Morning Ritual: 3 Quick Tips to Optimize Your Whole Day
We’re all looking for a performance boost, and one of the best ways to achieve it is with a healthy morning routine. From rockstars to billionaires, the morning ritual is a staple of the ultra-successful, and I’m not talking about the two sugars in their coffee, though coffee can be part of your AM boosters. Here we are going to focus on 3 things you can do to supercharge your day, using the power of biology.
1. Turn off the alarm. We have known for a long time that sleep is important, but in recent years we’ve realized it might be the single most important thing for your health. Unfortunately, our 9 to 5 nation has begotten some bad habits when it comes to getting our much needed shut-eye. One of these habits is the use of an alarm. Imagine you are a cave man living 30,000 years ago. What woke you up in the morning? The sun maybe? Or the soft sounds of other members of your band, as they began their days. Turns out the answer is that morning temperature changes have the most effect on our sleep cycle, but that’s beside the point. The point is, a loud, booming noise right next to our faces is not it. Back then, such a morning means an attack by animals or raiding villagers, and the signal is danger. Fast forward to the modern day, and we’ve evolved a bit technologically. Now we can scare ourselves awake every morning and not even realize it’s causing a stress response. Unfortunately, our biology hasn’t changed much since the invention of alarm clocks, and they are not good for us. If you can, try to wake without using an alarm. Most people find that they wake up when they need to naturally. If you can’t afford to risk it, use an app like sleep cycle, which will analyze your sleep patterns, and wake you during your lightest sleep cycle in the morning using gentle tones. Ways to upgrade this biohack are to get light-alarm clocks, which are lights that imitate natural daylight and wake you by filling your room with light. Many find this works great as an alternative.
2. Make lunch breakfast, as in wait to break your fast. Fasting has become hailed as one of the cheapest and most beneficial health habits of our decade. Going without food in the morning has hosts of health benefits, from increasing human growth hormone, to optimizing fat loss, detoxification, etc. It also gives a huge boost on mental performance. Tim Ferriss is a renowned author, famous for his book: The Four Hour Workweek, and his podcast: The Tim Ferriss Show. Tim’s forte is interviewing the world’s top performers and finding out what makes them tick, and over the course of 300 interviews (including such names as Billionaire Peter Attia and Actor and former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger) he found that a huge number of these top performers skip breakfast. Of the male guests, over 80% forgo the morning meal, and some eat one meal a day usually at dinner. We could go on for hours about the benefits of fasting, but I simply suggest you try it. If you have trouble, you can hack it by having coffee in the morning with unsalted grassfed butter, or coconut oil. When running on these fats, your body maintains most of the same processes as if you were still fasting, but without the hunger pains. Another great hack for your appetite is Lactobasillus Reuteri, a probiotic strain that kills cravings and boosts Oxytocin. You can read about it in this post.
3. Last but not least: Shake what your momma gave you. Our bodies come with an internal detoxification system called the lymphatic system. This system helps us clean ourselves out and remove all the unwanted junk that comes with being a messy, biological machine. Your lymphatic system is similar to your circulatory system in that it transports things through your body using fluids. The only caveat, it has no pump. You see, your lymphatic system requires movement in order to activate and work, and one of the best ways to charge it for the day is to move a bit in the morning. When possible, I suggest an up-to 30 minute workout, but what’s great is you can get the detox benefits of activating the lymphatic system just by jumping. Quick, vibrational movement is best for moving lymph, so for those of you that hate exercise, this one should be an easy win. Simply hop up and down 100 times, and you’re good to go. I like to use a jump rope and get my arms moving, but it’s by no means a requirement.
There are plenty more morning routines you can use to kickstart your day, but these 3 are so easy and so quick to implement that I decided they are the most important. Simply making these changes to your daily routine could have life-changing implications for your energy and performance.
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