My day begins each morning, when I’m home in Toronto, between 3:30 and 4 a.m. I slip stealthily from under the covers and drape my feet over the edge of the bed.
Bally the Dog, alert to my slightest of movements, takes this as his cue to get up from his mat. He wanders over from the corner of the bedroom to my side for a early morning petting. I vigorously rub his back in that one area that for some reason turns his tail wagging up to a ludicrous speed. This goes on for about a minute before he turns around, plenty satisfied. Time to return to his homemade bed for another three hours of doggy dreaming.
With this, I make my way to the bathroom to get dressed and cleaned up. I put on my workout clothes for later and head down to the kitchen table. A jug of cold water from the fridge and a few daily supplements (vitamin C, a probiotic, and glucosamine chondroitin) are the only nourishment I need for the next few hours.
I grab my writing sweatshirt and put on my headphones. There’s no music. Just silence. It helps me get locked in and laser-focused for the next sixty to ninety minutes.
John Carlton, the famous copywriter, recommends that all writers have rituals that signify the start and end of their work time. Wearing my big headphones and blocking all extraneous noise gets me in writing mode.It’s as though I’m separated from the world by some soundless barrier. My kitchen table is my fortress. My keyboard my weapon. An eight hundred word article my prey.
Time flies by. I pause only when my throat gets dry to quench my thirst. It’s still pitch black outside the 16-foot windows of my loft apartment resting high above a hill in Toronto’s Beaches neighborhood. Only the headlights of an early morning garbage truck break the stillness of the night, but they don’t break my concentration.
By five thirty or six o’clock I’m satisfied with my first draft. It’s time for my daily inspirational quotes to be shared with our rapidly growing Early to Rise Facebook readership of over 7,500 members. These are not automated. I prefer to share what is fresh on my mind each morning. I tweet it. I post it for my Turbulence Training readers. I update it to our Transformation Contest entrants as well.
After this few minutes break I return to my writing. This time, it’s email drafts. It could be the weekly Wednesday Early to Rise team email, or the Thursday Turbulence Training team email. It could be Monday’s issue of Early to Rise Premium, where I share “What I Learned This Week.” Or it could be one of my many Turbulence Training email articles to be sent to my list of over 90,000 fitness fanatics.
These emails come faster and much easier than the eight hundred word articles. I slay the biggest dragon first when my subconscious mind is bubbling over with ideas and my mind is clear and fresh. Then I move to the emails. Having written over three thousand fitness emails in the last twelve years, the Power of Habit has helped me achieve outlier status. There are few people in the world that have written as much on fitness as I have. I can dash off one thousand words for a fitness article almost as quickly as you could recap your dinner from last night.
My next habit is one of my favorite parts of the morning. It is my daily document review and reading time. Thirty minutes are allotted to this important thinking session. First, I read the daily entry from Dr. Gay Hendricks’, “A Year of Living Consciously.” I might copy down a quote to be shared later on Facebook or in an ETR essay. Next, two pages from “The Art of Living,” Sharon Lebell’s new translation of the works of Epictetus, are given reflection.
I move to my gratitude and achievement journal next. Split lengthwise down the page, the left hand side is for the people, activities, and the future for which I am grateful. I often record my thanks for the easy life that I live, and for the opportunity I have to coach, connect, create, and share my gifts with the world. I never forget how lucky I am to have been born in this day and age. There could be no better life for me, for my life is what I make it.
My gratitude journaling ends with the long list of people that I have connected with or been helped by in the last twenty-four hours. Many people have unknowingly made this list over and over and over again. I remind myself to send them a personal thank you email, text or card. No one gets enough appreciation these days, and it’s easy to deliver.
Time to move over to the achievement side. I list the five biggest accomplishments of the past day, and reflect on ways to achieve the same or better results today. Some days it’s hard to find five achievements, but even the small things, such as a good workout, a quick phone call to a friend, or getting an essay out the door belong on the list. I thank Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, for introducing the power of this habit to my day.
On I go to the many documents I’ve gathered over the years. There are the Kekich Credos, Yanik Silver’s Maverick Business Rules, and many others. Each day I review one from the list. Like a horoscope speaks to its readers, I find the points salient to my day’s activities. Sometimes one triggers a breakthrough in an essay or business strategy. Such is the power of this habit.
By now my throat is dry and water jug empty. I return to the fridge for another cold one. The dog is getting restless. I’ve been at this for over three hours and his belly, though always empty – at least according to him, is emptier than ever. We’re almost done, there are just two more habits to go, and both of them are new.
The first new habit is reading a chapter of a book each day. With all of the other reading in my day-to-day schedule, I’d found my book reading diminished in the last year. What better way to fix this problem than with making this a daily habit. Each morning, before the dog gets walked, a chapter must be read.
Finally, it brings me to my last habit, and one that I have struggled to implement for years. Yet it is the simplest of activities. It is mediation. I’ve tried, always quitting, to implement the habit in the past. But this time, with some coaching from ETR’s Publisher, Matt Smith, I’m making it stick. I’ve passed the so-called magical 21-day mark for building a new habit. I haven’t missed a day, and yes, I believe it has made a difference.
This brings me to the dog walk. It’s broaching 7 a.m. by this time. The winter’s morning sun is starting to peek above the beach at the end of the street. Time for Bally the Dog to come downstairs, bask in a quick belly rub, and go out for his morning duties and socialization at the off-leash park. He’ll also try and sneak in a swim, no matter how cold the water. If he can break through the ice, he’s in.
And I watch, satisfied. I’m satisfied that my heaviest lifting of the day is done, though the city is just waking up. You can almost hear the creaks in its bones as it rolls out of bed. The CN Tower yawns and stretches high above the cityscape off in the distance.
My satisfaction comes from the Power of Habit, the strength of repetition, the backbone of success.
But the writing, the reading, the meditating, none of those come easy, save for the Facebook update. My monkey mind wants to chatter. It wants to read when I’m writing, and write when I’m reading. It wants to be on Facebook or in email all of the time. It wants to do anything else but the nothing that I want it to do during meditation. No matter what though, the chattering monkey mind, or The Resistance, as Steven Pressfield calls it, can be defeated over time, with your super human Power of Habit.
Habits are something we can all build over time. It starts with simple planning and preparation. You identify bad habits, find solutions, and implement them. You work on creating new habits, supporting them through planning and preparation.
Success is simple once you have the Power of Habit on your side.
The keys to your future are your daily habits. Start implementing new positive behaviors. Make them a habit, and take control of your future, today.
[Ed. Note. Craig Ballantyne is the author of Financial Independence Monthly, a complete blueprint to helping you take control of your financial future with a web-based business that you can operate from anywhere in the world - including a coffee shop, your kitchen table, or anywhere around the world where there is Internet access. Discover how you can achieve the American Dream and your financial independence here. You've never seen anything like this before.]
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Today’s essay spoke to me particularly. (They all do, in some way.) I have a new job that requires I rise at 3:30-4:00 at least 3 days of the week. I have found it much easier on my body to get up at that time everyday, whether I am scheduled or not. Wow! Power of habit at work! I get so much more accomplished than I used to. I appreciate how you have shown us how you structure your early hours, and it has helped nudge me into thinking how I might do something similar. Thanks for another thoughtful & useful post. Right on target – again.
Thank you Cynthia!
nice article..thanks a lot for sharing this valuable inspirational words..
Craig, I love this article, especially the part about meditation. I have always considered mindset as the missing component for success in weight loss and fitness. Everyone talks about diet and exercise, but they tend to skim over anything related to the mind. I personally use meditation to help me keep focused on my goals. It helped me to go from 210 lbs back down to my high school weight of 165. Keep up the good work. I always recommend you to my friends when they talk about losing weight and getting into shape.
Thanks for all that you do,
Mike Bryan
Thanks for the referrals, Mike, and congrats on your success!
Hi Craig!
Thanks for sharing these personal details. You have blessed me greatly!
Reminds me of the saying:
“Sow a thought, reap an action.
Sow an action, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny.”
I too have found that taking the quiet time to stay still in God’s Presence is one of the most powerful times of my day.
Blessings.
Jeeva
I liked this article so much I posted it on my Facebook fanpage.
Thank you so much, Judy.
Craig,
Thank you so much for todays article. You inspire me, I am curently looking for work, and trying to stay motivated and inspired. NOt always an easy task while searching for work. i love your morning routine thanks for sharing!!
I am going to implement an earlier arisal time with tasks that I haven’t been finding the time to do.
THANK YOU so much
Stay strong, Rachel!
Thanks for your thoughts today. I am impressed with your discipline. I can see why you get so much done! Thanks again for sharing. You have inspired me!
Paul
It would be great if you wrote an article about how you perform your meditation.
I just sit on the floor, cross-legged, and close my eyes and breathe slowly. Hope that helps!
OK. Wake up time is at 3:30-4:00 am. What time to you retire at night and do you have any conditions under which you take speaking engagements that tend to have you up past the 11:00-12:00 hour?
Thoroughly enjoyed the article. Looking to change some old habits but wondering how to attack a long, too well established schedule that keeps me up late into the evening. Thanks so much.
Yes, at least once a week I do not get to sleep on time – and much more often when I’m at seminars. But I stick very closely to the wake up time.
another great article. Thank you very much!
Craig,
if your mornings are so productive, what are you doing rest of the day?
To be honest, I have similar morning habits (2 kids instead of dog) and where I struggle is rest of the day when my mornings are to productive. I become somehow lost for rest of the day…
The lunch time gets away from me a bit, but 2-4 are good, and then I have to be careful not to waste time online between 4-6. Future articles coming soon.
Hi Craig, I’ve only just made it here and what a great first article to read. Loved it.
Thanks!
***Update***
Sure enough, the old saying is true. “You plan, and God laughs”. Ironically, the same day that I shared my daily habit ritual, the one where I describe my monk like, workman’s approach to the morning hours and my writing craft, a time management and sleep schedule disaster struck.
A flight was delayed 4 hours, and then after 2 hours of socializing, I finally got to bed just before midnight. But I was still up at 4:30 am – sticking to the power of habit.
It didn’t break my stride. I stuck to my plan, supported by my vision and mission, and had one of my most productive mornings of the week the next day.
I will have a nap later and get back on a regular schedule tomorrow night…as tonight will also keep me up late.
Keep working on your habits!
Resistance via habit is the best thing ever I learned today. Craig thanks for the update comment that’s makes your articles realistic for me so I know I’m just not listening to a preacher…LOL
Craig,
Great article and advice I will implement. How much sleep do you generally get and how long do you meditate?
7-8 hours and 10 minutes, respectively. THank you Dave.
Hey Craig. I think this is the BEST article you have ever written and I have been reading your stuff for at least 6-7 years now. Being ADDish, I accidentally found that when I put ear plugs in my ears, I got alot done. Keep the info coming. You come across as a real person, some of your articles are very positive and then you also share the trials and tribulations to getting to where you are now.
Happy to help, Donna!
Loved reading this article, very much relates to what I’m in the processing of doing with my own life (maybe not at 3am, but even to be up and productive by 6am would be great!). Also I’m glad to hear you sleep 7-8 hours, I do too. I dont think sleeping less for prolonged periods than that is that healthy. One question, does this schedule extend to weekends or public holidays?
7 days a week, thanks!
Hi Craig
I have a quick question – do you mind telling me what time you go to sleep at? I am just wondering, what time to sleep in order to be able to wake up earlier. I currently wake up around 5.30am and go to sleep around 10pm.
Great article – thanks!
8, thanks!