How to Rapidly Accomplish Any Goal In 1 Hour a Day

Speaker A: Welcome to the Nurse Leader Network podcast with your host, Chris Racinos. Wherever you're going on your Nurse Leader journey, we're here to help you get there. Welcome everybody to the Nurse Leader Network podcast. I'm your host, Chris Racinos. On previous episodes I've talked about what you can do to try to find your work life balance, try to fit everything in. And recently I came upon a book that has really helped me to focus and to achieve more while reducing the burnout. And so I wanted to share that book with the audience today. So I'm going to do kind of a little overview of the book and then I will also, um, just kind of share with you how it's worked for me because I highly recommend it for any of you who are looking at projects that you have done or personal development, things that you want to improve. This book has been a game changer for me. So the book is called the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. And basically what it talks about is how to create a routine in the morning that will give you life changing results. So it really just kind of breaks it down into you dedicating an hour of your morning to whatever the tasks are that you're looking to improve, um, and you'll see significant results from it. So he basically goes on to talk about like, we all have the potential to be successful, right? Whether you are looking at doing something at work, a change in your job, losing weight, achieving that marathon, whatever it is that you're looking at doing. We all have that potential. And some of the ways that we can fulfill that potential are being very intentional about a couple different aspects of things that we do. So one thing that he talks about is our sleep. So thinking about how we sleep. So obviously we need to have enough hours of sleep, right? Nurse leaders. I know myself, I tended to not get enough hours of sleep. And so he really talks about not only getting enough hours of sleep, but being intentional about the time that you go to sleep so that you could wake up early. So an example of this is, you know, you typically are waking up at, you know, 7:00am or 6:00am his approach is to look at waking up at minimum one hour prior to that, so making sure that you're getting to bed earlier. So for me, I adjusted my schedule. I used to go to bed at 10 and um, then I'd wake up at 6. And now I'm trying to be in bed by 9, 9, 15, and then I'm getting up at 5. Once you have established that extra hour that you can Fit in, right. So if I get up by 5, then by 6 I am ready to hit the ground running with getting the kids ready for school and doing drop offs, pickups, that kind of thing. It's going to look different depending on like what your morning looks like. But again, think about getting, giving yourself that one extra hour of time. For some of you, you might already have that hour of time before you need to head into work. Um, and so it's restructuring that time. Are you sitting there watching the news for that hour? Maybe it's time to repurpose that time. So it's really going to depend on what you're already doing in the morning. A couple things that you can do in terms of creating a routine, um, according to the book, are that you want to make sure, number one, that you are going to tell yourself you're going to wake up refreshed, you're going to wake up and it's not going to feel like a chore to get up early. You're waking up and you have the gratitude and abilities to wake up early and use that time. You want to make sure that you place your alarm clock somewhere far in the room. So don't put it on your phone, um, where you can just easily hit snooze. Make it so that you have to get up once you turn the alarm clock off. Make sure that you go immediately to brush your teeth because that's going to give you kind of like a nice little boost of wake up and then go and have a drink of water. So that according to the book, those are the things that you want to do first thing in the morning that is going to help you get up and get ready to be productive versus feeling like all cozy and snuggly in your bed and then getting ready to go right back to sleep once you've done that. He recommends making sure that you do some type of meditative process in order to really kind of help fight any type of stress that may be coming your way during the day. So, you know, that might look like doing a five minute meditation, it might look like sitting and just in silence. There's a variety of different things you can do. It might be a prayer, um, so if you're religious, you might be doing prayers, um, and it might just be reflecting on three things that you're grateful for in your life. So again, first step is getting up, making sure that you are out of the bed. Second step is then making sure that you're prepping yourself for resilience and any stress that might come your way. The next step in the book he talks about is really visualizing and affirming what it is that your goal wants to look like. So, um, an example of my affirmations, I actually have them posted right next to me on my wall and I look at them every day and it says, for example, I will work five days a week on my health, my family and nurse leader network. So five days a week, I'm going to dedicate that to my time. So I tell myself that I write in there that I will take action, steps related to my goal and say no to other things. Right. So I am affirming that these are the things that I am and that I want to be. Um, another example of my affirmation is I'm a happy and healthy and successful entrepreneur. And so these are the things that I tell myself and that I believe. Um, and that you are going to be writing about yourself and what you believe. And so again, you're going to be talking about what you want your life to look like in the future. These are the goals that we have and we're going to repeat them to ourselves, um, and remind ourselves of why we do what we do every day. The next step is he recommends doing kind of like a five or ten minute exercise routine. Um, so it could be 20 minutes, uh, you know, but looking in that hour. So we've done a couple minutes for meditation, we've done a couple minutes for our affirmations. Next step is if fitting in some type of physical activity. Um, and so it doesn't have to be super intense. It just needs to be some type of physical activity that you can do, you know, 10 to 15 minutes. For me, I actually don't include that in the one hour in the morning. And the reason is because I'm actually training right now for a bikini competition. So I do have gym time scheduled in my day every single day now. But prior to training for this, I did include, I actually did like a 10 minute exercise that I found on an app that I had. So again, including a little bit of exercise in that morning. And then the next step is really around making sure that you have time for personal growth. So every day doing 10 minutes of reading, 10 minutes of writing, or 20 minutes of reading the next day, 20 minutes of writing. And when you're reading again, it's something that's going to have a huge impact on your personal growth. So he, uh, puts in his book that if you read only 20 minutes a day, that would be 3650 pages a year that you'd be reading, right? So that's a lot of self development that we could get accomplished in a short amount of time in the morning. Um, for me, I use that time for writing. So I'm currently writing a book and I use that as my writing time. So every single day I have that writing time scheduled in. He also recommends to customize your miracle morning. So he gives you these different habits that you can include, but you want to customize it. And so that's what I've done with mine, is I've customized it. What I do is I do do the affirmations. I get up, I put my cell phone far away. I do, uh, do this meditation each and every morning. And then I use the next piece of it not for the exercise because I do the exercise later, but I use the next piece of it to schedule out my day. So I look at, okay, these are all the things on my to do list. What are the top three things that I want to get done today that are reasonable? Right. So what can I reasonably get done today so I don't have to think throughout the day what I'm focusing on? And if distractions try to come my way, I bring myself really quickly back to those three top things I need to get accomplished? And then in addition to that, I work on whatever major thing. So I'll do my writing for my book, I'll do an outline for the podcast, I will do something related to the Nurse Leader Network membership. But by the time my kids wake up, so this is an hour after I've woken up, I literally have a clear plan for the day and I tend to have everything in motion. Right? So I've already started working on some important things for you that might look like, okay, if I have a project or if I have an interview or if I'm meeting with somebody, that might look like using that time in that way, right? It might look like, hey, I'm looking for a new job, that I'm going to use that time to search for the new job. It might be, hey, I'm looking to de stress you're going to add additional meditation time or a massage or whatever it is that you are, but every single day you're going to utilize your routine to accomplish what you're going to accomplish. What I can say is that I've gotten very close to completing my book by doing this miracle morning. I've been able to publish consistently for the Nurse Leader Network podcast. I every day go wake up and know exactly what I'm doing. I, I have never ever in my life felt better. I have so much more energy and so I just can't sing enough praises for this book and I wanted to make sure that I gave the recommendation to all of my listeners because it's been life changing for me and um, hopefully it'll be life changing for you. So if you want to find out more about the book, I highly recommend you go pick it up again. It's called the Miracle Morning and it is by Hal Elrod. Super highly recommend it. It's something that as a nurse leader I recommend to my team because it just helps us feel more productive. We get so much more accomplished in the morning and we just feel so much better about ourselves. So another little tool I wanted to share with everybody. That's what we have for today, folks. So we'll see you next week, um, on the Nurse Leader Network podcast.