This is a script of Wake Me Up episode #1. It has been abbreviated in certain ways for reading. You can listen to this episode on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
Welcome to Wake Me Up, where morning people are made.
To have consistently great mornings you really just need to have a regular morning routine. That’s why Wake Me Up works. If you tune in consistently, you’ll become a morning person in no time. And you’ll find that if you consistently win your morning, you’ll consistently win your day.
So as you’re lying there in bed, you can just listen to me, as we take the next few minutes to get up. You can start by rolling onto your back, and wiggling your fingers and toes.
Open your eyes. Allow the morning light to help you wake up. And begin to take some deep breaths. Notice the flow of air in and out of your chest. Draw the air deep into your belly, hold it for just a moment, and exhale.
Begin to bring some movement to your arms and legs. Nice and gentle.
You may have a difficult day ahead, you may have an easy day ahead, or maybe it’ll be somewhere in the middle. Either way, you can win this day. No matter what is in store for you.
It starts right here, right now. If you win this morning, you’ll be primed and ready for anything.
So take one more deep breath in, and as you exhale roll over on your side, place your feet on the ground and stand up.
Feel the sensation of your feet on the floor. Feel the blood beginning to move through your body. Notice yourself coming to life.
Stretch your arms to the sky. Bend at your hips and take a forward fold. Just loosen your body up a little bit. [Note: Only do stretches if you can do them safely!]
Now that you’re up and stretched out a little, let’s take a moment to get ready for a bit of meditation. If you’d like, you can have a sip of water and begin to make your way to a comfortable seated position. You can sit wherever you’d like, just don’t sit in bed.
While you take a moment to find that comfortable seat, I’m going to share my tip of the day. The tip of the day is a bite-sized piece of information that will help augment the morning routine you build with this podcast.
Since this is the first episode of Wake Me Up, I want to talk about the importance of prioritizing your morning routine. Many of the most successful people in the world tout their morning routine as the key to their accomplishments. We know from science that the human mind is particularly suggestible in the waking hours, so if you feed it distractions, it will be distracted most of the day. If you feed it focus, it will be focused most of the day.
So the most important thing you can do to start having consistently better days is to prioritize having a good morning. This is the time of day where you have the most control too. Decide that the first 30 minutes of your day is the most important part. If you execute those 30 minutes precisely, the rest of your day will fall in line accordingly.
I’ve done this myself, so I can speak from personal experience. I wasn’t always a morning person. I used to hit the snooze button several times almost every day. Some days I’d be really productive, and others would just be a wash. Some days I’d be really happy and grounded, others I felt disorganized, lazy, or chaotic. I was getting tired of it, so I decided to experiment with myself.
I set a simple, standardized morning routine. I always got up with my alarm. No snoozing. But I got up calmly and slowly. I would have a glass of water, and then sit down for meditation. After that, I did a simple journaling exercise. It took me about a week to get used to it. And my days began to blossom. I was physically, psychologically, and emotionally better off. It kind of blew me away how simple it was. But it worked like magic. I’ve always loved the saying “keep it simple stupid.” There really is truth to it. And that’s exactly why I made this podcast, so I hope it does the same for you too.
So now that you’ve found a comfortable seat, you can just listen to my voice as I guide you through a brief meditation.
Many people hear the word - meditation - and tense up. Meditation requires literally no effort. A better word for it would be “sitting” - because that’s all you’re going to do. Sit. That’s why it’s great to do in the morning.
Thoughts will come and go, because that’s what our brains do. And all you do is sit and watch. As though you’re laying in a field watching the clouds move through the sky. Each thought is a cloud, and you’re just noting them as they float by, not judging or worrying about it, just watching.
So you can gently close your eyes and breathe deep into your belly. Hold that breath for just a moment, before exhaling slowly. Take three or four deep breaths just like that at your own pace.
As you take these breaths, start to draw yourself inward. Notice the subtle movements of your body. Your heart beating. Your chest rising and falling with each breath. Notice what it feels like to breathe with your lungs.
And as you sit, watching your breath, thoughts may come to mind. That’s perfectly normal. You can note that thought, just like a passing cloud in the sky. It’s just a thought.
Just as quickly as it arises, it’s replaced. But you remain. Your breath remains. So whenever you find yourself distracted, just note the thought, and return to your breath. Return to what is always there.
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If you’re distracted, you can just return to your breath. Send your focus deep within. Feel the sensations of breathing. What does it feel like to breath? What does it feel like in your chest, your belly, your neck, your shoulders, or your back. Just watch the breath from all sides.
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Now, you can draw your attention to your surroundings. Notice the sounds of the room your in or noise from the street outside. You can begin to wiggle your fingers and toes, bringing a little movement back to the body.
And slowly open your eyes.
Send off
Now, it’s time for today’s send off. Today, I want to talk about a thought experiment that I learned from Alan Watts. If you don’t know Alan Watts, I highly recommend checking him out.
The thought experiment goes like this. What if you had the ability to control your dreams? Each night while you slept, you could live an entire lifetime, let’s say 75 years. At first, you’d surely use your newfound skill to live out your wildest fantasies. You’d explore every nook and cranny of the earth. You’d fall in love - perhaps more than once. You’d be rich. You’d be famous. You’d skydive and go to space. Night after night, you’d live out the best life you could wish for.
But eventually, after controlling every moment of many lifetimes, you’d get bored. You’ve done everything there is to do. Seen everything there is to see. You’ve been in control so long, that it’s not exciting anymore. You miss that excitement, that thrill of life, which you could only find by not knowing. That thrill of doing something new. The thrill that comes only with not being in control.
And so, after living out these many perfect lives in dream after dream, you’d give up complete control. Because you want the thrill of living a life without a predetermined future. And you’d find yourself exactly where you are at this moment. A flawed person facing known and unknown challenges to which you don’t know all the answers. Yet you’d be invigorated with life. Invigorated by the thrill you’d lost always being in complete control.
You see, this life is the dream of all dreams. Surely it’s not perfect, but that’s what makes it interesting. That’s what gives it direction and purpose. We spend so much time worrying about the outcome of our lives, that we forget the entirety of life is lived in the present moment. The outcome is right now; the outcome of life is the journey of life.
And because the outcome is the present moment, you can change the outcome instantaneously. Like the flip of a switch. You need only decide to make a change right now. If you do, the outcome of the next moment is immediately changed. In fact, even if you don’t make a change, if you do nothing in this moment, you’re affecting the outcome of the next moment - the outcome would be one of laziness in the prior moment.
So the control is truly all yours. You can choose to be positive. You can choose to be healthy and happy. Right now, in this moment. And thereby change every other moment in the rest of your life.
Outro
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks so much for tuning in.
I’ll talk to you tomorrow morning. Until then, I hope you have a wonderful day.