Greg Faxon explains why every entrepreneur benefits from a morning ritual and walks through the three essential components of a strong routine: an emotional/spiritual practice (e.g., meditation), a physical practice (e.g., walking or bodyweight exercise), and an intellectual practice (reading and writing). He frames the ritual as the foundation for the day, gives his personal order and timings (e.g., 6:00 AM start, reading then writing), and recommends building habits incrementally.
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Hey everyone, Greg Faxson here. Today I want to talk about morning rituals. This is one of the most important things in my life and business. And I'm going to tell you why morning rituals are so important, what they actually are, and how to develop your own, or if you already have a morning ritual, how to make it even better. I'm going to give you the three components of a really solid morning ritual. But before I do, I want to point out what I'm walking underneath. Okay. This is a timber frame pavilion. And. And my girlfriend and I recently moved from D.C. to West Virginia. And one of the first things that we did was we built this big timber frame. Alright. We had a nine day workshop. And I sort of see a morning ritual as similar to a timber frame. Right. Because the timber frame is the foundation of a house or a building. Your morning ritual is the foundation of your day. Right. And if you don't have a good series of routines and habits that you're doing first thing in the morning, which is what a morning ritual is, then it's going to be really hard to get momentum. And if you're an entrepreneur, you have no one giving you systems or structure, you have no boss, which is one of the really good things, but also what makes it hard to be productive. And so your morning ritual helps with that. So there's three components of a really good morning ritual. I'll give you mine in detail, I'll probably write it out. But the three components that you should have, in my opinion in any morning ritual are, number one, your emotional or spiritual self, number two, your physical self, and number three, your intellectual self. Okay. And the order you choose to put them in the ritual is up to you. It depends on your priorities and what you think you're most likely to procrastinate on, and a whole bunch of different things. For me, that first part, the emotional self, is the first thing that I do. And for me it's meditation. So I recommend that you develop some sort of practice. It doesn't have to be meditation, but something that lets you tune in, be present, see where you're at, and just start the day that way. Because otherwise you roll over, check your phone, you're already in your day, and you never really got a chance to really wake up, to really say deliberately, okay, I'm starting my day, let's make this a good day. And as entrepreneurs, it's such an emotional roller coaster that if you don't have something that helps ground you and that helps tether you, you're going to be in trouble. So that's the first piece is an emotional or spiritual component. The second is, is a physical component. Okay, so something to wake your body up. And there's been so much research on how physical activity helps your mind perform better too. So absolutely, you got to get something in. For me right now it's walking. I have a little body weight routine that I'm doing. It's nothing crazy, but if you're training for a marathon, you go running, whatever it is. But I like to do that first thing in the morning. And then the third part of the routine is your intellectual self, right? It's your mind. And for me that's reading and writing. So I'll read a book for 30 minutes. I typically read fiction or, sorry, typically read nonfiction in the morning and fiction at night. And then after I read, I write. So I do my weekly blog post and I'm doing drafts on that. And personally I like reading first because it kind of cues me up, it helps me recognize good writing and, and it helps me ease into my own writing. And then I'm doing a 90 minute chunk of writing. So those are the three components that I have in my morning ritual. Again, I'll write them out in detail and I'll link to it from the video. But I really recommend you have all three because if you're missing one, you don't really have that. You don't have that piece of the foundation. I sort of see it like a three legged stool, right? So you got to have all three legs. If you're missing a leg, then part way through the day you'll kind of fall over. And, and the only other points that I would make about a morning ritual are make sure that you use, save all your creative energy and use it in the morning. Right? Because your willpower is going to diminish throughout the day. That's why I'm doing things like writing a blog post. Like writing for me is ridiculously hard. So if I leave it to the end of the day, I'm just going to be depleted. So I'm trying to save all that willpower for things like meditation, you know, writing, physical activity that really require it. And I'm not leaving that stuff to the evening unless you're on stage, some sort of crazy biological clock where you really do function better at night. My day kicks off at 6am I'm going straight into my morning ritual. And then after I've done all that, that's when I'll work with clients and that's when I'LL do all the logistical stuff of my business or I'll check email. The worst thing that you could possibly do is roll over, check your phone, and look at everyone else's agenda for your day and just do whatever feels most urgent. You can't serve other people and unless you have water in your glass, right? So if your glass is empty, you have nothing to serve with. So I really recommend getting that solid foundation of a morning ritual and see if you can stick to that every day. You might install one component at a time. You know, a lot of habit formation research says that we try to do too much too soon. So I recommend over the next week, see if you can add in one little component. Maybe it's five minutes of meditation the first day and then you do 10 minutes or you do the five minutes meditation and then and you do some push ups. Okay? So whatever it is, the ultimate goal you're trying to get to is those three components and you can tweak it around and see which order you like to have them in. For me right now it's meditation, reading, then writing and then I do my workout and then I shower up and I'm good to go for what everyone else needs from me for the day. But that's all I have for you right now and I hope this video is really helpful. And again, if you want my morning ritual in detail, I'm going to write that out for you all and I'll link to it. Leave a comment, tell me what your morning ritual is. I'm always looking to improve mine and we'll talk soon. Have a great day.
