Latest / Life and How to Live It with Dr Rocco / Own Your Morning, Own Your Day

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Own Your Morning, Own Your Day · Life and How to Live It with Dr Rocco

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do you sometimes feel like life is passing you by?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: How would you like to get more out of life?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: We explore all things life on this podcast.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Life and How to Live It podcast with Dr.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Rocco.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Live and how to live it.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Run to live it, live it, live and how to live it.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Dream, create, connect, just live it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of the Life and How to Live It podcast with me, Dr.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Rocco.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you wake up in the morning to the sound of your alarm and find that you're immediately rushing through all these activities?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Showering, shaving, put on your makeup, making lunch for the kids, walking the dog, running into the car, driving to work, and you find yourself getting to work exhausted.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: You find yourself feeling not really up to the task at hand.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: If that sounds like you, you're not alone.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So many people, I would say most people, that is their morning routine.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: But if you do identify with that description, you would benefit from a more intentional morning routine.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: A morning routine has the power to make your morning feel less out of control and to make the rest of your day more productive and successful.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: But what is an intentional morning routine?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, clearly, what I described before was not intentional.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of a default morning routine.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is an intentional one?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: In today's episode, we will explore different aspects and examples of morning routines.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you listen until the end, you can hear me share some of my own experience and my current morning routine.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it would be fun and interesting to start our exploration with examples of the morning routines of some famous people.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite people in history is Benjamin Franklin, and he started his morning routine was that he would wake up at five.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, he's the early to bed, early to rise guy.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So he would wake up at five and he asked himself this one question What good shall I do this day?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to thinking about that, he contemplated virtue and then he used a planner and planned out his day.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Marcus Aurelius, the ancient Roman emperor, would recite mantras and self-talk to align his daily actions with his personal values and his sense of duty.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: The artist Georgia O'Keeffe woke at dawn to watch the sunrise, and this was followed by an early morning nature walk.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: The author Ernest Hemingway also rose at dawn, and he would immediately start writing.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: President Barack Obama was up by 5.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: He did 45 minutes of a workout, followed by green tea and then reading the morning news.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the actor and professional wrestler Dwayne the Rock Johnson starts his days with gratitude, goal setting, and visualization.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this is followed by an intense workout.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So these are just some examples.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you go online, you can find many, many examples of famous people and their morning routines.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So why do these famous and successful people carefully craft morning routines for themselves?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Research shows that a consistent morning routine has many benefits.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the benefits, which is an interesting one, is this idea of reducing decision fatigue.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So decision fatigue is this idea that making decisions is inherently neurologically costly.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: It takes energy to make decisions.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so first thing in the morning, you're not necessarily full of energy and your thinking is not that clear.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And having to make a bunch of decisions right away can lead to some decision fatigue.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So having a routine helps to decrease that.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing a morning routine can do for you is to lower your stress and anxiety.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that you felt a bit of stress when I was describing that kind of default morning routine where you're rushing through.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is stressful.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're always feeling like you've got you're running behind and you have too many things for to do in too little time.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, having a routine that is predictable will decrease that stress.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: A morning routine can also enhance physical and metabolic health.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, especially if your morning routine includes exercise, you know, that's going to improve your physical health and your fitness.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing that is helped is your productivity and your focus.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if you do certain things in the mornings, you increase your ability to focus and pay attention, like really from the get-go.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: You show up at work ready to go rather than feeling like you've just run a marathon and you need a break.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of reasons to do a morning routine.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are the components of a morning routine?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember me talking just a moment ago about all these different famous people and their morning routines, they're they don't all do the same things, uh, but there are certain things that are consistent to many routines.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: The first and most important thing is you need to identify a consistent wake-up time.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this wake up time needs to allow for you to have enough time to do some things before you have to get on with your day.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take an example of someone who has to be at work by eight o'clock and they have a 30-minute commute, and their morning activities, they're sort of non-negotiables.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, like maybe showering, having breakfast, um, you know, walking the dog, taking care of the kids, whatever.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Say that whole thing takes one hour.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So between the one hour and the half hour commute, you have an hour and a half of time that is um sort of spoken for.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have to be there by eight, that means you have to get up at 6:30.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: But that gives you only time for the essentials.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to have a more intentional morning routine, something that's more nourishing to yourself, uh, you need to get up before 6:30.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need to get up at 6, maybe 5:45.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, you need to have more time that you can use.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing about time is a few minutes in the morning is much more valuable than a few minutes in the evening.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you get an extra 15 minutes, if you can carve that out of your morning and fill it with something that is going to nourish you through the day, that's more valuable than 15 minutes, say from 5 p.m.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: to 5.15 p.m.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, so you don't need a super long morning routine.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: You just need something that works for you and that you can do consistently.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the consistent wake up time is really important.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another component of the morning routine is um hydration and or nutrition.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, I'm not going to talk about breakfast because breakfast is kind of uh it's almost a topic of its own.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many opinions and theories about breakfast.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, should you eat it at all?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Some people think it's the most important thing.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: You must eat very early, as soon as almost as soon as you wake up.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Some people are very opinionated about you know what you should be consuming, whether it's high protein, high carbohydrate.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to get into that.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one thing that I do think is non-negotiable is hydration.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have just spent six, seven, eight hours not imbibing any uh water, and so you're just the natural metabolic activity of your body uses up water.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: There is a certain amount of um urine that is made overnight where um, and that is a loss of water.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's a certain amount of sweating that happens overnight where you lose some water.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: There is um exhaling while you're breathing, you you have steam coming out.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we all wake up in a kind of a relative state of dehydration.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying you're totally dehydrated, you're relatively dehydrated, you're not fully optimal in your hydration status.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very important first thing in the morning to drink.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Drinking fluids is important, and then what is another aspect of a morning routine?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Exercise.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Most of these people's routines included some form of exercise.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I would say is it's not important really what the exercise is.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: It can be something intense, like a very intense uh gym workout or a run.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: It can be something gentler like yoga or going for a walk.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the important thing is that you are doing some consistent exercise first thing in the morning.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Another component of a morning routine would be silent contemplation.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Silent contemplation is something that you do that's sort of like meditation, journaling, prayer, those kinds of things that help you to kind of focus on yourself, get centered, kind of see what, you know, kind of what's the big picture, because it's it's very hard to see the big picture when you're running, running, running trying to get to work on time.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So carving out a little time to look at the big picture will help you to kind of put your day in perspective.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Goal setting is a part of some people's um morning routines.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, we can be talking about major goals, but I think most morning routines are more about like the goals for the day, what you would like to accomplish, what you need to accomplish in that given day.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And another thing that people do with these morning routines is take advantage of the undisturbed focus that can happen early in the morning while working on an important task.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, like Ernest Hemingway would get up and immediately start writing because that was what he considered his important task.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, in preparing for this uh episode, I looked at some of the books and things that are out there uh on this topic, and I want to share those with you.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one is The Miracle Morning by Hal L.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Rod, E-L-R-O-D.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: So he has this um framework that is an acronym called Savers, S-A-V-E-R-S.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So each letter stands for something.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: So S is for silence, A is for affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing, or which is really journaling.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So what uh Mr.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Lrod is saying is that you know every morning routine should incorporate these six elements, and and he's you know, he says you don't have to do them all separately, like you don't have to have like five minutes of silence followed by a minute of affirmations, you can actually stack things that's he describes it as stacking.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you have say say your exercise is going for a walk.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, your walk can be quiet, so there's silence and there's exercise.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, while you're walking, you might be saying affirmations to yourself, you might be visualizing.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So there's so these are different elements that you would want to incorporate.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And once again, the exercise can be whatever you need it to be.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: The reading in his framework is sort of you know, self-improvement to sort of reading.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: The journaling or scribing is um the just getting ideas out on paper about your your day, your life, things that are on your mind.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And doing this each day, you know, if you do it consistently, will will help you to feel more centered.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: It will help you to be more healthy and productive.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a word about uh affirmations.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: So affirmations basically are these positive statements that you make about yourself.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: It could be something like, I am fully present uh and engaged when I am with other people.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe that, you know, it's a you feel like uh you tend to wander or you think about other things, you don't focus on the people that you're with each day.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe your affirmation is I am fully present and engaged with others.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um affirmations are actually quite powerful.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and visualization.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Mr.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Lrod got his ideas, you know, from the study of athletes.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Athletes do visualization all the time.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they will visualize themselves successfully doing something that's part of their sport, say visualizing themselves taking free throws if they're a basketball player.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we're not professional athletes, most of us, um, but say you could visualize giving a presentation at work.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can visualize yourself literally standing in front of people in a conference room and successfully giving this presentation.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: The visualization uh in this framework is really important.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: So savors.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, another book is The 5 a.m.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Club by Robin Sharma, S-H-A-R-M-A.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And his framework is this idea of 2020 20.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine that you have a 60-minute uh morning routine.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It would be broken into thirds.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the thirds are move, reflect, grow.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: So for 20 minutes, you would move.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what he is recommending is intense exercise.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is to really get the blood pumping, get those kind of like the neurochemicals going, really wake you up so you're sharp and ready for the day.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he believes that these should be done in this order: the move, reflect, grow order.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the second part of this is reflect.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be 20 minutes of quiet time on meditation, journaling, goal setting, uh, or thinking about things that we're grateful for.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Gratitude.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And next would be 20 minutes of grow.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Grow means personal development through reading or taking a course, listening to an audiobook or an educational podcast.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's important to understand that you know he has a 2020-20 uh framework, but he also says you can kind of you know shorten this if you need to.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: It could be like 10, 10, 10 if you only have half an hour, but there's a certain belief there that you need to split it up evenly and do it in that order.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: The next book that I looked at was The Perfect Day Formula by Craig Ballantyne, B-A-L-L-A-N-T-Y-N-E.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is not a book about morning routines, it is actually about the entire day, but he does have an uh segment in the book, a big segment, about mornings.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, own your mornings before distractions and chaos take over.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: There is some real wisdom to this idea, you know, that most of us do have a time in the morning before the day takes on a life of its own.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we're usually sleeping through that part of it.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you do need to wake up a bit earlier, maybe not a lot earlier, but a bit earlier in order to own your morning.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: What I like about what this book talks about is the importance of the night before.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: The night before really sets up your success the following morning.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just say you, you know, you're you have to make lunches for your kids in the morning so they can take them, you know, to school with them.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, nothing says you have to make them in the morning.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, remember what I said, those minutes in the morning are so precious.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Say it takes you 15 or 20 minutes to make these lunches for these kids.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Just do it in the evening.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do it the night before.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Get everything set so that in the morning you just have to hand them their lunch boxes.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing you can be doing in the night before is laying out your clothes for the next day so you you don't have that decision fatigue of having to decide what to wear.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Just lay it out there, and that saves you the few minutes of figuring out what to wear in the morning, and you can use that towards something more productive for yourself.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing that you can do is maybe you think that you it's really important to go running in the morning.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, get your um running shorts, your your whatever shirt you're gonna wear, your running shoes, and put them somewhere where they just they are just obviously, you know, looking, you're they're looking at you as much as you're looking at them and challenging you to just put them on and go out and run.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: So part of the night before is is trying to smooth out the next morning, remove obstacles, and make things as easy as possible for the next day.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: What he says is you should be waking up 15 minutes or more earlier and focusing on your single most important priority.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So part of the night before is also uh determining what that priority is so that you wake up and you're ready to go.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Another book that I looked at is The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not a book about uh morning routines at all.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a book about creativity, it's a book about trying to maximize your creativity or regain your creativity if you're feeling blocked.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And she has this really interesting exercise that is meant to be done in the morning, uh, and it's called morning pages.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I've done this exercise myself.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea is you get up and you do whatever must be done.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like you go to the bathroom, you get a cup of coffee, you get a glass of water, whatever you do.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do anything else and go sit at a desk, you know, while you're maybe drinking your coffee, and you sit in front of some blank pieces of paper, and you have to write three pages of longhand stream.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Of consciousness writing.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Stream of consciousness means really you're just writing whatever comes in your head.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're not thinking about it.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is not, these things are not meant to be read by anyone.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not even you necessarily.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you want to go back and read your morning pages, you can.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea is that you're sitting there and you're you're not being critical of what you're writing.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're just writing whatever enters into your head.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: You may be sitting in front of a window and looking outside at a tree and just writing, you know, about you know how the leaves are changing color on the tree.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next sentence might be about a dream you had, and the next sentence might be about a fight you had with your friend the other day.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: It can be anything, it doesn't have to be even very coherent.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: It could literally be writing, I don't know what to write, I don't know what to write, just write that over and over until you start thinking of something to write.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: The idea is that you're you're not judging it and you're just letting it out.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a way to like get your creative juices flowing.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some people call this a brain dump.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: You just like get these things out of your head so that you can be more creative through the rest of your day.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I promised that if you stuck around, you could hear me talk about my own experience with the um morning routine.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what I will say is I was very much that person that I talked about at the beginning of the show who just had enough time to like get up and do the necessary things and get to work on time.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I found myself getting to work feeling kind of, you know, already like stressed out rather than like ready to face the day.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so I decided to to start waking up a half hour earlier and just give myself time to do something.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was very sort of on non-specific when I started doing this.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably probably something like 20 years ago I started doing morning a morning routine.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so over the years it has uh changed and evolved.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh currently what I do is I wake up and I sometimes make coffee.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh depends if my wife wakes up first.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: The first one up makes coffee and feeds the cat.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I might wake up and make coffee and feed the cat.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I go to my desk and I do this morning prayer, which is part of the Catholic tradition called liturgy of the hours, and that takes about 15 minutes.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I do that, and then after that, I do um some sort of exercise.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and and I'm a little vague about this because it changes over time, it has changed over time, and it changes even sometimes day to day, depending on how I'm feeling, on my mood, on the weather.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it can include any of the any of the following things.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I often and usually like to take a walk in the morning.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is the most, um, I don't know, the most satisfying uh form of exercise for me first thing in the morning.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes I don't take a walk.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I can I've done Tai Chi, I've done yoga, I've done calisthenics, I've done uh different sorts of exercises, and sometimes I'll do like a short bit of stretching and then go out for a walk.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: So so there's always the uh morning prayer, there is the exercise, and then sometimes there that is followed by journaling.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my morning routine.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not so routine, but the important thing is that I carve out a certain time every day to do these things before I start with whatever else I need to do for the day.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I hope that you understand that um it's not so important or essential to say what exactly you do in your morning routine.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: The essential thing is that you have a wake-up time that makes sense, that gives you time to do things and not rush through your morning.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: You need to hydrate, as I said earlier, and the rest is kind of up to you.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you may be a person that loves to journal and gets a lot out of it.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: You may have heard about this morning page thing and said, wow, that sounds interesting.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna try that.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever you do, there is no right or wrong, it's just what works for you.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the the thing you start doing tomorrow morning is not necessarily what you will do in a month, a year, five years.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: The important thing is to just do it.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's uh what I have to say about um morning routines or very intentional morning routines.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that this has been helpful and stay tuned for Dr.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Rocco's Rex.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's time for Dr.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Rocco's Rex, Dr.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Rocco's Rex.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's time for Dr.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Rocco's Rex.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: My recommendation today is try starting your day with affirmations.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I mentioned affirmations in the last segment of the show, and I know that some of you roll your eyes when you hear about affirmations.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was that person too, you know.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was a bit cynical about affirmations, they sound corny, uh, they, you know, they they sound kind of woo-woo, but you know, it's it is they are really powerful.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: They are really powerful.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll share with you a couple of affirmations that I say each day just to give you an idea.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: So one of my affirmations is I am the kind of person that I can be proud of.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, this affirmation is very helpful because I value being a person who is a person of integrity, a person who lives their life consistent to their values.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if I do not follow my values, um I'm not really proud of myself.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: So saying that I am a person that I can be proud of is a way to remind myself every morning that I am that kind of person.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that through the day, if I am tempted to do things that you know I wouldn't really be proud of, that I remember that affirmation.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: So so this is a way an affirmation can help you to live consistently to with your values and and and what you want, the way you want to live.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Another um affirmation that I say each day is sort of a formula that you can add the ending yourself.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I am the kind of person who, I or I am the per a person who.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: So every day I say, I am a person who takes care of himself.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how I finish that sentence.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and so this helps me, you know, when I am looking at that thing that I shouldn't be eating, or or in a more positive way, you know, thinking about making something healthy for myself.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am the kind of person who takes care of himself.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that is reinforces that feeling for me.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: You may say, I am a person who makes time for others, I am a person who is involved in his community, whatever, however, you want to finish that.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: But you will be surprised how powerful affirmations can be if you use them consistently.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: So give that a try.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: So Marcus Aurelius, I mentioned him earlier in the show.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Marcus Aurelius uh was a Roman emperor, uh, and he also was a stoic philosopher, and he kept a journal or a diary that eventually became published as uh Meditations.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this was really meant to be a very personal journal, and he didn't expect people would read it, but we have had the benefit of having it, and um, it is full of amazing information.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you might want to read it yourself.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I've there is a quote in there that's very appropriate for the morning routine uh topic.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, as a human being, I have to get to work.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: What do I have to complain of if I am doing what I was born for?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it that I was born for or created to huddle under the blankets and stay warm?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: So next time you are having trouble getting out of bed, remember Marcus Aurelius.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: It feels really good to just kind of hit the snooze button and sleep for 15 more minutes.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: But we were not born to sleep.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: We were born to be people of action.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: So get out there and live your life.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks so much for joining me today for this episode.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you learned something.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that you enjoyed what you heard.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, so long.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to the Life and How to Live It podcast with Dr.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Rocco.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to book a coaching session with me, simply visit the show notes and schedule a discovery call.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if today's episode encouraged you or added value to your life, please subscribe and leave a review.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, life is not a dress rehearsal.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, so long.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Just live it!