[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 2

I just finished up at Camp Elevate run by Celia Slater.  I have been to a lot of conferences over the years, and I don’t know that there is one that compares to this one in terms of the quality of speakers from start to finish, the information given, and the feeling of community created.  Coaches, in terms of personal development, I don’t know that there is a better conference out there.
I want to continue to share my upcoming speech notes with you about how to create a Championship Morning Routine.  I am only going to give you the first 2 steps today.  The rest will come next week.
As a quick reminder from last week, Mel Robbins, author of the 5 Second Rule, talks about how we all have two minds: the genius (champions) mind and the robot mind.

1. The champions mind is where the greatest live. This is the mind that you want to have.  It's creative, it's proactive, it's free, and it’s where your best ideas come from.
2. The robot mind is when your mind is on autopilot.  It’s when you're overwhelmed by small tasks, it's when you find yourself checked out and putting out fires all day and having no time for yourself. You might feel like a robot to if you feel like you're constantly at the whim of the demand of others doing what they need when they need it.

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.  Here are the first 2 decisions I want you to start making today that will make a significant effect on how you show up tomorrow.
Step 1.  Win tomorrow today with a great plan. A great routine always starts the night before.  Take 10 minutes tonight to plan tomorrow.  These are the 3 things I want you to plan for.

1. Every night, plan TOMORROW’S morning routine. Wake up with a plan of action and a routine in place, making it that much easier for you to take action right away.
2. Write down ONE GOAL YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH TOMORROW before you leave for the office. What is one thing that you could do to make progress on something that matters to you?
3. Write down your TOP 3 PRIORITIES for tomorrow and what time you will block off to work on them.

Once your to-do list is organized, it becomes a map to guide you from morning to evening in the most effective and efficient way. This guide tells you what you have to do and what is more or less important so it helps to eliminate a lot of wasted time. You will soon develop the habit of using your list as a blueprint for the day.
Step 2 Champions- don't sleep with their phone.  Let me ask you this, do you use the alarm on your smartphone as your alarm clock in the morning or do you put it on your nightstand best next to your bed? If you're doing that stop! Stop it immediately.  If you have your smartphone right next to your bed you're making it harder for your inner champion to wake up. Allow me to explain, see when the alarm goes off the robot mind is going to mindlessly reach for the phone and then one of two things is going to happen

1. Either you're going to hit the snooze button and fall back asleep which means you will probably oversleep and then rush out late.
2. If you grab your phone and decide to look at it, the robot has won and now in control. The robot mind is going to open that phone while you're lying in bed and you were going to mindlessly check your email, or you might check Facebook, or you're going to watch a couple YouTube videos.

The scary thing is that you just flooded your mind with a bunch of useless garbage and you're not even out of bed. Plus, what might be even worse is that if you're checking your texts or work email before you even get out of bed, you're blasting your brain with stress hormones before you even fully wake up. You are handicapping your brain from even having a good day because if any of your work email makes you anxious or worried, and let's face it, who whose work email doesn't, your pumping your mind full of cortisol. In case you didn’t know, cortisol is a stress hormone that leads to things like depression and anxiety and negative thinking and this all happened in a nanosecond. And according to research, you've killed any chance that your champions mind has for ideation, imagination and new thinking.
That one small decision has a major impact. If you want your mind to have a shot at your best ideas, if you want the best you, the champion in you to set the agenda for your day before the rest of the world weighs in.
You make one small decision part of your routine and you're going to see some major rewards.
So tonight, put your phone in a different room.  Tomorrow morning, you're going to have to force yourself to get out of bed to walk to where ever it is your phone is and then turn off the alarm.  When you pick up your phone you have a choice to make, you can let the robot takeover and go into autopilot mode.  Or, you can let the champion mind be in charge, and you're going to take that phone and you're going to flip it over. I don't want you to even look at it. You're not allowed to check email you're not allowed to check Facebook.
I promise you just try this tomorrow this is the first decision that you need to make in order to bridge the gap between where you are right now and where you want to be. It sounds stupid, but this is actually a very difficult thing to do.
I have to say, this is so simple but it's not easy. You don't realize how addicted you are to checking your phone and how quickly you go on autopilot. You're going to be absolutely amazed at how easy it's going to be to take charge of your day when you find the discipline to wake up to let your champions mind have a second to breathe and then to turn off the alarm and not check the phone. You got it? Good.
If you've ever struggled with productivity, keeping your to-do’s organized and prioritized, I have a great tool you can now check out for free.  Right now, I am giving you a chance to try my Busy Coach Game Plan Daily Planner for 30 days.  Just click on the link to check it out.