5 Daily Rituals From Vishen Lakhiani To Show Up As Your Best Self Every Day

One of our goals here at Mindvalley is to help you develop systems that will allow you to create the best version of yourself. Many of us struggle throughout our day. We find ourselves constantly reacting to the daily situations that inadvertently crop up. One of the secrets to taking control of your daily life is to develop certain specific routines or rituals. These rituals, when implemented on a daily basis, will have a profound impact on how you move throughout the day. I've narrowed it down to five key rituals that, if you make them part of your day, will have the most optimized impact on how you succeed for your entire day. And remember, perfect days lead to perfect weeks, perfect weeks lead to perfect months, perfect months lead to a perfect year, and perfect years lead to an extraordinary life. Robin Sharma once said that the first hour of your day will define how the next 24 hours unfold. So you really want to make that first hour of your day absolutely deliberate and magical. And here's what I found helps me best. So first, let's talk about your daily set points. Here's what a set point is. You need to start every day by touching base with your body so you know the status of how things stand. I do this by checking my weight and body fat percentage. The first thing every morning, I check these against what I call my set points. Now, what's a set point? It's the point I have determined I won't allow myself to cross in my weight and body fat percentage. Think of it as a line drawn in the sand that I am determined to to never step across. If I find I've crossed my set point for weight or body fat, I make sure I work out regularly and I eat right for a couple of days to move back down to my established set point. So many of us see these things slip as we age. But when you set set points, you stay young and in control of your body. Now, the next ritual is optimized meditation. A lot of people misunderstand meditation. It's not just about clearing your mind. I think of meditation as a transcendent practice. And modern science shows that there's an exponential curve in terms of studies on how meditation improves just about every aspect of your life. So if you want to be successful, you need to meditate. Now, this is how I do it. I devised a meditation protocol called the Six Phase Meditation. It takes just 15 to 20 minutes. And it takes you through six specific phases that bring out the best of your human potential. The first phase is rooted in loving kindness meditation. It opens up your heart and gets you more connected to the people and the world around you. The second is gratitude. Science shows that gratitude has the highest correlation with well being of any other character trait. The third phase is forgiveness. And forgiveness science is showing doesn't just have an impact on your body, but it changes the way you function across the day. You're less reactive, you are more compassionate and understanding. The fourth phase is about seeing your ideal future. It's creative visualization. The fifth phase is about visualizing your ideal day unfolding. And the sixth phase is simply a blessing or a prayer or asking for guidance from whatever higher power you believe in. When you layer these six phases together, the six phase becomes a powerful form of meditation that is being talked about by some of the world's most elite performers, from NFL hall of Famers to celebrities. And now I go into the exercise routine or the workout. This takes about 20 minutes and it only has to be done at minimum twice a week. The optimized workout I do is designed based on the science of super slow strength training. It's designed to be an extremely short workout, no more than 20 minutes. It's an optimized program designed for rapid muscle building. Keeping solid musculature throughout your adult work years has been scientifically proven to be tied to longevity and health. It is one of the most important things you can do to live long, look good, and feel your best. And there are five specific exercises that science has shown are the best exercises to do in the gym. You can read about this in books such as Body by Science, but there's a specific way you do these exercises, and it takes about 90 seconds per exercise. We've seen time and time again that one month of super slow strength training can increase strength in someone under 30 by as much as 25%. And for people between 30 and 45, we've seen strength gains of about 50%. Now, the funny thing is, for people over 45, we've seen strength gains as much as 70%. It seems that the older you get, the more powerful this is on you. Then we come to the optimized breakfast. Now, I know what you're thinking. Who wants to optimize breakfast? It's one of the most enjoyable parts of your day. That's true. But remember, we eat for two reasons. We eat for ritual or we eat for fuel. If you want to eat for ritual to have a beautiful breakfast with your family, go ahead. But often after I've dropped my kids off at school, I'm eating simply for fuel. So what I've designed is an optimized breakfast based on a nutrition stack. I start with a base, which is essentially protein. Now, when you're doing super slow strength training, you need protein in your body. So I start with that protein base. And in this shake, I also add various superfoods from wheatgrass to spirulina. I might add blueberries or banana or peanut butter. All healthy nutrients. But here's the funny thing. I never make the shake the same way every day. It's not about eating the same thing every day. The human body is designed to grab what it needs from a wide variety of different foods. And by creating that variety, it never gets boring. So this is what I fuel myself with every single morning. And I found that it improves cognitive functioning. It causes me to maintain my ideal weight. And when you layer this with super slow strength training, it speeds up muscle growth. Now the final ritual is dedicated learning time. The last of the five key rituals is about going deep into your continuous learning. This is vital to my day and I intently focus on learning for about 20 minutes every day before I start work. Now, there are a couple of amazing tools that we have provided to help you learn as easily as you can. The first, of course, is mindvalley Quest. If you are a student on mindvalley Quest, you can open up your TV or your Quest app and go deep into the study of everything from nutrition to fitness to meditation to developing a super brain. Robin Sharma, whose Hero Genius Legend quest is coming up at my mindvalley, says that most people live a life on default, when instead we should live a life like warriors. What he means is that we have to dedicate time to our own growth. And so I might sit in front of the TV in the morning before going to work with my shake and watch an episode of my daily MindValley Quest learning module. Now, as I'm commuting to work, I might open up my podcast app and continue learning. We have a mindvalley podcast that you can listen to, call completely for free on itunes or Spotify or any other podcast service. And we release new episodes two to three times a week. And I try to bring in some of the world's leading thinkers in unique areas of personal growth. These key rituals, when applied to your daily life, can help you find the energy and focus needed to create the best version of yourself possible. Join me in making these simple rituals a part of your daily life. I promise you the results will be astonished. And if you'd like to learn more, I encourage you to join me and Robin Sharma on a special masterclass on Mindvalley, where we're going to go deep into the habits of the world's greatest super performers.