[trx_quote cite="#" title="Mandy Green"]As coaches, to bring our best selves each and every day, we need to awake our inner genius/champions mind first thing in the morning by making certain choices and decisions.[/trx_quote]

Championship Morning Routines Part 3

 
For the last 2 weeks, I have been sharing parts of my speech from NCRC 2017.  Today I want to move onto step number 3.  The third step of your championship morning routine is that champions let their mind wander.
Have you ever been standing in the shower minding your own business and all of a sudden you have a total aha moment? Isn't the idea that pops into your head at that moment almost always a great one- it's like a major problem you've been thinking about and all of a sudden you finally got an answer to it? Guess what, that's the genius mind at work. It needs space to bring its best ideas to the surface.
As I have said the last few weeks, you have two brains. You have the robot brain which is mindless, addicted to your phone and addicted to your to-do list. Then you have your Genius brain that is patiently sitting quietly in the background trying to work on your dreams and great ideas.
Now a major problem for most of us today in this society is that we suppress our genius/champions mind because we plug ourselves into consuming information via the Internet and our smartphones from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to bed.  We are really drowning out our own champion inside of us with the garbage on the web every single day.
Our genius mind is significantly more powerful than the robot mind, but it can only work if you awake it and you give it time and space to wander.
Time Ferris, author of the 4 Hour Workweek,  does a great job at this.
Ferris gets asked about his morning routine all of the time.  He said he gets up, drinks tea, eats breakfast, goes for a walk and is just thinking the whole time.  I guess he will do this for weeks.  What he is trying to do is find that one domino that so powerful that it will wipe out all of the other ones or at least make the other ones irrelevant.
I think that as coaches we don’t give ourselves enough time to let our mind wander and just think.  We are always on the go from the moment we wake up to the time we go to sleep.
From the research that I have done, it appears that anybody who has been successful works time into their morning routine to ensure that no matter what else happens in the day, that they've allowed their genius mind the time to provide them with breakthroughs, with brilliant ideas, and with the solutions, they need to remain focused and productive for the rest of the day.
I found this quote by Nick Saban. "I usually make a lot of notes during the day, things we can do better and things we can do differently," Saban explains. "But it seems to me that things come a lot clearer to me in the morning. I think of stuff when I'm showering, when I'm shaving, when I'm getting ready to go to work, and on the drive, I'm putting it all together of how I want to implement it into the day."
Here's how I do it.  In the morning after I've gotten up and walked into the living room and turn my phone over so I am not even get tempted to look at it, I just let my mind wander. I go get some water and then sit on the floor and stretch.  I just let my mind be relaxed I try not to think about anything. Actually, if I notice that I drift to a to-do list or start to feel anxious about whatever's happening in the day, I just point my mind back to trying to think about nothing.  I protect this time, and I just let my mind gently wake up and wander and do what it needs to do and you know what, it's in these quiet moments in the morning before I've looked at my phone that my brain is the most powerful.
And you know what happens, it happens literally almost every single morning, I have at least one great idea every single morning. It's become such a predictable pattern that I now keep my journal by me on the floor while I am stretching so that if something really awesome comes up I can write it down so I remember.
What's really great about these ideas is that they become a main point of focus for the rest of my morning (more about that soon).  I think that part of becoming the greatest you as a coach is learning how to let the most powerful you guide you, not your mindless automatic pilot brain that is addicted to your phone and email.  When you give the most powerful part of your brain space to breathe, wander, and expand, you will start having more aha moments.  Love it.
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