Hi and welcome to the New Vision counseling.live OKC Christian marriage counseling podcast. I’m Shawn Maguire. Welcome to a place where we help you discover what better looks like for you and equip you with the tools to create it. Today we’re going to be talking about part two of morning habits that will change your life last podcast, if you haven’t listened to it, go back because I talk about how to not argue with your alarm clock and overcome the snooze epidemic, the snooze epidemic. Because I know in marriages, in families where I live, in Edmond and we were working in Oklahoma City as well, it’s such an epidemic of getting up on time of not running late, of starting your day ahead instead of starting your day behind. When you hit the snooze, you start behind when you get up at the scheduled time, you when you feel better. You know, it’s so wild that I heard this guy and my let talk about if you get up after the sun, you’ve already lost the day.
If you get up after the sun, he would say, ed, my legs and y, l. E. T. T. Ed Marlette. He says, you’ve lost the day now. I don’t know that I would go that far every time that mean. I think there is some wisdom in that, in that if we determine what time we need to get up to accomplish the things that make our life rich, to accomplish the things that help us to succeed with our family, with our finances, with our friends, and for me most importantly and with my God and my relationship with him, then I think we’ll start our days winning and feeling better about ourselves and about all these other areas of life because we’re starting ahead instead of behind. So I’m going to give you some ways that I do and I have found helpful for my Christian marriage counseling clients over the past 25 years in OKC Christian marriage counseling, in business consultant and business coaching and the Edmond, Oklahoma City, and even when I lived in Florida and Tulsa, Oklahoma, these were very effective tools that I have developed more and more over the years.
Now you say, Sean, is that some of these OKC Christian marriage counseling tools, they don’t affect my life or they’re not relevant to the rhythm of my life today. That’s great. Some of them write down as something that you might implement in the future because I’m going to give you a lot of different tools and resources and my hope is that you will look through them, determine which ones are most effective for now, which ones you can share with other people in which ones you might implement for yourself at a later date. And some you might say, ah, no way. Not even going to consider that. So the first one is the wake up time. What time do you want to get up? You may have never thought that you could get up at five or 6:00 AM you felt that’s for people that are crazy. I know this is a belief that I held very strongly all the way through my college years, even to a large part of my adulthood.
I thought the old time I would get up at 6:00 AM or even more ridiculous than that would be 5:00 AM is if I’m going on vacation or I’m going fishing or doing something extremely cool. That was worth getting up early for. But besides that, there was no way I would get up at seven o’clock probably a good rhythm, sometimes six 30 if I wanted to work out or something like that. And maybe even in my most strict times of my life I would get up at six but in my forties I’ve discovered that I have these amazing little creatures called children and they consume so much of my time because I want to give it to them. I love them, I value them. I have a wife who’s incredible and the reality is my night times are consumed a lot with them and with the to do’s of the day.
And so the only time I get by myself to really consistently accomplish what I want to do, to spend time by myself recharging and rejuvenating and filling my tank up is in the morning. And so this is my rhythm of this season of life and I’ve had to remove a lot of limiting beliefs to get here, but I get up at 4:00 AM before you flip out and think that’s crazy. You can never get there. Just know that’s where I lived the majority of my life is that there’s no way I can get up beforehand and again, this is my rhythm. This is what works for me. My wife gets up at 7:00 AM between six 30 and 7:00 AM on most days. Unless we go on vacation or we’re doing something extraordinary. That’s where she gets up and that’s the rhythm that works for her. Some people like me, I require less sleep.
I require six hours is my goal. Sometimes they get five and a half, sometimes I get six and a half, but but six hours is a rhythm that really works well for me. So that’s the first thing is determined the time to get up and then when your alarm goes off, do not argue with the alarm. Do not argue that you deserve a sleep aid and you do not deserve to get behind the eight ball. You deserve God’s best. You deserve winning the day, starting when you first get up. So when I get up, I get out of bed quickly and there isn’t there. There typically is some form of a dialogue that starts in my head that I have a choice. Do I let the dialogue continue? Have you know what? What’s 10 minutes going to matter? You know, you get up at four, it doesn’t matter.
You know, he didn’t really sleep well last night. So that dialogue, probably about 50% of the time, it starts to come in my mind as a, my feet are getting out of the bed as I’m moving towards getting the covers off of me and getting up. That dialogue is happening. So within about five seconds, I flipped the dialogue. If you know it’s a normal night, I flipped the dialogue and I say, this is one of the things I said, it depends on the day, but a lot of times they’ll say something like, I feel amazing and full of joy. I no longer crave sweets because God has delivered me from all food addictions. I crave vegetables and real foods that heal my mind and body. And because I’m trusting God for my health and revision, I am resting peacefully and hint. And you say, Sean, I’ve seen your picture.
You’re not addicted to food. You don’t look like it. You don’t sound like it. You seem like you’re active. Right? But addicted to food doesn’t mean that I have to eat chips every day or ice cream every day. It just means that I want to be moving and I want to cultivate a desire for vegetables. I want to cultivate a desire for the foods that feed my body, not the foods that give me temporary comfort in long term sickness and disease. So that’s something that I say. Another thing that I start with, oftentimes it’s one of these things is all I’ll see myself either I look in the mirror when I get up or I see myself looking in the mirror saying, I’m so proud of you. I’m so thankful that you know God, that you’ve blessed me with the skills to love my family and to love people, to serve them every day.
I thank you that today’s going to be a great day and I imagine myself looking at the mirror and saying these things and seeing myself there. A lot of times I’ll actually look in the mirror and this takes less. There’s takes anywhere from a minute or less to do this. Now, depending on what I have going on in my life, if I have a lot of challenging stressors with relationships, whether it’s at work with OKC Christian marriage counseling clients, with family members, or maybe I’m trying to accomplish something that’s so far out of my beliefs that I need a lot more validation. I’m not going to wait for other people to give that to me or to feel like doing it. I’m going to proactively look in the mirror and say, I’m so proud of you, Sean, that you’ve got up at 4:00 AM that you, even though you had a really tough day yesterday, here you are again, getting after it, asking God for grace, saying your prayers, reading your Bible, doing these things, showing love to people.
Even though you’re feeling like you don’t have the love, that capacity, you’re trusting God to give it to you. See what I’m doing is, um, I’m taking the authority from the world I live in and my circumstances, this could be, this will be a whole talk at some point and I’m putting it in my morning routine so that I start with validation. I’m letting my voice be my father, God’s voice who loves me and he’s, I’m imagining him speaking to me. These words of life that I need to hear again and again and again, that may not make a big difference in a week, but over a lifetime. That’s huge. That’s really huge. Something else that I do when I first wake up is I go and, uh, I work up cold every morning. Some people say, you should take a cold shower. I don’t need to do that.
I wake up cold pretty much every morning and I go and I, and I put my partial outfit. I’ll put my pants on, I’ll put a tee shirt on, you know, an undershirt, and then I’ll get my clothes. And I’ve already lied. I’ve already have picked out from the night before. So in a groggy state, I don’t have to make those kinds of choices that had been already made for me. So that just moves in a rhythm quick and efficient. I don’t have to do a lot of thinking and I’ll take it and I’ll hang it on the door and are put my socks and depending on my shoes, if they’re really comfortable, uh, I’ll put them on. If they’re not, then I’ll just carry those out. I let my cat in because my cat is in the laundry room because she bothers us all night if we don’t keep her away from our door.
So she stays in the laundry room and she has access to the outside. So I let her in, put her on my bed with my wife and then I move out towards the living room. Now how so many routines now this, this, this takes me all of maybe five minutes to do these things I’ve just shared with you and now I’m moving out towards the living room and I am going to open all the windows or partial partial windows. The ones where I sit at my computer, I’ll open those. Even though it’s pitch black outside. Opening the windows just helps me to feel like I have availability and it’s, it’s an open door, it’s an open day and there’s so much potential and opportunity. Also, why I don’t put my shoes or my dresser it on is because I don’t want to be confined. I want to, I still feel relaxed and free.
You know, my ideal outfit, if I’m not going to be around people is our, some kind of a shorts, tennis shoes or some kind of a jogging pants that’s comfortable and that this lets me move and I just feel like, man, I can do this. So that’s why I leave my outfit. I’ll hang my shirt on the door and I’ll put my shoes at a place where I can’t miss them when I leave because I’ve had, I’ve gone to work with my jacket on and just my, My v neck under shirt that I wear most days and it has, that’s a little bit awkward. Uh, I’m sweating all day with a jacket on and then I’ll, one day I remember walking into work and I looked down, I’m like, there they are. Those are my house shoes and I’m walking into work with my house shoes.
So these are the rhythms that worked for me. That whole process takes about five minutes to do that. Now moving towards my coffee and in most nights I’ve already dumped it out and I have everything ready for me to go again. I remove as many choices from my morning rhythm as I possibly can because I do these at night before I retire for the evening so that my mornings are efficient and I can get quickly to the, the, the parts of my morning that are most important. And the reason I do this is my morning time is so nectar. It’s the sweetest, most rejuvenating part of most of my days. It’s something that my mind is progressively quick, rapid, and so full of optimism and hope and it’s not contaminated. Something I don’t do is I do not check my emails in the morning. That’s something I did not mention because I don’t do that.
I don’t look at my texts because I don’t want anybody else in their crisis or even their OKC Christian marriage counseling requests or demands to derail my morning rhythm of where my mind is going. So then after I get my coffee, I sit down and I have my journal that I’m in. It’s this, this season, this year I’m running in a five minute journal, which basically just goes through what are the things about my day, how it has a quote on top, and what are the things about my day that are positive, what’s great about my day to day or what am I thankful for? And then it goes to how career, what are three ways I can make today great. And then it’s I am and whatever you put after the war, the two words I am is going to be the most important thing about you that day. Or it would be the most important thing about you because it’s legacy.
It’s a signature of your life. I am. So typically my I am is either, either you leave the I am in or oftentimes I’ll put, I easily surrender all control of God because it frees me to enjoy the people and the processes of my life while giving high effort and not experiencing the stress of the demands or the anxiety or the performance. Some form of that, or if I put I am, I said I’ll put, I am loved by God is a Sun. Without any effort, my position is secure and my value is sure and my father got. I live from a place of love of already having everything I can get from God and everything that I need to be successful. I don’t live to earn. I live from a place of love. Some form of that is in there and what you’ll discover is when you frame your mornings like this, then your mindset is continuing to move forward in power and optimism and you’re articulating reticular activating system.
Your Ras is that system that brings into your awareness that what you most need to succeed in accomplish your goals. So guys, these are a few of the things I’m going to see. I guess I’m going to do a part three of my morning routines. I just think these are so crucial to succeeding to putting a place of success on the table every day of framing your mind optimistically by choices, by not allowing some of these texts, emails or what other people would say, even with your own mind in your tape that you’ve been playing for your life. Don’t let that tape just continue to play. You’re taking control and you’re certain you’re, you’re putting that control and a place where you move towards the goals that you want to accomplish. All right, so this is, this is half of my morning routine and again, what I have just told you, it takes all of Max 10 minutes before I’m on my chair or in a prone position, whatever position my body needs for the morning.
That’s where I’m at. I have a few five of fire going. I’m sitting before the fire and I might do two or three positions as the morning kind of rolls on. Alright guys. So I hope it was as amazingly helpful. If you liked this, please share this podcast with your friend radius on Google. What that does is it helps get the word out that we help you discover what better looks like for you and equip you with the tools to create it. And that’s our mission at nuvision OKC Christian marriage counseling that live. We want to help as many people as we can realize. You don’t have to stay stuck that there is better possible no matter where you’re at today. And we have a team of Christian counselors to help Mary Biblical principles. We’ve cutting edge counseling techniques to jump into your story with you today. So if you need more help than just podcasts are going to our Facebook page, division, counseling, Okc or Instagram handle same plane. If you need more help, please contact us today. We would love to join you and your story and see how God can amazingly transform your life through our collaborative working on your story today. All right, so remember, don’t let your day create you. Be Intentional in your decisions about creating the day that will create the life that you want to be a part of. God bless until we see each other again or talk to each other. Create an amazing day.