to know in the first instance. And if you have any questions at all, please just email me at mail@bethgoodrham.com and I'll be happy to help answer any questions you may have. 

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE RETREAT BROCHURE 

Additional links referred to in the episode:
The Rachel Hollis Podcast Episode 580 with Hal Elrod
Miracle Morning Book By Hal Elrod

Transcript

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Hi, I'm Beth and this is my podcast, A Friend in Your Ear. Friends are so important in our lives. They support us through the good and the bad, the ups and the downs. They give us the space to grow and the grace to fail. They are our biggest cheerleaders when we are our harshest critics. They are not just here for us, but they're here with us. And that's what this podcast is all about. Being a friend in your ear. I'm a lawyer turned stylist and fashion blogger, who built a successful styling business. And now I work from home running an online business. I spend a lot of time reading books, listening to audio books and listening to podcasts. My favorite podcasts offer me advice, comfort, support, wisdom, and fun when my real life friends are busy. And this is a place where I can take what I've learned and deliver it in a way that hopefully makes your life easier, gives you something to ponder, and brings a little joy to your day. Think of this as a chat with a friend, a place where you can come to reminisce for nostalgia, a giggle, and a place to find answers to something that might be bothering you. So whether you're out on a run or a walk, on the school run, being a taxi to your kids or grandkids, on a Zoom meeting with your microphone muted, or sitting with a glass of something cold in your Welcome to the A Friend in Your Ear podcast. Hi and welcome to another episode of the show. I know it's been a while. Life is like that sometimes, isn't it? We just suddenly look up and seven or eight or nine weeks has passed and we're not even really sure where it's gone. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about something that has really, honestly, utterly, and totally changed my life. And that is introducing a book. morning routine. I know, don't roll your eyes, I have been so skeptical of morning routines for so many years and every time I've heard somebody talk about one I've been like, oh here we go, let's jump on that particular bandwagon. But what prompted me to start with a morning routine, first of all, was listening to a podcast episode with Rachel Hollis. I will link to that below. And it was really enlightening. She was interviewing a chap called Hal Elrod, who developed the Miracle Morning Routine on the back of some difficulties he'd encountered in his life. And I really suggest listening to that episode. And it was just before Easter, so it was about the 20th of March that the episode came out. But I probably didn't listen to it for a few days later. And I distinctly remember on Good Friday having a really, really bad day. That was, 29th of March and I suffer from tinnitus and my ears were really playing me up. I was probably a bit tired as well I was probably a bit overwhelmed. I think everyone was coming home Not that that overwhelms me, but I maybe got work to finish and I just thought you know what? I am not going to have any more days like this. I knew that in order to deal with my tinnitus I had to get myself into a stronger place mentally because it's the only way to cope with the constant ringing in my ears And i'm actually going to do a podcast episode on tinnitus That might be next week or the week after because there's some things that I want to share with anyone who suffers from tinnitus Which might help and in return i'm sure you'll have things to contribute as well Anyway, so there I was on good friday with my ears buzzing feeling tired feeling overwhelmed and thinking You I'm going to do something different. And I really enjoyed the podcast episode. So I ordered a copy of Hal Elrod's book, which is called the miracle morning. And I'm sure over the Easter weekend, I must've sat down and read it cover to cover and I started implementing it. on the 1st of April. Coincidentally, I just downloaded the app to the 30 Day Challenge and committed to doing this Miracle Morning routine every day for 30 days to see where it took me. I have to say, the first week, I was like, I was a bit tired because I was having to get up earlier in order to do it, but gradually I've got used to that. And so what I'm going to do in the episode is very quickly talk you through how this particular morning routine works. And it may work for you. It may not. There may be bits that you think, Oh, I like that. I'm going to incorporate it into what I already do. Or this may be something totally new to you as well. So I'll talk you through how it works. I'll share with you some of the things that I've implemented, some of the affirmations I've created, just so that it gives you a framework and you can either think, Yeah, I'm in or no, thank you very much. I am staying in my bed, which frankly if you did I wouldn't blame you, but I've done the first 30 days and we're now at the beginning of May. I've done another three days since then, and I can't see myself stopping doing it anytime soon, which is quite revelatory for someone like me who, you know, I was happy to get up at quarter to seven, seven o'clock. I now find myself getting up at about 10 past six and I'm hoping to get it back to something that starts with a five in it. Even if it's 5. 59, because I've always, always hated getting up at a time that involves a five in it. I don't know why. Anyway, let me walk you through how the morning routine works. Well, the miracle morning routine, in fact. There are six different elements to it. What I would say at this stage is that I don't think you need to do all six elements first thing in the morning. I think there are four of them which are really helpful to do but I think if you run out of time there are the other two which you can come back to at a later point in the day. So already I've managed to chop it down a little bit if we're a bit short of time. Now there's an anacronym that Hal Elrod has come up with to make it easy to remember The first and the last letters of the anacronym didn't quite fit, so he's had to tweak them slightly. So just bear with me on this whilst I explain it. But the anacronym is the word SAVERS. Now the first one stands for silence. This is where he had to do a little bit of a tweak to make it work, which is actually a form of meditation. Again, don't roll your eyes just yet. I'll talk you through how it works. The second one is The third one is visualizations. The fourth one is exercise. The fifth one is reading. And the sixth one is scribing, which is actually journaling. Let me just go through those again, because if you're anything like me, when I listened to the podcast the first time I was like, Lordy me, what's going on here? I can't quite remember all that. So the anacronym is SAVERS. Silence, which is meditation, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing, which is journaling. Now, out of those, the key ones I find to do are the silence, which is meditation, affirmations, visualizations, and scribing, which is the journaling, the other two, the E and the R of savers, the exercise and the reading. I think they can come a little bit later on in the day if you don't have time for them first thing, depending on how you feel. So let me talk you through what this looks like for me. It involves setting my alarm for 6. 10 in the morning, 6. 15. I've tended to find that I'm awake earlier than that anyway now. I'm just naturally waking up a little bit earlier, probably because I'm getting more used to it. And it's also lighter in the mornings than it has been. How this is going to fare in the winter, I honestly don't know. I might share that with you when the time comes. What I do is I get out of bed. There's no faffing around. I don't reset the alarm. What he says in the book is if you hit the snooze button or reset the alarm, you're not getting very deep sleep and you're just recreating the agonizing process of having to wake up again. And frankly, why would you do that to yourself? So get up, go into the bathroom, clean teeth, do some body brushing. So I'm doing some habit stacking as well as part of my morning routine. I'm Building in things that I know I want to do, but I didn't really have a place to do them, or I'd forget to do them. Then I put some yoga gear on, something comfortable, come downstairs, make a cup of tea, drink a glass of water. So already, before I've started the morning routine, this is the very 1970s girl in me. I'm like, yes, I am ahead of the game. I have body brushed, I've had a cup of tea, And I've drank my glass of water. Then I go out to the back of the house and I always say, Good morning, morning, and just see what the weather's doing. There's often a robin, which is sitting in a tree outside, singing away, so I have a little chat to the robin. The squirrel has normally come by then and he's looking for some squirrel food, so I have a little chat to the squirrel. And then I sit down and I start to do my morning routine. Now the first one, the silence, the meditation, the meditation. This is an interesting way of doing meditation, I think, because there's a structure to it. There's a structure to all of this. So rather than me being left to my own devices, which could be a bit random, I might involve me falling back asleep or not really having an idea of what's going on in the world. There is a structure to it, I like that gives me the feeling that I'm actually making some progress because frankly, if I'm going to be getting up at some ridiculous 10 past six quarter past six in the morning, I need to know that I'm going to be making progress and it's worth my while. So the silence, I set a timer for 10 minutes. There's a free app that comes with the miracle morning routine. It's got a timer in it. It sets out all your savers in the right order. You can tick them off. It's Very good. You get a streak then so you can see how many days you've been doing it for. And the silence is broken down into three separate sections. So the first section, or the way I do it, is I do 10 deep breaths in and out whilst clearing my mind. And sometimes I do go back to one because I've realised I've got to ten and I've just been thinking about things and I'm actually trying to work on emptying my mind. So I'll sometimes go back to the start, which is fine, do my ten breaths of just having a very, very clear mind. So after that comes a gratitude practice. And I will literally just think of anything that I'm grateful for. And it normally comes down to the basic things like I am safe, I am free. I live in a lovely house. I've got food in the fridge, I've got running water. I'm not in pain. My family are well, my children are, well, it's a sunny day. You know? What more could I need in life, frankly? What more could I need? And that just puts you into a really good framework, and it's important to acknowledge what we do have in life, and what we are lucky for, so that we don't take things for granted. So I'll do a quick gratitude practice, and then this is the part of the meditation that I really like, I can't remember the actual name. I think it's emotional something meditation and it involves getting yourself into a state that you want to feel for that day. So for example, for some days for me, it'll be, I just want to feel really settled today. And the idea is that you think back to a time when you felt really settled and you draw on the emotion and the energy from that time and embody it for the current day. It might be. I want to live in a really high vibe today. I want to be really happy. I want to be really energized. It's the weekend. And so you just decide how you want to feel for the day and draw on any resources that you've got. Memories, I guess you could look at photos, you could listen to a bit of music if you wanted to as part of the meditation, because meditation can be active, to get yourself into that particular state, which just means you've set your intention for the day. And I love doing that. I think it's a really, really positive way to start the day so that you get ahead of it before it gets ahead of you, that you've taken control of it. This is how I want to feel today that I'm setting my stall out for the day. All for a bit of setting the stall out for the day. The next thing that he comes to which I have found super valuable are the affirmations. And before the only affirmations I'd come across were things like Basically, lies you would tell yourself. I am this, I am that, I am whatever. And then your brain would go, You're not, are you? So, then it would become meaningless. So there's a very specific structure that he has for setting out your affirmations. There's four stages to them. I just had a notebook that I'd got from Wilko. Who used to love Wilko? I love Wilko notebooks. Shame it's closed down. I've got an empty Wilko notebook. So it's nothing fancy. It's not pre set out It's just something I can scribble in and it literally is a scribble. Sometimes I go back or quite often I try and go back to read my affirmations. I'm not always clear what they say because writing at half six in the morning can be a bit of a challenge. But anyway, moving on, there's four stages. Now what he suggests is that you choose something that you're committed to because you're only going to stick with something that you are committed to. So you make a commitment to do something and that might be to do with health, it might be to do with relationships, it might be to do with your mindset, it might be to do with activities you want to do. But pick something that you're committed to. And the stages go like this, and I will read one of mine out to you. The first stage is, I am committed to X. No matter what, there is no other option. And you write that down. So you've actually formed in your mind what it is you are committed to. The second one is, I am committed to X. Because. So then you identify why it is you're committed to this particular thing that you're committed to. The next stage is to follow through with my commitment. I will take the following actions and you make a list of the actions you're going to take. And then the fourth one is to follow through with my commitment. I will schedule The following time to take these actions. So then what you've done is said, not only am I going to take these actions, but this is when I'm going to take them. I'm committed to this. This is why I am committed to it. These are the actions that I'm going to take in order to demonstrate my commitment. And this is when I'm going to take these actions. So it's this really simple four part framework. And what happens is that over the 30 days you build up a whole big bank of different affirmations of things that you want to work on. Now, I don't know that you have to do a new affirmation every day. I have up until now, but I could imagine there just might be Five affirmations that you make that you go back and revisit them. So you maybe rewrite them slightly. You maybe just reread them. You maybe say them out loud and that's absolutely fine. It's whatever works for you. But what I found was after I did the first few, I could almost make a list of other ones, but I, Oh yes, I really want to work on that. Oh yes. I want to work on that. Oh, that'll be something that would be really interesting to dive into. What I've also done with these affirmations because otherwise I'll just end up with a book of affirmations is just write a really quick list at the back of my book as to what each one is and they all start with a verb so for example I've got I've got learning to rest and take holidays. I've got being at peace with myself. I've got putting play first and work second. I've got practicing gratitude. I've got exploring ways to keep me healthy. I've got finding a way to deal with overwhelm. So I've got this little list at the back and it's really reassuring as you go through your day to think, Oh, I'm feeling a little bit unsteady about this. And knowing that you've already dealt with it and you've got a framework in place to deal with it. So let me just read one to you and this is about finding a way to deal with overwhelm. There's something that I think is very common to all of us. We can get to a place where we feel that there's so many arrows being shot at us. There's so many things on our to do list. There's so many things that we need to do that we're not quite sure where to start and it can just be. Horrible, your body goes into that fight, flight, or freeze mode and I've definitely had freeze. I had freeze in the supermarket a few weeks ago where I was just standing in front of the cabinet just looking at it and thinking. I don't know what to do. I actually do not know what to do next. Almost to the point I felt so awful it was funny, I just said to myself, just take the next best step, which was to reach my arm out, pick something from the shelf and put it in my basket. That was all I could do. What's the next best step I could take? So, now I've come up with a plan to deal with overwhelm, which I will talk you through. So, the first point is, I am committed to finding a way to deal with overwhelm. There is no other option, no matter what. That's my commitment. My second step, I am committed to finding a way to deal with overwhelm, because. First, it can take out whole days for me. Secondly, it's debilitating and unsettling. Third, life is too short to feel the overwhelm. And fourth, it's just a horrible, horrible way to feel. So they're my reasons as to why I wanted to make a commitment to deal with it. Number three, to follow through with my commitment to find a way to deal with overwhelm, I will take the following actions. Continue with a morning routine. Continue with a bedtime routine. Recognize when the overwhelm is likely to hit and take preventative measures. Identify what I can do in the moment to lessen the overwhelm. Then the next one, to follow through with my commitment to find a way to deal with overwhelm, I will take the following actions at the specified times. Number one, morning routine, 6. 15 to 6. 20 each day. That's my start time. That's not how long it takes. Evening routine, 9. 30 p. m. each night, because I found having an evening routine also settles me and stops me from feeling so overwhelmed. Plan to run on the days, you know, you might experience overwhelm and then this is a practice that I've put in place on a Sunday afternoon come five o'clock. I look at the clock and think okay, what could I do now? That means I'm less likely to feel overwhelmed tomorrow because Mondays are great days for me to feel overwhelmed and that might look like Just going into my inbox and clearing my inbox. So I know that come Monday morning, there's not likely to be that much there that I need to deal with. It might mean just getting ahead of the game on some of the cooking for the week ahead. It's just putting a few things in place to make sure that I'm ahead of Monday before it arrives. Now I know that we all try and do this, and over the years I kind of figured that out, but to actually have a set plan in place has made a massive difference. And then when the overwhelm starts to hit, I've got a plan for what I do. So it goes along these lines. Set a timer for 20 minutes. Just 20 minutes to do whatever the activity is that you know is causing you a bit of overwhelm. When the timer goes off, set it for another 5 minutes and regroup by listening to a song that's uplifting, doing some box breathing, focusing on breathing. a mindless task like a little bit of washing or doing some sweeping, have a drink, send someone a message, plan what you're going to do in the next 20 minutes. Then I sit back down and set another timer for 20 minutes and repeat it three times and just see where you get to. And actually, I found I probably only need to do it once and I feel a hundred times better and the overwhelm just disappears. So that is the section on affirmations. What you'll build up Is a blueprint for all the areas of your life that you find a bit challenging. Often the things that we find really challenging are as a result of. patterns of behavior that we've got into over the years. And I found it's really quite hard to break a pattern of behavior when it is happening. It's quite hard to recognize it and go, Oh, I've thought this a million times. I need to stop thinking this. But by writing affirmations, you reprogram your brain before you've actually started down that path. And the effect of this is to. Stop it from starting, if that makes sense, because you've thought about it in advance and you're reprogramming yourself and pre programming yourself before the situation happens, though, that you have a plan in place of how you're going to react. So rather than going to your default mode and pattern of behavior of how many years standing. You've already started the reprogramming process, and that is what I have found to be the most valuable thing. Moving on to visualization. So visualization is literally where you rehearse in your head how a situation is going to play out, whether that is something that you currently do in the moment, on a day to day basis. So for example that might be tomorrow morning, I want to go running. So this is what it's going to look like. I will have a Laid out my running clothes the night before. I will have my trainers by the front door, together with my key, together with my running armband. And that's, you visualized it so that when you get up in the morning, you're pre programmed again, just to go and do it without thinking. One of the best examples of visualization I ever had, and it's very, very basic and simple and quite boring. I remember I was driving along once through Moseley, where I used to live in Birmingham. And I thought to myself, just imagine how you would react if a police car came up behind you, blue lights on, sirens going, what would you do? And I was like, I would indicate, I would find a little gap at the side of the road, I would pull over, I would wait for the police car to go. And then I would pull off again. All the things that we know actually in our head, but sometimes, I don't know, I don't even know why I was thinking about it because it's not something that ever bothered me. It doesn't stress me out in the slightest. Next thing, I look up, police car behind me, sirens going, blue lights flashing. I indicated, pulled over. There will happen to be a gap, fortuitously. Police car zooms by and I was like, oh, that was a textbook maneuver, but that was a visualization. I visualized how I was going to respond in that moment, pulled it off and it was all fine. So that is an example of a very, very simple visualization. It's just planning out in advance of something happening, what it's going to look like for you. The exercise, and I should have said this at the start, but how Elrod allows Does it allow 10 minutes or 6 minutes for each of these things? Can't quite remember which. But anyway, it's up to you how it works out. But he suggests doing some exercise. So whether that's a bit of yoga, whether it's I think the aim is to get your heart rate up. But frankly, at that time in the morning, it's too early for me. I don't want to get my heart rate up. I'll do a bit of stretching. I'll do a bit of yoga. on the basis and knowing that I'll do something a little bit more intense later on in the day. One thing that I found really helpful because I do this sitting on the floor with my legs crossed is just to kind of circle from my spine. I'm doing it as I'm recording this. I'm moving in circular motions and it really, really sort of unclicks your spine for the morning. So even if it's just that is better than nothing. So if you want to do your exercise, then great. If not, don't worry. Reading, he recommends reading some kind of book that I don't think it matters what you read as long as you enjoy it, frankly. It could be a novel, it could be a book about a topic that particularly interests you, fiction, non fiction, whatever. He puts a bit of reading in there as well, but the aim is sort of self development reading. I think as long as it puts you in a high vibes state and you enjoy it, it doesn't matter. And then the last one is scribing or journaling. He does lay out a formula in the book for journaling, but it's not something I follow. I just write down whatever needs to come out and then it's done. My hope is that I've explained that in such a way that it sounds eminently doable because it is, if I haven't described it in such a way that sounds eminently doable, ignore me and just go and buy the Miracle Morning book by Hal Elrod and take a read through it at your own pace, see which bits you think you might, you might Find helpful to have in your own life Like I say for me the things that the most important thing I think is the affirmations because it just actually makes you sit and focus On the thought patterns behaviors, whatever it might be that you want to focus on and change and are committed to doing something about But the silence the affirmation the visualization and the journaling to me or the scribing Other things that make the biggest difference, the exercise and the reading, the reading you could do before you go to bed or at lunchtime. Exercise doesn't have to be then. And eating. If you don't have a lot of time in the mornings and think even doing the silence, the affirmations, the visualization, and the journaling would be too much, break them up. I know that there's lots of people who try and have mini resets throughout the day. So you might say, I'm just going to do one of them in the morning. I'll do one mid morning. I'll do one lunchtime and break them up throughout the day or do couple in the morning, four in the evening. I don't actually think it matters. In an ideal world, yes, it would be great to do them. In the same order, at the same time, every day, and to do all of them. But life isn't like that. I've done them before when I've been walking to New Street Station. I've done my meditation when I've been walking. I don't know what people thought of me. I think I'd put sunglasses on. But you could do the breathing. You can empty your mind. You can even work through the affirmations and just jot them down later. There is a way to do things. But like I say, I have found it incredible. It's been amazing. It's been the best thing that I've done. And I don't want to get to the stage where I'm totally trying to persuade everyone to do it because everyone has to do what works for them. But if you're a little bit at sea and you're ready to try something different, what is there to lose? It's a great time of year to do it now because it's lighter in the mornings, it's sunnier, you get ahead of the day before it gets ahead of you. And I think that is something that is super, super valuable. So I hope that you found this podcast episode helpful. If you've got any questions, come and find me on Instagram at Beth Goodrum, If you'd like to come and check out my website for lots of free resources that I've got on there, that's at www. bethgoodrum. com. I will pop some discount codes below, like I normally do, for Stripe and Stair knickers, which I love wearing. Wear them every single day, and for Balkan. And also just to say, I will also link below to the retreat information that I've got coming up for a retreat I'm running. At the beginning of October with my good friend Mandy Rees. We are so excited about this. We've got 10 spots as it stands at the moment. We're just about to release it. We've got 10 spots for 10 amazing women to come on a weekend retreat with us at a beautiful house with amazing food and loads of great things planned. So I'll pop the link to that below as well. Alright, well you have a great day and I look forward to being back again with you soon. Lots of love, you take care and bye for now. This is the place where I say all of the things which I should have said during the podcast episode, but which I forgot. So first of all, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that you enjoyed the episode. If there's anything that you would like me to cover in future episodes, please just let me know. If there was anything that I mentioned and that you'd like more details about, whether it's a resource or a code for a product, just take a look in the show notes. I will be sure to have. Mentioned it there, and if you would like to subscribe to the podcast so that you get notified as soon as future episodes are ready, then please just hit the subscribe button now. Thanks so much once again, have a super week, and I will see you again soon. Bye for now.