The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)

Possibly the Afternoon?
Maybe I could schedule it in the middle of the day? Possibly on
my  lunch  break,  or  somewhere  in  between,  I  could  just  find  some
“extra”  time.  Well,  that  extra  time  just  doesn’t  show  up  and  the  day
usually gets away from us.
Aw, Come on – Not in the Morning!
Then,  I  considered  doing  it  in  the  morning—but  I  resisted.  To
say that I was not a morning person was a gross understatement. The
fact was, I dreaded getting up in the morning, particularly waking up
early,  almost  as  much  as  I  hated  running.  But  the  more  I  thought
about it, the more a few things started to make sense.
First,  by  committing  to  my  personal  development  in  the

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morning,  it  would  give  me  a  positive  motivational  kick-start  to  my
day. I could learn something new in the morning. I’d likely be more
energized, more focused, and more motivated for the rest of my day. I
remembered  a  blog  post  that  I  read  on
StevePavlina.com
,  titled The
Rudder  of  the  Day.  Steve,  also  the  author  of Personal  Development
for  Smart  People,  stated:    “It’s  been  said  that  the  first  hour  is  the
rudder of the day. If I’m lazy or haphazard in my actions during the
first hour after I wake up, I tend to have a fairly lazy and unfocused
day.  But  if  I  strive  to  make  that  first  hour  optimally  productive,  the
rest of the day tends to follow suit.”
Not to mention, by doing personal development in the morning, I
wouldn’t have all of the excuses that accumulate during the day (I’m
tired, I don’t have time, etc.) If I did it in the morning, before the rest
of  my  life  and  my  work  got  in  the  way,  I  could  guarantee  that  it
happened every single day.
Finally, I just didn’t really see any better time to do it. Executing
my personal development first thing in the morning was looking to be
the most advantageous option, but it was already hard enough to drag
myself  out  of  bed  every  day  at  6:00  a.m.—because  I  had  to—so  the
idea  of  getting  up  at  5:00  a.m.  seemed  absolutely  insane  to  me.
Feeling frustrated and a bit defeated, I was about to close my planner
and  forget  the  whole  idea,  when  I  heard  the  voice  of  my  mentor,
Kevin  Bracy,  in  my  head.  Kevin  always  told  me,  “Hal,  if  you  want
your  life  to  be  different,  you  have  to  be  willing  to  do  something
different first!”
Damn it. I knew Kevin was right, but that didn’t make waking up
early  any  easier.  Committed  to  making  a  change,  I  decided  to
overcome my self-imposed, life-long limiting belief that I was not a
morning person and wrote into my schedule that I would wake up at
5:00  a.m.  the  next  morning  to  do  my  first  personal  development
routine.

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