How intentional are you about your life?

How much thought do you give to how you start your day?

I’m not talking about when you’ve got your coffee and are sitting down 
 to start working… I’m talking about from the moment you open your eyes.

What do you do next?

Do you hit snooze 10 times?

Do you force yourself out of bed to stretch and brush your teeth?

Do you immediately reach for your phone?

None of these choices are necessarily wrong… but they could be the difference 
 between a super productive day (and a successful life) and one that leaves you 
 frustrated and feeling like you didn’t  get much done.

Here’s how to make sure you’re starting your day as strongly as you possibly can. 

Consider what happens next?

Okay, so we're back at intentionality again and creating an intentional life.

So, in an earlier podcast I talked about what I think is the absolute number one cornerstone habit that will create an intentional life for you and that is meditation. 

So this week I want to talk about where that fits in and really what I see as the other cornerstone habit that… and when I say cornerstone what I mean by that is this is the one habit, or I guess this is the second one, but these are the two habits that if you put them into your life and they become part of your life, then they will make everything that you do more intentional. 

That's what we're talking about is, I think the way you create the design for an amazing life, lead an amazing life, is to be intentional about leading that intentional life. 

And so the second cornerstone habit is the way you start your day. I like to think of it as my morning routine or my morning ritual and I've been working on my morning ritual. This is my 12th year now. I started 12 years ago doing this. And basically all that means is I have consciously programmed the way my day starts every single day and when I say every single day, that's my intention. No one's perfect and I'm more like maybe 90% of my days start this way…

But my day starts with, the first thing is, well, brushing my teeth and drinking some water. Lately, I'm drinking some water with my supplements, but just drinking some water and then immediately going into meditation—that absolute cornerstone of the cornerstone. So, meditation is the cornerstone of my morning ritual. After that, then I will do some exercise, exercise and/or yoga and so this is just what works for me, okay? I'm just telling you my ritual. Your ritual will probably be different. 

I highly recommend you have some level of meditation in there, but your morning ritual is going to be different. I'm just walking through mine and my thought process, but one of the key things is, it's not set in stone. What I'm doing now is different from what I did 12 years ago. 

So as you sit down to plan out your morning ritual, your morning routine, what you want to do is you also want to plan in a debrief. You want to say, look at the calendar and say 30 days from now, “This what I'm going to do for 30 days, and then after 30 days I'm going to review it and see how it's working.”

 Do a little process. Just sit down with your computer, with a piece of paper, your journal, and look back and say, “How's this working? How's it fitting in my life? Is it making my life better or is it making it worse? Am I able to fit this in or is it too much of a rush? Is having a morning ritual stressing me out, you know, trying to pack all this in? Stressing me out? Is it leaving me more tired or not?

 Can I add in more? Are certain pieces working or other pieces not working?” But it's sitting down and designing the way your day starts because if you don't do that, how do you start your day? 

I know a lot of people, they wake up, they reach over, they pick up their phone, they look at their phone, and now you're in the rabbit hole. Now you have lost control of your day.

 Now maybe you're in email, you're in social. You're looking at your texts, whatever. You are now letting someone else set the agenda for your day, setting the intention for your day, setting what you're not going to accomplish that day because once you start down that path, it's really hard to recover. 

What this is all about, this morning ritual, is about putting you in the right frame of mind, in the right state, the right emotional state, so that you can create that intentional day. And then you know what? You string together a bunch of intentional days and you want to end up with an intentional life. So exactly what my morning ritual looks like… that's not what's important. What's important is, you sit down and plan how you're going to start the day. 

You know, like I said, I've got hydration in there, I've got meditation in there. Usually, sometimes I have some journaling in there. Sometimes I'm doing some learning, some reading stuff that is making my life better as opposed to reading Facebook or Instagram or something like that. Certainly nutrition is in there. That's my morning ritual. It usually ends, that's the last part of my morning ritual, is usually food. 

Here's another thing… if I miss? That's okay. You just get back on the habit the next day. If you miss for a week? That's okay. Then you just start again. You just come back to the practice. That's what this is about. It's about starting. 

It's about sitting down, being intentional. It's about designing it and it's about following that process. And then when you fall off the wagon, when you stop doing it, it's about coming back to the practice. That's the key. 

And one final thing is that sometimes I'll have different morning rituals, rituals for different days. Like for my creative days, for my workout, for my days where I'm going to spend with the family, I'll have a different process. So I'll actually have a different morning ritual lined up for different types of days, but that's super advanced stuff. Just start with one morning ritual and just start super simple and be forgiving of yourself if you miss, if it's not perfect, if it ends up being a little wonky. That's okay. It'll get better over time. 

One lucky listener that posts a review on iTunes will win a private confidential consultation and coaching with me on discovering your soul’s purpose. I will lead you on a personal journey to discover your unique mind-body psychosomatic map of your life. You will get a detailed report and a personal 45 minute consultation with me that is worth thousands.

On this podcast I’m going to help you design a life that works. So you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The more clear you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you’ll step into your true potential, stay on track and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen? 

Feel free to reach out to me to ask your questions at AskDrSun.com.   Your life is a gift. Design it. Do what matters and join me each week as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams.  I am Dr Sun. Join me next week on Your Life by Design.