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Since habits shape our lives and determine our destiny, it’s time to copy the morning habits or successful entrepreneurs. But how do they start their morning?
Meditate, gratitude journal, running, writing.
This sets many up for their day and brings massive benefits. They are more productive, have more energy and above anything, their happiness levels are through the roof.
Every entrepreneur seems to have a secret to their success. For some, it’s an ability to think outside of the box and take risks. For others, it’s staying humble, even when faced with huge success. While every entrepreneur is different, you’ll notice that there are also some things that they seem to share.
For instance, talk to almost any successful business owner and they’ll tell you that a good morning routine is the key to unlocking endless opportunities.
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Morning Habits of Successful Entrepreneurs
The question of what success is gives so many subjective answers. The Oxford definition simplifies it to mean any desired outcome. It could be the attainment of wealth, professional development, or personal growth by achieving happiness, life fulfilment, and/or safety.
Our subjectiveness with regards to what success means to us is what directs our self-purpose and vision in life. However, each good successful outcome we’ve known of has a unique persistent manner of behaviour attached to its beholder. These are success habits. Repeated behaviours being set with a goal in mind.
Successful people have these habits and traits that put them a niche above the ordinary person. Despite the source of success, good habits always produce good outcomes.
Here are some of the morning habits of successful entrepreneurs:
Establish Goals & Priorities
How long do you spend each morning just trying to work out which tasks you should be tackling first? Figuring out a schedule can take a lot of crucial time for productivity out of your routine. That’s why it’s so helpful to set goals, be prepared and plan ahead.
- At the end of each workday, put ten minutes aside to make a list of the things you need to do first the next day.
- This way, you can start your morning with a focus on what you need to get done and avoid anything that might put you on a path of procrastination.
We can define goals as objects of a person’s ambition or an aim at a desired result. Most of us have some goals set out for ourselves to improve our lives. We can relate your goals to personal or professional progress.
Either way, without goals, there’s not much room for advancement. Without the challenge of reaching a goal you’ve set for yourself, life would be stagnant.
But the process in which we set goals for ourselves matters. Although, you are responsible for whether you follow through with the goals you’ve set for yourself, how you set them has a hand in determining how successful you’ll be in achieving them.
The term SMART Goals refers to a process in which you set your goals that will give you greater success. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. The SMART goals method will help you with your organization, focus, and clarity with your goals.
Research has shown that using the SMART goals method can save you time and simplify reaching your goals. SMART goals are easy to implement and can be used by anyone with the desire to improve their life by setting and achieving goals.
Wake Up Early
While you don’t have to be an early bird to get the worm in business, it often helps. According to Richard Branson, the entrepreneur behind Virgin, wherever he is in the world, he makes a concentrated effort to get up at 5am.
- Branson believes that getting up early helps him to spend more time with the family before he gets down to business.
- Try going to bed a little earlier than usual and waking up early too. Research consistently proves that many successful people wake up well before the workday begins. How could you spend an extra hour before your commute?
Successful people also have a habit of getting up early every day and making a to-do list. Waking up early gives us a sense of control of our lives. Early mornings are a time when we feel most refreshed and collected. Successful people use this time to make daily to-do lists, set and reflect on their goals, and get ready to accomplish their day’s agenda. Setting a daily to-do list can eventually turn into a habit. It’s an anti-procrastinating tool that can guarantee progress and getting the desired results.
Exercise Regularly
Exercise can do incredible things for the body and mind. Working out every day increases one’s energy and productivity. Successful people prioritize exercise and self-care.
Studies show that regular exercise increases your energy levels and strengthens your cognitive abilities. A few minutes of sweating before work can also help you to clear your mind for the day ahead and reduce stress.
- If you’re wondering how to use that extra thirty minutes you’ve added to your morning each day, a mini workout could be just the thing.
- Follow up with a healthy breakfast to nourish your mind, kickstart your metabolism, and give you the energy you need to handle the day. Drink some cold water too. Huffington Post founder, Arianna Huffington, says she always starts her morning with a tall glass of water.
Successful entrepreneurs also understand the importance of getting enough sleep. When the mind is refreshed and well-rested, it becomes more productive. Focused thinking through meditation helps produce a creative mindset.
Develop A Daily Reading Habit
It’s important to make time for activities that enrich your mind and teach you new things. Consider some of the most successful people in the world. Now reflect on this: They’re all avid readers. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, and Tony Robbins, for example, make reading a daily habit. If they can do it, you certainly can too.
Mr. Tom Corney said in one of his interviews, whenever he comes across a new concept that he doesn’t know, he reads three books about it. To be able to achieve more in life we should learn this trait of reading a lot for self-education. Reading and learning something daily gives us answers and solutions to our worries. This brings happiness and peace of mind and a new intent for life.
How to Develop a Reading Habit
- Create a reading list of books that you’d like to read.
- Set a goal.
- Schedule a time for reading.
- Find a good place to read.
- Eliminate distractions.
- Read actively.
- Keep a reading journal.
If you want to turn reading into an everyday activity, the tips above are sure to help you get started. Sometimes, all it takes is adding it to your schedule or switching up the material you consume to turn it into a daily habit
Do The Toughest Job First
Trying to plan your day to facilitate success? Starting with the toughest task first is one of the strategic morning habits of successful entrepreneurs.
Mark Twain once said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
The idea of “eating the frog” basically means that you handle the thing you least want to do first. So, if it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one.
- If you overcome your biggest challenge first, then everything else you do will feel easier by comparison.
- Plus, tackling and accomplishing a challenge first thing is a great way to motivate yourself.
- As the founding editor of Lifehacker.com, Gina Trapani tells us, your mind is clear first thing in the morning, and you’re not getting distracted by other demands. This is your chance to get things done!
Eat the Frog, a deceptively simple and memorably named productivity method is perfect for anyone who:
- Struggles with procrastination
- Gets a lot done but isn’t making progress on the important stuff
- Has a hard time sticking to a productivity system
- Has trouble deciding what to work on at any given time
- Feels overwhelmed by their to-do list
Successful entrepreneurs intentionally concentrate on the most important task instead of getting mired down in the smaller, unimportant ones.
Get Rid Of Distractions
Focus is one of the keys to living a successful life and running a successful business. It is paramount in everything we do. You have to be focused if you want to live your best life. If you want to do well in your academic life, once again, you have to be focused.
Maintaining success in your personal life also requires a great deal of focus. Learning how to run and operate a blog as a business certainly requires applied focus.
Therefore, if you’re going to seize the day like a successful entrepreneur, it’s important to avoid distractions. That means not constantly checking your emails and social media on the way to work.
- Starting the day with a heavy focus on your social media and phone alerts means you’re more likely to get easily distracted throughout the remainder of your day too.
- To start the day in a more helpful way, why not try an activity that relaxes you? Up to 90% of the doctor’s visits reported per year come from stress-related problems. If exercise doesn’t lower your stress levels when you wake up, find something that does.
Undoubtedly, a natural consequence of time management is an increase in productivity. Distractions and worries are minimized when your days are predictable and simple.
Start Keeping a Journal
From Richard Franklin to Winston Churchill, many of history’s greatest achievers have kept a journal or diary at some point in their lives.
Now, of course, I’m not saying that journaling is what made these great figures what they were. Nor am I saying that journaling alone will be enough to make you ‘great’. But what I am saying is that they can’t all be wrong. And, there are a ton of very valuable benefits to journaling that make it one of the best morning habits of successful entrepreneurs; Surely it’s worth your consideration, so here are just some of them…
It’s a Record
When you write a journal, it of course means you have a record of everything you’ve done and this in turn is something you can look back over in order to learn important lessons and to put your life in perspective.
It can sometimes be a great feeling looking back and seeing all the exciting things you’ve done. But if that’s not the experience you get from your journal then perhaps it can highlight that something needs to change. Either way, this lets you honestly appraise your life.
And imagine being able to read over this in 20 years – there will be so much detail that you would otherwise have forgotten! This is a way to immortalize yourself and to hold tighter onto those memories.
What’s more, is that it keeps a record for others and means that they can potentially learn from your experiences.
It’s Meditative
A lot of what most of us do on a regular basis will involve using technology, working on things that make us stressed and otherwise being wired and on the go. Writing a journal at the end of the day is an excellent alternative to those activities that is almost meditative in its ability to encourage focus. It’s quiet, it doesn’t involve a glaring screen and it’s a great way to unwind before bed.
It Can Be a Powerful Tool
You can also use a journal as a tool. As well as writing about your day, why not also write down what you ate? Or what you dreamed? Or make a note of each day you worked out? You can even just make a note of your mood. This lets you assess your performance in any goal at a glance and also to get some useful contextual data that might help you to find correlations in your routine and the way you feel/act.
Find Your Own Routine
Here’s one more tip. If you’re struggling to start the day on the right note, brighten things up again. Turning on multiple lights around the home and opening your curtains will actively wake you up. It’s the best way to tell the brain that the day has started.
- Natural light tells your body to stopproducing melatonin – the hormone you need for sleep.
- Get outside and breathe in some fresh air if you can. Natural light and a fresh dose of the great outdoors will put you in a great mood for work.
- If you can’t quite make it outside, don’t panic. Brightening your indoors will help too.
These are just some examples of how to spend your morning like a successful entrepreneur. I believe we all have the potential to succeed in whatever we pursue. As Walt Disney said, ‘all our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them’.
With the proper and consistent application of these seven morning essentials, entrepreneurial success is well within reach. However, remember that you can always put your own spin on these suggestions. Find out what works for you and add some rituals of your own. Once you find what works for you, stick to it and become the Master of Your Day!
