A while ago (I looked it up, it was 2012) a book was published which promised to transform your life before 8 A.M.
Originally I thought this was a brilliant idea.
Who would not want that?
Until I discovered applying The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod included doing an hour of All The Things I Don’t Want to Do before 8 A.M.
And that the time-slot was problematic for me..
I was never home before 10.30 P.M and the only time I went to bed before midnight was the half year I had a boyfriend who wanted to have a call every night at 11.15 PM.
I would unwind with a vengeance in 45 minutes flat, so that I was in pj’s in bed, by the time he called.
I know it would sound much better if I said I was naked or only wearing a red G-string, but sexy sleeping is one of those on-and-off things for me.
And one that’s usually off.
.
Aside from that brief period in my life where my lover provided me with a sensible bedtime, I never got to bed before 0.30 AM.
There was no way I was going to transform my life first thing in the morning, unless a boyfriend was going to plan that out for me.
In which case it would last 6 months.
.
But it wasn’t just that Hal Elrod’s ambitious kick start to the day conflicted with my nightly teaching schedule.
It was also because I genuinely dreaded the tasks I was supposed to do.
Something Hal referred to as:
“best practices, developed over centuries of human consciousness”
Well not Suzanne’s consciousness.
I m not going to start my day with a glass of water, meditation, affirmation, visualization, reading, journaling, yoga;
And call that the life I want.
It’s actually a spot on description of a life I will avoid at all costs.
But (again) it is more than that.
.
The reason Hal Elrod’s morning routine, just like 5 step processes or How To- books AND also regular yoga, will fail to impress the creatives, the driven entrepreneurs, the full-on high level badasses of the world who are stoked about life and everything in it?
Is the passivity of it all.
The stillness.
Nothing is created, so therefor it will never satisfy us.
.
I can only imagine that for some people spending their entire morning on inner-work and reflection must work out great, because morning meditation and yoga are thousands of years old, and people have called The Miracle Morning life changing.
So I will take their word for it.
.
And, get ready for this – and this will require an extremely flexible mind and paying attention, but it is crucial to understand-
It’s not that I don’t journal.
It’s not that I don’t do yoga.
It’s not that I don’t visualize or do affirmations.
But it comes from an entirely different place, and it is something that buzzes with excitement and is so tightly knit to my goals and dreams that it is an effortless, ever changing, don’t-even-have-to-think-about-it, stream of consciousness and activities.
That I have done for 10+ years by now.
.
It is also the reason I at one point stopped doing yoga because I didn’t want to “calm down and relax”.
Why would I want to leave that place at the top of the mountain where you just feel really really good about life?
Why would I come down from feeling great?
What was there to relax from?
.
So the key difference between Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning routine, regular, standard journaling, and so on and so forth, and what I teach;
Is that I make sure I only do things that GIVE me energy. That is what gets me up every morning super excited to start my day.
Currently I have slowed down my morning routine by watching Sex and the City having breakfast and cuddling the cats. But for years I just took my breakfast behind my computer and started writing.
And maybe I ll switch back some day, because it’s certainly the most natural thing for me.
.
So before I share my rock star morning routine and also tell you the real secret to creating the life you want (one no one seems to understand) here’s the first big takeaway:
.
DO the things that give you energy
STOP doing the things that drain you.
.
Kicking yourself to the gym every day? Christ! Do you know what else you could be doing with all the energy? Probably save the world and everybody on it.
Activities you do for yourself should GIVE you energy, not drain you.
Not even initially (although I will nuance that later).
But in general, you should be extremely excited over all the things you do in your life. And if you don’t feel that; Reframe it, rewrite it in your head. Find a way so that you CAN feel excited about it.
Attach a big goal to it.
Make it a challenge.
Turn it into a quest.
But do not start doing that activity, feeling all yucky because it’s like energetically rolling around in your own dirt.
You first need to elevate your energy, until you’re pumped to go do that thing.
.
Last week I drew back from what I will call “The Only Job I Ever Really Wanted”. Not because I didn’t want it anymore but because it had been two weeks, and I had not heard from them.
The momentum had just disappeared.
I had been pumped about it but after two weeks of waiting it was gone.
And as effortless as it had been to go all in, that’s how easy it was to pull the plug.
Because I refused to let something that had given me energy, turn into something that was draining and basically a struggle.
Things should not be a struggle.
.
A struggle is if you want something and you’re not getting it.
The solution is to stop wanting it, and to believe you will get it if it was meant for you. It was already created by your mind, by wanting it;
There is no more work to be done.
.
You just need to stop doing/ actively wanting it, and you need to give it a chance to come to you.
..
You know the saying that you can’t lose what’s really yours because it will always return to you. And if it doesn’t, it wasn’t yours.
You can’t lose your dream job, your dream partner, your dream life.
You only lose the things that were not that.
Have faith. Follow the flow. Follow the energy, and stop digging through the dirt, swimming upstream, pushing shit up the hill, and then needing to relax and reflect on that.
No.
You need to move the other way, where the energy just flows naturally, and the idea of a yoga class either excites you (because you have some cool ideas on how to rock it!) or it repels you because your purpose work calls you so loudly, there is no way you re going to waste time to slow down.
.
After I share my morning routine, I will tell you the other secret, one Hal Elrod doesn’t know either.
.
So what is my morning routine?
.
Well my favorite morning routine, or daily routine, is extremely simple and monotonous: Write, write, write, write.
I could do it all day, every day, and maybe one day I will give into it.
It’s an addiction of the sweetest kind.
.
But I assume that’s not the answer you want to hear.
.
So my other daily routine, and one I did not commit to, nor designed, until I understood the secret I will share later, is based on doing things that energize me. Or that are very tightly connected to my goals.
I have embedded the “requires (startup) energy” between the effortless activities.
effortless/ energizing = e/e
requires startup energy = SU
Here is my 1 hour Rock Star Routine:
1. e/e 8 minutes – finance. Check back statements/ pay bills/ log expenses
2. SU 8 minutes – journaling. Write out affirmations, all present tense. I am/do/have
3. SU 8 minutes – work on publishing my books. This is the most difficult activity for me, where I have the most resistance around
4. e/e 8 minutes fitness -listening to Bon Jovi
5. e/e 8 minutes stretching/ yoga – listening to Bon Jovi
6. e/e Write for the remaining hour to unlimited, depending on how much time I have.
Why doing small/ 8 minute tasks is critical
(the secret even Hal Elrod doesn’t know)
One of my biggest rationalizations to not do Hal Elrod’s morning routine, was that I don’t like small tasks and switching. I work from flow, and unless I have at least half an hour, I don’t feel like doing it.
To cut my life up in 10 minutes chunks seemed unappealing and highly ineffective. No one gets anything done in 8 minutes.
And although I still find it unappealing – it will never replace the flow of writing – I eat my words on calling it ineffective.
Doing a tiny bit of something is VERY effective.
You know why?
Because you create from the mind.
If you do it right that is. Which is by treating these “activities” not like an activity – as if you’re ticking off a to-do list – but like mindset work or like performing a magic ritual.
The 8 minute activity is the magic, the ritual creating your future.
.
My financial future is not created from what I do in those 8 minutes – but from the mindset of being in touch with my own finances, and connecting to my dreams and goals in that field.
My body is not reshaped because I do my exercises, but because it reminds me of my health and fitness goals.
It is not the journaling as in blindly copying yesterday’s affirmations and writing them out another day; It is starting fresh, writing out the affirmations that come up that day.
You should never have to refer back to yesterday’s page to know what your goals are, you should just let them come up and the real goals will come.
..
It all ties in with what I call Rock Star Yoga: An intuitive practice where you just put on a Bon Jovi album, tune in with what’s inside, and move your body the way it wants to.
Someone could write out exactly what it is you do, or what I do, how we move our bodies on the yoga mat and how we’ve spend the 1 hour 5 minutes of “Keep the Faith”;
But it was never about that.
.
It was the tuning in, that got us the experience. The tuning in, is the magic.
.
Tuning into an area of your life, will get you do results.
Not what you do.
..
So now create your own morning routine.
What are the areas you want to focus on in your life?
As a reminder, mine were:
– creating a future/ life of my dreams: which made me include journaling and writing
– becoming a famous author (under my pen name): which made me include publishing my books
– creating the body of my dreams: fitness and yoga
– upleveling my finance: checking in my bankaccount daily. Which highly energizes me, so I could have included it just for that reason only..
Keep track of which activities are
effortless/ energizing = e/e
or:
require startup energy = SU
Naturally, to make it fun and a “Hell yes!” routine, include as few SU’s as possible, and as many fun, energizing activities as you can.
Maybe you first want to design and implement a Rock Star morning with energizing activities, and without any activities you don’t like.
So to rock your morning and create a Hell Yes! routine that will get you out of bed all excited:
.
1. do things that RAISE YOUR ENERGY
And that are completely effortless!
Design your routine in a way that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning.
.
2. implement extra activities to CREATE FROM THE MIND
On any and all other areas in your life, that matter to you.
.
Keep on rocking.
Let’s rock it together!
The subscription button is somewhere on this page, usually on the top right, and we’re on:
Rock Star Yoga on Facebook
my personal Twitter account
This is my last post until:
Jon Bon Jovi and his wife have been very involved through their charity organization JBJ Soul Kitchen, providing meals.
As I m writing this I have no idea if I will make yoga videos tonight;
Rock Star Writer 