Miracle Hours: How My Life Has Changed In the Last Two Months
How one of the best systematic morning routines has changed my mornings
The past two months, I’ve been experimenting with my morning routine by way of using Miracle Morning routine.
This routine was developed by Hal Elrod in his international best seller by the same name.
It was developed as a way to transform life each morning through dedicated action.
Elrod wanted to challenge himself to excel and develop himself for his best life. He practiced the routines and then challenged millions to undertake the same challenge.
The Six Components of the Morning Routine and Ways to Incorporate Them Based on Personal Experience:
Silence: prayer, meditation, or simply sitting in stillness. The goal is to relax for a few minutes without thinking too much.
Affirmations: written or stated aloud.
Visualizing: helpful tools include: vision boards, scripting, or just visualizing dreams like a movie.
I have trouble with this part and usually write down my five year goals and then imagine a single image of them coming true.
Exercise: This is up to the participant and can include strength training, simple walking, yoga or an exercise video. I usually opt for a short youtube video.
Reading: Read about development and topics you are interested in. By reading, you’re developing your mindset and your life. You’re learning new techniques and tricks to implement.
In the past two months I’ve read a lot of different topics, including: meditation techniques, how to succeed on Twitter, how to be more like Mr. Rogers and how to cut my own excuses.
Writing/Scribing: journing, writing content or even just writing down a quote that you find informational and inspiring. I usually divide the time between organizing my upcoming day in my bullet journal and creating content for Medium.
On Forming the Habit:
Elrod states that it takes 30 days to set a habit: the first 10 days are the easy ones we breeze through which is accompanied by a sense of beginner’s high.
Round 2 (second set of 10) is where things get challenging. The routine has lost it’s fresh appeal. Each day feels challenging during this period. If we make it through the second set of 10.
The third set of 10 day is to establish the habit and make it concrete.
The plan is also easily customized. In his book, Elrod talks about a 6 minute morning routine, but it can be cut down into 10, 20 or 30 minutes segments. You also don’t need to divide up evenly. You can spend 60 minutes (or less) evenly, but the routine allows for customization. Design to your own needs.
Here’s an example of my typical routine:
20 minutes- reading
5 minutes- meditation, becoming still
12 minutes- affirmation youtube video
2 minutes- picturing my mental vision board and seeing dreams come true
5 minutes- low grade stretching and yoga
30 minutes- writing- mostly for Medium. I choose to write only during this time and leave my edits for night.
I tend to go over the hour almost every day.
Ability to Learn New Things:
I love this program not only for the customizability, but also because through daily practice, you want to begin to learn new things and new ways of working through the process.
I’m learning about scripting because I had trouble visualizing. I’ve been reading articles on Pinterest about the best questions to answer and how to use the scripting journal for development.
Each part of the program has activities that can be changed out as far as method is concerned as often as you like.
You can always try a different activity for each part and see how you gel with the concept.
You can also identify 2–3 activities per day for each of the categories and rotate or go for the tools that you need on a particular day.
What I Love About the Routine:
Since starting the morning routine, I have more focus. I start the day feeling grounded and if I need to fill my energy tank, I know that returning to these activities will do the trick for me.
I have been able to accomplish large goals since starting the routine. These goals include: paying off a 3750 credit card on June 23rd (a month and five days into starting the routine), finding a second job that promises potential, and finally getting to the point where I’m at least a week ahead on my content schedule for writing.
I love the fact that it allows time for reflection and self care in a world that screams at us to be doing other things. I am able to figure out what is really important, practice gratitude and easily notice where I am with my goals.
The routine is also teaching me to show up and work through the same practices every day and to commit to an actual routine. I’ve missed exactly two days in the past two months. Not every day is easy or perfect, but as long as I’m working through the routine, I know that I am working to set myself up for success every day.
Finally, I’m flipping my life script and undoing a lot of damage that occcured when I was a child by doing affirmations and revealing a new truth about myself. Repetition gets it into my brain and works on making me believe in the statement that is made about myself.
I feel good about where I’ve gotten to so far and I’m excited to see what’s next in my personal development journey.
Conclusion:
This routine can work wonders and change lives, mindsets and increase results. It also has the ability to introduce new ideas to life: it leads to introspection and overall improvement.
One hour each day for self-development is not a lot to ask, it is a small price to pay for the amazing things that will come to life just by following the practice.
