Hi everyone. This is Sean McGuire with a new vision.live podcast, episode number 27 you know, today we’re going to talk about morning habits that will change your life. I have a lot of morning habits, but before I jump in, I just wanted to tell a story. You know, I do OKC Christian marriage counseling done in Edmond, Oklahoma City, don’t even in Florida when I lived there and went to school and grew up there and I remember this lady, we’ll just call her Charlotte. She said she was dating her current husband and when he first met this guy, his dad, he was a preacher, this Pentecostal or something like that and maybe Baptist church. And he said, hey Ya Sharla and let me see, come over here and looked at me and he looks her up and down and he says, now you know I buy stock. I Bet I can guess your weight.
I, yeah, I used to run cattle in a, put them at the stocks and I thought, oh my gosh, that, you know, there are things that you never say to women. And I have got to say that out of everything I’ve heard, especially coming from a preacher, that’s the last thing you ever want to tell a woman is to say that you used to run cattle and could guess weight and you want to guess her weight. Just thought I’d throw that in there for a funny little start of what not to do. Men with your wives, you want to do the opposite of honor, value and esteem them. Now I wonder if that guy would have had the right morning habits, if he’d have a different outcome in his life. Because what I heard is I’ve heard later on that guy what ought to be single.
I know it’s a mystery of how and why he came to that position, but here’s morning routines are probably not, but I’m going to list. They probably were something very different. So consider for you what’s some amazing morning routines are, you know, that New Vision OKC Christian marriage counseling, uh, or an Oklahoma City. And Eben, we really strive to help you develop the habits and systems in your life that will create not just success while you’re with us, but sustained success. And a lot of that comes from our training. But you know, as you graduate college and you go to these different trainings, a lot of the really color comes from our personal lives and our experiences. And the more you learn and grow, the more you can influence and help other people. And I’ve discovered that the morning routine for me is crucial because it sets the standard to the day.
You know, growing up most of my life as a Christian, being in different churches, quiet time, quiet time. And what did I say? Quiet time were crucial to being successful in your daily walk with God. Now there was a movement on and off throughout my childhood of, Oh, don’t, don’t be so religious about your quiet time. Don’t, don’t make it such a law driven reality, you know, have a relationship, not a religion. And all these things, but really what they were doing is giving people a free pass to not have a good morning ritual. I’m spending time with God.
Now what I’ve discovered personally is it’s not because I feel awful because I’m not spending time with God. One day I’m not going to go to hell or be a bad human being because of that. It’s that the morning routines and your morning habits, we’ll create the standard of the day that you can have and so I’m going to go over some things that I have found really helpful in over 25 plus years of helping people navigate life successfully. Whether you’re an Admin Noco city around the world, whether it’s OKC Christian marriage counseling, parenting, whether you’re in college, these will be impactful. Take the ones that you find helpful, implement them into your life and what you’ll discover is you’ll start to create the life that you want to be a part of. When you start to bring in daily habits that will give you routines and there were teams will set you up to be in positions to win.
It’s like working out every day. If you work out every day and ways that your body needs and you do the right exercises, well then your body will start to change and productive and healthy ways. You’ll get more muscle, more strength. You’ll have more energy to sustain you through the day. Same is true of habits. So one of the first things is I am really hardcore about the time that I get up, the time that I get up now this time has changed throughout the year or years. You know, when I was younger in my, in my high school days, I would think you are crazy to get up anytime before either six or six 30 unless you’re going fishing, let’s you’re going on vacation. Why would anybody in their right mind by choice get up that early? And I had a friend on Saturdays that was sleeping to noon.
I never could do that even if I wanted to. I was usually up by eight but I just could not understand that well through my life and especially in the season I’m in now, my forties that I just discovered, the earlier I get up, the more productive, the more time I have in. This is a window of morning time that on my mind is really activated. I’m hopeful about what the day can hold and I have a lot more, a lot more and different kinds of energy. So I have about two and a half to three hours of time before I go to work every day. Now, some days I’ll leave my house at six 36 20 depending on what time I see my first patient and other days I leave my house at eight eight 20 it says, see you at nine o’clock all the about eight eight 20 but I get up at 4:00 AM now before you freak out and say, oh, that’s crazy, that’s early.
Or maybe you’re one of those crazy high achievers like at Ed Mallet or like this, a thrive time nation that people that work there, some of them get up at 3:00 AM every day. Well, I started getting up at four 30 when I heard a podcast about the power of morning routines and then I heard this guy, I think it was either Ballantine who wrote the perfect day formula or the [inaudible] Guy Power of habit. I think there’s Ballantine that wrote the perfect day formula. This guy I think got up at 4:00 AM and he’s talking about it and I was like, man, if this guy can do it, I can do it now. My hard time is 4:00 AM and what I don’t do is I don’t hit the snooze button. It’s the snooze button. Why don’t I hit the snooze button? That’s a fantastic question. When you hit the snooze button, the argument begins.
The argument begins. What argument? You know the argument that you hit the button? Oh, I didn’t sleep well. That would be me. This morning I’ve, I think our heat is just exploding in our room. It feels like a volcano erupts every morning. So I wake up hot or him throughout the night at one 45 it’s hot, but then our kids’ room is cold. So I can make the excuse of, I should not have gotten woken up early at. Actually I woke up at three 40 today because I couldn’t sleep, but I could use the excuse of I need to sleep in and hit the snooze. And the interesting thing is sometimes when you hit this news, whatever system you’ve had in your mind goes into action and you may sleep, but then you have an argument and you have an anxiety and a stress starting to work its way and the wheel of stress and anxiety starts to go for most people, even if it’s on an unconscious level, because you know that accomplishing your goal starts when that alarm goes off and that you will do better at winning your day if you get up on the time that you set.
And so you just don’t want to start your day with stress. Also, people that you say, I just can’t get up. I can’t get up. Do not tolerate any arguments. It’s like if you are going to be a great parent, don’t get in debates with your kids. That creates a power struggle. And then instead of, you know, disciplining and giving them the love they need and clean and effective ways. When you started to get into a power struggle and argue, you start to allow your emotions to get engaged and then you take things. Personally, I’ve done this. If you’re a parent, you’ve done this and it just goes south really quick. So what you can do is having your mind that no matter what time you go to bed, no matter how bad your sleeping is, it’s you’re going to get up and if the arguments happening, but it happened as you’re getting out of your bed, getting out of your bed, this is a big deal for most people that are listening.
I know for me, this argument kept me in bed so many times the argument of, you know, I worked really hard and I deserve this, or even on a weekend I deserve to stay in bed. I deserve, I deserve, I deserve, or I didn’t. And then it’s all of his lack of mentality of things that didn’t go right or what I deserve. But let’s think about this. You deserve to sleep in longer, miss out on a really productive morning and time of your day, or you deserve to start your day buying the eight ball because now instead of getting up on time, you’re running late, you’re running late, getting your coffee and your breakfast, your grubby to your kids and your wife or your husband because you’re out the door that just doesn’t seem like productive. Or let’s say on a weekend you’ve worked really hard all week and now it’s Saturday and still you typically get up at six 30 and now instead of getting up at six 30 you get up at nine because you deserve to sleep well.
You’ve just given up two and a half hours of an opportunity to do what you want to do. That is not, it either is or isn’t work related, but whatever it is that you want to do time, maybe it’s time with God. Maybe it’s time taking a walk or exercise and you’re sitting on your porch with a Nice Cup of coffee. I don’t know. But I just really encourage you to blow the lid off of expectations of what you were taught. That sleeping in is a reward for and limiting your, your ability. So if I sleep in too much or if I ever, if I have a bad night’s sleep and I’m just not sleeping well and I wake up a lot, then I’ve had this a lot, a few days recently, which is not typical for my rhythms. And I think it has to do with the heat.
Well one, identify where those areas are coming from. So we have her right now until I find a permanent solution, I have pillows over the events, you know, all these events coming into our room and, and that’s my tip prep temporary solution. The other thing is is I, I get up. My mentality is when I get out of bed, I give myself about five seconds, five to 10 seconds on my way to the bathroom where I get ready, uh, of I don’t stop but I have a five to 10 seconds and if I give myself space to say, you know what, it was a hard night’s sleep hygiene, get up. I mean, I didn’t sleep as well as I like and I about five Max, 10 seconds of validating. Yes, it was hard because if you don’t give that time, then your mind and your body are going to be all day trying to be heard.
So, so here that it was tough. This is a good relationship principle with yourself and with others as well. But then quickly move onto your next phase. You say, what’s my next phase of you know what God, I’m trusting you. Then I’m going to have an amazing day actually because of this. I’m going to flip the flow and flipped the script and I’m going to have a really strong day and where most people would get taken out because of this and they flipped their mentality, be taken down. I will have more energy, I will be more productive. I will feel better and more joyful throughout this day because I’m gonna use adversity as a trigger for success, for joy. And you maybe say, Sean, are you crazy? No, I’m not crazy. I just see OKC Christian marriage counseling life differently. I see that we don’t have to be limited by what pharmaceutical companies tell us by what we’ve been trained.
Everybody has to get eight hours sleep or you’re in lack. That’s just not true. I get five and a half to six hours sleep. Six is what I go for it. And I function better on that amount of sleep because that’s my rhythm than I do on Sunday, say eight hours, eight hours my whole life. I tried to do that. And how would just stay up all night? I wouldn’t sleep well because I was in bed way too. It just wasn’t my rhythm. My rhythm is six hours right around there. You know, if you’re sick you need more. But, but mostly, and the cleaner I eat, I can shave some time off of those six hours and I can if function even more efficiently if I fuel my body in healthy ways. So, you know, I guess this first one I’ve talked more about the mentality of getting out of bed, that I have my morning routines and I guess that’s because so many people that I see in OKC Christian marriage counseling, at least in Oklahoma City, Edmond, and when I was in Florida, the hardest part of their time for the morning routine was getting out of bed.
And so if you can win at getting out of bed, then you can implement these next routines that I’ll go through in part two of the morning routines because it’s such a big deal. So remember, do not argue, do not argue, refused to entertain arguing with yourself and allowing that voice to just start telling you what you deserve is basically a lie from the devil at subtracting what you really need. And that’s to get out of bed. And the momentum of your day started right now, one of the things I didn’t talk about that, or we’ll briefly touch on is the time you go to bed matters, but try to go to bed at a time when you’re tired and, and you’re, you’re, you know you’re ready and have routines and we’ll talk about bedtime routines at another time, but, but go to bed when you’re tired, it makes a difference and your sleep is, it is important, but guess what?
You will recalibrate, what time you go to bed and what time you get up. If you get up the same time every day or most days within 30 minutes, that’s what the Harvard sleep study would say. Then you’re going to recalibrate what time they go to bed at night. That will work itself out. Trust me, it will. All right guys, I hope this was amazingly helpful if how you can get out of bed, how you are going to not listen to these arguments. You’re going to validate if you’ve had a tough night sleep, but you’re going to flip the flow and you’re going to say, man, I’m gonna have a great day to day and that will be part of what I tell you to do in the morning of what you say to yourself. The kind of habits and the thoughts that you choose to bring into your mind and say, I have your mouth will impact the way you start your day and live your day.
Also, if you’ve liked this, go to our website, nuvision counseling, got live. We have all, all the podcasts I’ve done so far on their hope. This was really helpful to you. If you say, Sean, that’s great but I need more help. We have a team of counselors and division OKC Christian marriage counseling. If you go to where it was like website knew was in counseling live, we would love to partner with you. We have a team of people that are going marry biblical principles with cutting edge counseling techniques to join you in your story today and reach out to us. Contact us today. This has helped you share it with a friend or family member that can benefit from it and also really means a lot. If you guys would rate us a go to Google and it rate us, or if you’re listening to this on podcast, if it’s been helpful, radios, that gets the word out to people. That change is really possible because the mission that a new vision counseling is, we help you discover what better looks like for you and then they could be with the tools to create it and remember, guys, don’t wait for a great day to happen. Don’t wait for a great marriage, a great kid to be raised by the decisions you make each day. Choose to bring that greatness into your day in your life. God bless until we talk again. I’ll see you really soon.