 Can you start off your day and go, wow, holy s**t, I woke up today. I want to start off with a win. Boom. That's a win. Today, we're going to be talking about the one thing that I want you to do and how I want you to start your day every single morning. We all know that first impressions are important, don't we? You know, if you meet somebody and they end up being an asshole from the very beginning, you're probably not going to like them, even if they've been great to you over the past few weeks. It's going to just set you off on the wrong foot. You don't want to be set off on the wrong foot. And so when you think about your day, think of your day as if you're greeting a new person every single day. First impressions are important. And so we're going to talk about the first thing that I want you to do every single morning. I'm going to give you a couple of things that I want you to do first thing in the morning. Now, as far as the morning routine goes, this is not going to be an episode just about your morning routine. I've made episodes before. You can look me up on the podcasting space or on YouTube and you can see all the videos I've made about how to create a perfect morning routine. No, this is actually more of how to set yourself up to have a day where you're winning from the very beginning, winning from the very beginning. That's what we're trying to focus on. I'm trying to the point of the morning, the point of this in the tips that I'm going to give you is I want you to set yourself up from the beginning of your day for how you want to feel all day long. One of the things that I think holds people back from creating the perfect morning routine is they basically have a to-do list of everything they need to do in the morning and then they basically make a to-do list for their morning routine. And I don't know about you. That doesn't sound motivating to me to wake up to a to-do list. I want to wake up to how I want to have myself feel throughout the day. So what is your first impression of every single day? The first thing I want you to think about is when your alarm goes off, are you thinking, damn it, I don't want to have to wake up. I just want to sleep longer. Is that what you're thinking? Or are you jumping out of bed and you're grateful? Now, I realize I love sleeping. I can sleep for like 13 hours straight if my alarm doesn't go off. But I have to consciously remind myself when the moment my alarm goes off to start with gratitude, holy s***, I woke up today. How amazing is that? Do you know that 150,000 people didn't wake up today? That's how many people die per day. 150,000 people died yesterday and would love to be waking up today. Can you start off your day and go, wow, I get another chance. I get another day. Maybe you don't feel good. Maybe you're tired. Maybe you're sleepy. Maybe you're not really excited about what's going to be going on for the day. But can you set yourself up and go, man, you know what? At least I get another day. That's something to be grateful for. Now, here's the thing. We now have to go take that moment and walk over to your alarm. Hopefully, your alarm's not by your bed. Don't ever put your alarm by your bed. Put your alarm on the other side of the room so you have to turn it off. You have to stand up and walk across the room physically or walk into your bathroom and turn it off. Now that you've walked over to it, make sure that you do not hit the snooze button. Let me tell you something important that most people don't think of. When you went to bed, if you set your alarm clock for 6 a.m., when you were fully conscious, you said 6 a.m. is the time that you need to wake up. Now, when you're not as conscious, you're turning your alarm clock off and trying to go back to sleep. If you remember this for the rest of your life, if you hit the snooze button, you're starting your day with a loss. If you hit your snooze button, you're starting your day with a loss. If you're starting your day, the very first waking moments of your day with a loss, you're setting yourself up for failure from the very beginning. Now, can you still win the day after hitting your snooze button 17 times? Of course you can, but you're starting your day off with a loss because you wanted to wake up at 6 a.m. So if you wake up at 6 30, you're like, I already feel like I'm behind the eight ball. So if I'm thinking about how I want to feel throughout the day, I want to feel good. I want to feel grateful and I want to feel accomplished throughout the day. So I'm going to wake up immediately. And the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to try to go straight to gratitude. Thank you for whatever powers are out there for giving me another chance. I'm still breathing. My heart's still beating. Let me roll over. Oh my God. There's still somebody that's alive that's next to me. Right? Great. That's something to be grateful for right there. Now when I get out of my bed and I hit that alarm clock, I'm going to go, okay, I'm not going back to bed because I want to start my day off with a win. So don't ever, ever, ever hit your snooze because you're starting your day off with a loss. I want to start off with a win. Boom. I woke up when I was supposed to wake up. That's a win. It might seem like a little teeny tiny win, but it is and that's beautiful because it's just a little teeny tiny win. That's all we need is just a bunch of little wins. Next thing to make it a win. Make your bed. I hate making my bed. There was a for years, 30 years of my life. I thought making my bed was pointless because I'm going to sleep in the freaking thing anyways. I don't spend any time in my room besides sleeping. That's it. So why would I even make my bed in the first place? You make your bed for the same reason why you don't hit your snooze button because it's another win. And what you're doing is you're training yourself to finish tasks, right? One of the things that I find with people too often is that they don't finish things that they start. They get really excited and motivated to do something. Oh, I'm on this weight loss journey. And then four days into trying to lose this weight, they're off of their weight loss journey. It doesn't mean anything to them. They're not good at finishing tasks. I'm trying to finish the task of sleeping. I'm trying to finish every single thing that I do. If I go and I eat dinner, I want to take that plate. I want to wash it. I want to put inside the dishwasher. I want to finish the act of eating the same way that you finish the act of sleeping. I want to finish with a win. So if I wake up, boom, I hit the alarm, I turn it off and I stay awake. That's a small win. If I make my bed and finish the act of sleeping, boom, I'm finishing the act of sleeping. That is also a win. These are two little tiny wins. These are not going to completely change your life. But if you start your day off with gratitude, number one, in two small wins, don't you see how the first three minutes of your day are already off on the right foot? And if I'm trying to have feel accomplished and I'm trying to feel gratitude throughout the day, don't you think that's a really great way to start your day to wake up and to do that, to hit the alarm, go on with your day, stay awake, and then to make your bed. Those are two small wins in gratitude. I think that's great. And what's happening is you're starting your day. You may have heard me talk about this before. Leaning forward, proactively accomplishing things. All too often, we're too reactive in every single thing that we do. We're thinking to ourselves, oh my gosh, there's all of these circumstances coming to me and I'm putting out fires all day long. No, you don't want to focus on putting out fires all day long. I want to start my day off leaning forward, leaning forward on my front foot, not on my back foot. If I'm on my back foot, I'm on the defensive. I want to be on the offensive throughout my entire day. And if I'm starting my day off the gratitude, if I'm hitting my alarm clock and getting up, and if I'm making my bed, I'm already leaning forward. I'm already propelling myself intentionally to get shit done for the day. I'm starting my day on the offensive. If I hit the snooze button and go back to bed and then I wake up late and I don't have time to make my bed and I don't make my bed and I just rush out the door and get dressed and brush my teeth and I'm out the door. I'm starting my day off on the defensive. I'm starting my day off on my back foot, leaning backwards. What it is, is it's small mental wins. I always say it over and over again. Success is not some big massive sexy event. Success is doing boring things over and over and over again every single day to get yourself to where you want to be. It's small mental wins and that's what we're all working for. So then what you do after you get out of bed is you go ahead, you go get some water, you hydrate yourself, you brush your teeth, you go to the bathroom, do whatever you need to do and then what I recommend is to go and actually have a meditation area inside of your house, inside of your bedroom, whatever it is and that's how you start your day with gratitude and so what I do every single day, I wake up, I do exactly like I told you, I brush my teeth, go to the bathroom, get water, rehydrate and then I go to my meditation room that we have inside of the house. Once again, you don't have to have an entire room dedicated to this. You can literally have a corner of your place which for the longest time was a corner in my room was just a meditation area. You go to this and because for me when I wake up it's still dark outside. I have found that if I light a candle instead of turning a light on or instead of staying in the darkness even though I'm not like a candle guy it just feels more serious, it feels more sacred and so what I do is I wake up, I go take care of my business then I go to my meditation area, I light a candle and I sit there and try for 15 minutes to think about everything I'm grateful for and I try to bring in all of the gratitude that I have for every single thing, every single purpose, person, everything that's going on in my life and I try to bring gratitude to it. The reason why, you've heard me talk about it what you focus on you get more of. If I'm focusing on all of the negative crap in my life I'm gonna find more things to be negative about but if I'm focusing on all of the things that I'm grateful for, all of the ways that I've been blessed, all of the challenges that I've had in my life that sucked when I went through them and I would never wanna go through them again but I learned something from them and was able to make a positive from them if I can find gratitude in every single thing as much as possible then I'm gonna find more things to be grateful for throughout that day. If I start my day off with gratitude I'm gonna find more things to be grateful for and it's not, you don't have to be rich to do this you don't have to have everything that you want to this you don't have to have the house that you want you don't have to have the car that you want any of those things. If you're listening to my voice, you're breathing and you have a heartbeat. You can literally be grateful for just that. You can be grateful for the weather you can be grateful for the wind on your face you can be grateful for the fact that you have working limbs you can be grateful for the fact that your heart works that you have people that love you there's so many things that you be grateful for. Here's the interesting thing if you can be grateful for the little teeny tiny things and you can be grateful for the challenges in your life and what you learn from them you can be grateful for the big things. it's easy to be grateful for the big things, but can you find a way to be grateful for every single thing that you have, right? So I try to focus every single day on those things, to wake up and immediately set my mental GPS towards gratitude and just having like a little sacred spot, a spot that you take seriously, not just going and meditating on your couch, which you can do, I did that for years as well too, but to have a space that is literally like the meditation space that you take serious. And once again, I recommend getting a candle. For some reason, it just clicks my brain over to being like, wow, this is kind of like a serious thing right now. There's no lights on, you know, and there's also a meditation. Many cultures meditate by just literally looking at a candle. That's another way to meditate. If you don't wanna close your eyes because you're afraid you're gonna fall asleep, look at the candle and just watch the candle and that's actually a meditation as well. I know that my brain and my body is electrical signals in my brain and chemical signals inside of my brain. And that changes the chemicals inside of my body. Every thought is an electrical signal and a chemical signal. And every chemical signal and electrical signal in my brain sends signals from my brain to my body called neuropeptides, which tell my body the chemicals to make inside of my body. And so I'm trying to set my body up and to fill myself up with the gratitude, with the serotonin, with the dopamine. And I imagine the chemicals running through my body, the chemicals running through my brain and I'm trying to fill my body up with that good shit. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to set my brain and my body to immediately wake up and go to positivity, immediately wake up and go to gratitude, immediately wake up and feel the way I want to feel. I'm training my brain and training my body how to think and how to feel from the moment that I wake up. Have you ever thought about that? That you need to train your body to focus on how to think and how to feel? Because if you're not paying attention, you may have heard me say this before in previous episodes, your brain will naturally go towards negative a lot of times. And so I'm trying to train myself as if I'm a dog that doesn't know how to go to the bathroom, I'm trying to train this dog to go outside. What are you gonna do? You're gonna put it outside every single time he needs to go bathroom and eventually it's gonna figure out, you know, we have a puppy that's here. We do and sometimes he poop, well, not even sometimes. Often he poops on the carpet, right? So what do we do? We have to catch him in the act of pooping on the carpet, pick him up, make him smell the poop and then put him outside. So in his brain he goes poop outside, poop outside, poop outside. If he does this over and over and over again, he's starting to understand this now. He's starting to poop outside now. The same way I'm gonna train myself, the same way I'm training my, you know, four month old puppy right now. And I'm gonna train myself to go wake up gratitude, wake up gratitude, wake up gratitude, wake up gratitude. I'm training my brain and my body how to think and how to feel. Because otherwise I might just go straight to negativity and I don't wanna go straight to negativity because if I go to that, I'm gonna find more things to be negative about. If I go straight to gratitude, if I go straight to positive, I'm going to feel better. I'm training myself, my brain and my body how to feel. I'm making my brain send electrical and chemical signals that will release dopamine and serotonin inside of my body to make me feel better and to start me getting into, as I like to say, that good shit. So think about your morning routine. Doesn't this just sound nicer to have your morning routine like this? To wake up, to not hit the snooze button, to start your day with the wind, to make your bed, to start with another wind and then go and focus on gratitude. Doesn't that just sound nice? Doesn't it just sound nice to be fully present and appreciate what you have? To be appreciative for being alive? Doesn't that just sound nicer than just being pissed off about all of the shit that's happening in your life? In my opinion, I think it sounds nice to just do that. It gets rid of, what's funny is that when you start focusing on all of these good things, you start getting rid of anxious feelings. You start getting rid of worrying. They don't pop up and boil to the surface anymore because you don't even have space for them. Because you realize that everything that you have is great, everything's amazing. And when you focus on everything being amazing in this moment, the funny thing is, it only gets better. And it gets better, and it gets better because what you focus on magnifies and it grows. So if you focus on things to be grateful for and focus on things that are amazing, you will start to feel better. Now here's the caveat that I'm gonna say to this. People always say, yeah, but if you're focusing on all the positive things, that means that you're ignoring the negative things. No, no, no. I'm not saying ignore any negative things. What I am saying is that when you focus on how to be positive, you're starting your day off with a win, you're finding things to be grateful for, you go in and you can attack the negative things and the things that need to be worked through from a positive standpoint versus a negative standpoint, which makes you more likely to be resourceful, to be proactive and to actually get past the negative things. I will never say ignore the negative things. I will just say go into the negative things with their gratitude, with more gratitude and with more appreciation, more positivity. And I promise you, it makes it way easier to go through those negative things. And then you can look at those negative things and say, how can I take this crappy thing that I don't want to be happening? And how can I make myself learn from it? How can I make this a lesson? How can I make this something that I will eventually be grateful for? Because here's the thing that I know. I don't wanna go back through any of the hard times that I went through in my life, but I wouldn't wanna change them because all of them made me stronger, all of them made me who I am. And I guarantee it's probably that way for you as well. So I'm not saying ignore negative things. I'm saying go to all of your negative things from a positive standpoint with gratitude. And I promise you, it makes it even easier to create the life that you want to. So the first moments of your day or your first impression of the day, you can't change your first impressions. So how are you waking up every single day? Wake up with intention, wake up with gratitude, put some time into it. This only takes about 20 minutes to do all of these things at most. I promise you, if you do this, you'll start to get the chemical signals inside of your brain that are gonna go towards positivity, towards being grateful, having gratitude, feeling better. And you're gonna start getting addicted to that good feeling because who wants to feel like when you can feel great? Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. If you wanna learn even more about mastering your mind, click right here and watch this video as well. Good morning, everybody. Today's gonna be a beautiful day. Do you wanna go back to dreaming or do you wanna go to actually creating your dreams?