Morning Gratitude

Welcome to the Healthy Mindset App Podcast where host Mike Hartman, a performance coach and former professional athlete, brings his passion to help athletes and workplace athletes achieve their dreams and goals while being mindful of everything else in life. Mike also uses this platform to share his targeted assessment application, Healthy Mindset course meditation and goal setting technique for the athlete and workplace athlete we're glad you're here. Now let's dive headfirst into this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast. Here's your host, Mike Hartman.

This episode I'm going to talk about starting your day with gratitude. And I've heard so many people say I'm not a morning person. Well, these are things that you can work on. So if you want to be a morning person, you can. You just have to work at it. Getting up in the morning for me, just my schedule. I'm up every day probably around 4:45am and for me it works. And what I do right away is I start my day off not looking at my phone. That used to be a habit. I would get up and I want to check my email, but I have time for that later in the morning. So the first thing I do is I get myself ready. I do my exercise in the morning and I'm grateful for that. I work out. I don't lift weights. I'm big into yoga, I'm big into Pilates. I do conditioning on a bike because my knees get sore when I run. Now I'm a pickleball player, an average one, but for me that's what I do in the morning. I would play my pickleball early and then I'm off at times and then I have the rest of the day. So I've talked about so many different things that you could start off and it could be a practice for you. You could take a few minutes each morning and just reflect on things that you're grateful for, things that are in your life that could be positive, things that you want to acknowledge. To me it's important to do that because you're starting off on a good note. Yes, I've talked about making your bed and self care. Of course that's all important, but actually some of these actionable items as well is like being grateful when you first wake up. The other thing is journaling. To me it's so important and I know it works for some people to actually use their phone, but I like to write. So I would write down a few things that I'm grateful for every morning. And not just to write them, to write them I'm grateful for. It's beautiful outside. I just don't write to write. I really put some thought behind it and it's a very simple practice. And what it does, it shifts your focus towards just positive things in your life because you want to get up. And it helps you become positive. Because listen, there's times, yes, I'm negative. I had a speaking engagement once and it got changed and I had a fly out at a different time. There was a conflict. There's always going to be some sort of negativity going on. I tell people all the time that I'm not just the most positive person, because I'm not. There's some times where, you know, I have to take a step back now. I do sometimes. Now the five minute rule or the six minute rule. My father taught me this a long time ago. Don't make any quick decisions. Give yourself something, you know, used to say between five minutes and sometimes a day to think about it. But in this case, we can give ourself, you know, whether it's three or four minutes before we blow off the handle or you're driving in the car in the morning and somebody cuts you off and what happens, you know, people have road rage and that could be dangerous. So I've learned over the last probably 15 years that I'm just gonna just let it be. The best thing to do for me is to let it be. But I want to give you some of these tips to use. And using a journal is so important to me. I have everybody do it. Every one of my companies that I work with, every athlete, individuals. To me, it's so important just to have, you know, to think what you're grateful for. And believe me, you know, sometimes you don't know what you have until it's gone. I just lost a friend who was a mentor of mine for 20 years. He was such a great friend. We would have great talks. He asked me for coffee, I think it was three weeks ago. I said, no, I can't make it. I was just too busy. And I look back and he just passed away. And I wish I had that cup of coffee. So sometimes we. Sure, it's easy to look back and hindsight is no sight, but these are reasons why we do these things. Another thing is mindful breathing. And there's so many different practices you could do. And I really appreciate this. This helps me stay calm. And it's also, you know, it is part of gratitude. But like, I work with this professional golfer and I started working with him about A month ago, and he's on the PGA Tour, and he asked me, what breathing techniques do I need. I'm going to a tournament. I said I wouldn't start anything new. That's a practice. So what I would do is I take some good, deep breaths before you are ready to actually, you know, before you're ready to put. Or you could do some imagery before you do it with some breathing, but that's on your own. You just can't all of a sudden do these things. These are practices. I tell everybody all the time, like a meditation is a practice. I've had some people tell me, hey, I can't do this. It takes. I can't. But you have to practice it, and that's the important thing. So I like mindful breathing, to me, is however you want to breathe. But there are so many techniques that you could. And one thing, I always look back and I'm expressing thanks. And I've been doing this in the podcast, if you haven't noticed. But I'm sending messages to people that have really impacted me, people that have really gone out of their way for me in my life. That doesn't mean now I have to go out of their way. Someone does something for you, that doesn't mean you have to do it for them. But it's so important to express. Thanks mean that. I go to Starbucks every morning. It's one of my rituals that I have. It's part of something that I do. And I see the same people, they know me by name. I take the time to learn their name. And I just can't thank them enough for their service as well for them serving me there. So to me, I try to send thanks to people. You could do it in a message. But I got a really nice Right during the holiday, somebody sent me a Starbucks card because they know I go there. Her name is Kim Angelia. She's in Charlotte. She's a. Do I call her a friend? Yeah, but we don't. I don't think I've seen her since I've moved back. It's been three years. But I got that in the mail, just a nice gift from her. And I said, wow. And it just made me think. And I don't think it was for any transactional reason. It wasn't. Not that I think that I know it wasn't, but it was just sending somebody a quick message. And I know she teaches gratitude, so that was great. I mean, it really meant a lot. You know, visualization is important, but visualizing positive things when you get out of bed every day, picture yourself just overcoming challenges or how am I going to attack this situation? Or I'm going to be ready. Sports, we call it ready to play. You get up and you get ready. You start saying, you could do some self talk as well, but we're going to talk about that in a second. To me, one of the biggest things I love is the nature connections that are out there. I love the mountains and I love the ocean. It's one of my favorite things. We go to Jupiter at times and I love that because I could walk my golden doodle on the beach there and I'm beyond grateful for that. It's gorgeous. There's really nobody out there. I think it's around 6:30 in the morning. I'm out walking, you know, my golden doodle and they allow dogs on that beach. And I just, I look forward to that. It's something that I, it's like, it's my connection, it's what is for me. But you have to find something that you know that works for you. We have a greenway here in North Carolina, which is a beautiful, I think it's an eight mile greenway, four miles down, four miles back. And now they're connecting all these greenways together. But walking on the greenway and just enjoying the moment where you are and I hope you have the time to add this to your life. We talk a lot about affirmations and I've been going back and forth on affirmations for so many years. It was hard to. And again, if you do this, I am not taking this away from you. This is great for you, but it's not great for me. But people say, okay, I'm a millionaire. I see, you know, they go over these affirmations that aren't really true and then it's not measurable and to me it's not transformational. So I like affirmations. We have affirmations there. That's something that we can incorporate positive affirmations into your morning routine. Just, you could repeat statements that reflect gratitude, opportunities that will come your way that you think. But I don't like the unrealistic affirmations. I'm sorry, I've had people argue with me about that and in my opinion it's not for me. But again, I'm not taking it away because maybe it's good for you. Another thing that we do is you want to set positive intentions in your everyday life. To me, that's so important, no matter if it's being fully Mindful, being fully present. I tell people, no matter what it is, if you're Talking to somebody, 100% of that attention should be on that individual. Not looking at your phone. You see somebody in the morning. To me, these are morning things that you could do. And I mentioned rituals as well. I have a ritual every morning. Is it a healthy ritual? No. But I have a make sure I have my yogurt. My dietitian tells me, Cheryl says, Buckley, that you need to have some protein first. So I do have some protein. I have a yogurt and then I have my bagel and my coffee. But the first thing I do put into my body is the protein. Guess for more of how it digests and how it goes through your body. And I'm not an expert in that area. That's Cheryl. But. And that has helped me too. So that's something I like to do in the morning. That's my ritual. Then I actually journal and do some things as well. I like listening to podcasts. Boy, this year, like for me, one of my rituals was to read two books a month. Now I'm down to one. I'm so busy and I had audible and I've listened to about 38 books. But I do it in the morning if I'm driving. I'll listen to it if I can. I know I mentioned to be in a moment, but we work with what we have. So for me, I like to make sure I read in the morning or I'm listening to a podcast that I enjoy, which for me, that's one of my rituals. And one thing you could do again is the last thing is share the gratitude that you have in your life with others and start off by having something healthy in the morning to start again. You could start these and you can create such a positive, uplifting atmosphere that you could live in. And to me, this just helps you create a daily practice. Overall, in the morning just creates habits. And we need a lot longer than 12 minutes to talk about it now. So we're going to continuously share stories of gratitude for you. Looking forward to doing this. I appreciate everybody that has been listening. Feel free to go to our website, healthymindsetapp.com you can get our book the Healthy Mindset for Athletes and Workplace Athletes. It's a. It's really beyond a book. It's a workbook and it also goes hand in hand with our community where the healthymindsetapp.com is in the community in our program there. So if we could help you in any way, please let me know any questions, please reach out. Thank you for listening. If you can, you can leave us a review, share your feelings on the podcast and have a great day and looking forward to the next one.

We're so glad you joined us for this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast with your host, Mike Hartman. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. That helps others find the show, and we greatly appreciate it. To dive deeper and learn more about the Healthy Mindset program, or to get in touch with Mike, please Visit our website, healthymindsetapp.com thanks again for listening and we hope you'll join us again in the next episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast. Until then, be well.