5 MORNING ROUTINES TO WIN THE DAY

Tim Ferris, author of ‘the 4-hour Workweek’, has his 5 favorite morning hacks to maximize his productivity. As per Tim, positive momentum and a distraction-less start of your day don't come naturally, rather it’s manually earned every day by following a strict routine. After Interviewing hundreds of ultra-successful people, from the famous chess prodigies to athletes to billionaires – he has picked the common denominator out of all and made a list of his top 5 routines.

Out of his top five routines, he claims that even if he gets to three routines per morning – he wins. And as the famous saying goes, “if you win the morning, you win the day”.

Tim Ferris is an efficient all-rounder – he fluently speaks 5 languages, is a national Chinese kickboxing champion, holds a world record in Tango and is a best-selling author. That’s a big list for a single man – and getting demotivated from a long list of someone else’s achievement is not the point. Rather, it is a proof that the only thing that’s stopping us from succeeding in any field is our mental limitations, and Tim has a way out.

There is a lot we can learn from Tim, and his belief that single individual can achieve greatness, and with a right set of mind – can reach the pinnacle of his field. So, let’s get started.

Top 5 Morning routines

5. Make your bed

It might sound like an unimportant ritual, but it gives one a sense of control at the very beginning of the day. It’s a form of strategy that helps you to deal the intangibles and curveballs that life throws at you. No matter how complex your day is planned ahead – you can always make your bed and straighten at least one thing.

4. Meditate

He states, ‘more than 80% of the world class performers I’ve interviewed practice one form or the other of mindfulness’. As per Tim, there are few who go to Headspace, few who opt for guided meditation, and others who stick to traditional meditation techniques.   

3. Do Pushups

Tim says, doing any kind of physical exercise first thing in the morning helps you to stay prime, and wake your complete body at a go. He prefers to do the pushups, but he recommends any kind of exercise – sit-ups, lunges, and squats. Doing so quiets ones’ mental chatter and effects the mood dramatically.  

2.  Hydrate yourself

You need to water yourself and take out the dryness of the entire last night. He recommends titanium tea which is one teaspoon of turmeric, some ginger shaving and a teaspoon each of black tea and dragon tea. He recommends it for excellent cognition and weight loss. He personally prefers it with a glass of cold water, but even warm water would do the same trick.   

1. Write a Journal

The most important trick in his list is to write a journal for whatever is going in your head. You can plan your day or prioritize things or just express gratitude for the various labels in your life. When Tim writes his journal, he broadly considers four categories; opportunity for the day, some small goals, yesterday’s achievements and relationships.  

Are you jealous of other’s success?

How do you feel when your best friend bags a promotion, or for that matter, if he gets into a happy relationship? Don’t you often brush off these type of news with a shallow statement – perhaps saying – ‘it’s never going to last’.

We all acknowledge that jealousy at its core is a form of protective shield. It exists to give us a defense mechanism against all types of the successes of other people – that might, in various cases, demoralize us. We often mourn to our peer’s victory, often refuse them with a superficial tag, protecting our ego, screaming;’ I am a much better person than everyone else’. We don’t necessarily put that out loud – but most of us religiously believe in that statement.  We believe that our adversity is this temporary phase which will vanish as soon we want them to vanish. We all with our inner beings agree – that we’re and everything about us – is in control.

According to one study – it’s hard not to hate people around us – especially people that we grew up with; our friends, siblings, co-workers, spouse – merely to be just okay with this socially ranking based society. Certainly, this comparison trap swallows us – changes our perception and judgments. While jealousy is a natural response to so many adversities of life – it’s not necessarily beneficial and healthy.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

Don’t mix exteriors to interiors

In this social networking world, it’s easier than ever before to fall for complaints. In our terrible lives, we often complain about how other’s success looks completely unachievable. We always try to believe we’re fixed beings and there are differences that we often get confused about – but the evident truth is we’re a constantly changing species and we evolve every day with our every new experience.

We often ignore people’s journey to their success and regard it as pure dumb luck, effortless or unearned. We often fall prey to over-simplification and reactive thinking, for a simple reason because it’s easier to pass comments than to ask tougher questions to ourselves; How does their success relate to my own values?, or What do I admire about their story?, or What have they done to get that? When we introspect and try to answer these questions – we reflect, and immediately come out of the comparing trap and turn inwards to face our own desires and fears.

It’s not a secret that envy and admiration are the reactions to what we value the most. If we somehow align ourselves with what we value – we’re much inclined to a richly satisfying life. We should use other’s success as a mirror to our life – and that’s a critical key to most of our life’s hardships.

How to minimize your jealousy?

Avoid comparisons

Acknowledge that everyone around you is on a different track of life and all of them have their own set of weaknesses and strengths. We should also accept that these things that limit us don’t completely define us. 

Accept

We should all admit jealousy as our natural reaction to other’s success. We should be completely honest and put aside our bruised ego whenever we face things we wish we could do. And most importantly, we should accept ourselves completely to recognize our true potential and uniqueness we are endowed with.

Reframe Jealousy into Inspiration

The same emotion that fuels jealousy can be used for motivations and inspirations to accomplish something for you. Instead of downplaying other successes, you should ask yourself if you aren’t capable of what someone else has done already. You should think, more usual than often – If they can do – I can do it too.

Compliment

Make it a habit of complimenting people on their achievements. Celebrate all the success stories and rather to resent on what did not work for you – celebrate the possibility of it. It’s a lot lesser stressful and at the same time – healthier.

Reflect on your jealousy pattern

Learn how to figure out a pattern of the areas around which you find your jealousy, and those would be the valuable signs of your life to show where in life you need to put more focus in. 

Do you think your jealousy is holding you back from tapping your full potential? Comment below to let us know about your concerns and we’d help you to handle it progressively.

Is your Job fulfilling and meaningful?

The idea that the work should be fulfilling rather than its obvious nature of necessity for survival is quite a new concept. The first requirement of any job is to pay -- and then the secondary requirements, as important as money but less recognized – like it should have a meaning, should help other people, should make a change in the society. But how many people can actually raise and say that they have these attributes?

If we dwell ourselves into the dictionaries of past – say pre-1900, the word ‘fulfillment’ doesn’t even appear. In this modern world, we don’t just expect money from our labor but, we also— to our lesser or greater extent expect meaning and satisfaction. It’s evidently too much to ask and gives us a clear reason why there are so many people having a career crisis.

 What does it mean to have a fulfilling or meaningful job?

Seemingly, to feel a job is fulfilling and meaningful, a job should have following attributes in it;

1.    It should tap the most talented part of us.

2.    It should help other people.

3.    It impacts the society and makes a difference.

4.   It should make a great contribution towards fulfilling the organizational goal

Often on the Sunday night after the sun is set – we think about where our job is taking us – if it’s giving us any value and meaning at all. And it’s surprising to acknowledge that you’re not alone – almost all of us have that anxiety.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

It’s perfectly normal to be confused about your career choice

Before the industrial revolution – there were about 200 trades out there, which over time have stretched to half of a million. The result, we get so anxious to make a right choice – we don’t make any choice at all.

Knowing yourself helps

For knowing what to do with your life is a complicated calling and almost all of us are never confident even if we think we know what it is. It’s not to say that we don’t have a taste rather it’s the lack of clarity.

Thinking a lot clears the dust

If you think making a decision to buy a new house takes months of research – then picking a right career is indeed a result of a long-term thinking. We shouldn’t feel guilty about taking time – but seeing the long term result – to spend a life doing something worth and provide it time with generosity.

Try something new

I wouldn’t recommend you to sit on a bed and contemplate your inner-self to find the right choice. Rather the recommended process is to go out and collide with the society and find out a series of things that doesn’t match with you. Only through that - a continuous friction, you’ll be able to find a right choice.

Be confident

Our immediate world is surrounded by the self-help books that help us understand the importance of confidence. There are too many pieces of advice which after a sincere moment looks so mundane. But, the truth is – confident does make a difference in the real capitalist society and there are always opportunities to grab if you’re confident enough to ask for them.

Why is it so hard to find a fulfilling and meaningful job?

We all feel that our work is a big scam that does give us money but at the same time, takes all our precious time. While there are many factors we can blame that doesn’t let us reach our ultimate goals – there are three factors that stand out.

1.    No one tells us our authentic working identity

Through our universities and society – we’re prepared for any job rather than a particular type, the one that suits your talent and interests. We’re often our best at work when we deeply believe in the work that we do.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

2.    Working for something that actually makes a difference

In today’s modern world – it’s very easy to pack a product in a shiny wrap that at the end of the day adds no value to a customer's life. You might already be working for such a brand for money – but at the end – it’s really hard to derive any meaning out of these jobs.

3.    Tangible results

You might be working on something huge and it might feel like – if things go the way they’re going – it might change the world entirely by 2025. Looking at the timeline – it might get stressful, full of hopelessness accompanied with doubts and this happens essentially because there are no real immediate results, nothing tangible and that can sadly take out the core meaning out of your whole picture.

We live in a society where working in a bigger organization is appreciated, but often, it loses meaning because of the above reasons.  We often move out to work in smaller organizations with much real by-product and that often is enough to give us meaning.

What can you do to make job fulfilling and meaningful?

Fulfillment is felt when you establish the love for what you do, and you establish that love when you keep yourself distraction, stress and most importantly monotony free. Simply put, to actually feel that connection and bring love for your work, you ought to try something new every day.  Try to learn something new, see beyond the projects you’ve been doing since long, and try to find out something new; maybe new ideas that can make an organization grow. Try something that taps your innermost talent, and if you cannot really add that in your job, try to do that in your spare time; may be at office itself or at home, but do something what you love; because this actually brings contentment and increase your productive thinking capacity which can help you add more value to your organization with your work.

Lessons learned in 2016 shall help you in 2017

We all know how crucial part learning is for every human being. It is quite strange that we often think that we perform same tasks every day; we wake up in the morning, go to office, college or school depending upon what age group we are in) spend entire day as usual but still when we look back we notice how drastically our life has changed. Not only our life, but we too constantly change our thoughts, our perspectives, our behavior and so on. So what is that which bring that change in our lives and in our personalities? It is the experiences we get in life! Every experience; good or bad, brings an opportunity for us to learn something new and grow. Ignoring the lessons of those experiences or denying to them is like brushing off the pearls of wisdom that are lying all around us. Every failure or success, no matter how big or small; gives us a lesson, whether in personal or at professional front. The people who are able to embrace those failures, take learnings and use those lessons in the next chapters of life ultimately catapult themselves to success and happiness.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

Therefore, knowing how to examine your mistakes and wins to get better learnings is the most powerful source to attain growth in each sphere of life; whether personal, professional, or social. This process which is known as debriefing is crucial to keep growing and keep walking on the path which ultimately leads you to your divine destination.

We always make resolutions for the New Year; where these resolutions come from in our mind? From our experiences, we had in the past. For instance; because you threw tantrums and showed anger to your subordinates at workplace; due to which you faced problems and got learning that you should control your anger; so now you may make a resolution that you will change your temperament. Or because you trust so easily, many people took advantage and hurt your feeling, so you will make a resolution that you will work on your emotions and will become smart enough to know whom should you trust and whom not. Therefore, the learning we get in our past make us bring positive changes in our future and this is how we grow and become wiser in life.

Now, once you are familiar with the concept, I would suggest you to evaluate your year 2016 and take a look back to identify what you learned from both good and bad experiences you had in all fronts of life and what are the lessons you need to take that will enable you to take wiser decisions and actions in 2017.

Factors to identify how your relationships can benefit through this debrief process: Amount of time you spend with your family, friends or loved ones, how well you communicated your thoughts to others, how well you kept your commitments and promises, how honest and trustworthy you have been throughout the year, how do you find the surroundings or social circle you have, how trustworthy people are around you, how well you should mingle up with others and where do you need to give a shut up call.

Factors to identify how your professional life can benefit through this debrief process: How productive you were throughout the year, how profitable you were for the business, how did you present yourself to others; do you need any improvisation? How well you socialized with others, how well ou managed your work or the team under you, in what areas you need to bring changes

Your wealth: How you managed your financial matters, how much did you save, Is there anything in your mind through which you can gain more health and pursue you passion? Then go for it!

Choose one area of your life and begin evaluating;

1. This about a specific event or an event you still could not forget; whichever comes to your mind.
2. What do you feel while recalling that specific event? Sometimes when things go horribly wrong and the little voice in your mind tries to convince you that the entire event was just a nightmare, and you try hard to forget it. Think about it once again, there was some learning behind that incident, a lesson for you. Did you identify a new strength in you? Did someone unexpectedly extend you support? What learnings did you receive from that incident?

Remember, you can't learn less. Experiments, trials or goof ups are our inherent learning mechanism for development. Setting aside some time to go through and critically analyse your experiments and the outcomes you faced help you make a foundation to a better and brighter year ahead. Wish a very Happy New Year!

Take Charge of your life with AK Mishra's Art of Success

Every individual is an extraordinary creation of the universe, we must discover our uniqueness by paying attention to our deep inherent self. AK Mishra's Art of Success training sessions encourage participants to spend quality time in solitude in order to understand our inner voice and recognize our deep inherent potential to achieve extraordinary success in all spheres of life.

Letting go of that ego before it gets hold on you

Ego is a state of mind which is nothing more than a self-proclaimed or self-constructed pseudo identity. It's a mindset which prevents a human's inner conscious to accept things in their natural entity. It can also be termed as self-concept or “Ahankara” as enshrined in the Indian Vedas of Ancient times which sometimes also disables the receptiveness of thoughts and ideas from the other sources.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

In terms of human relationship, ego debars an individual to accept and pay regard to others individuality.  Relationships are a two-way process and in most of the cases, ego acts as a dead end on the road to a healthy relationship. If communication can act as a catalyst in a relationship, ego works all together in a different way. It acts as a slow poison and has venomous effects on the nerves of any relation.

Ego and ethics are also very closely related. The best example can be cited from our heritage Indian Epic of ‘The Ramayana'. In my personal opinion, if there would have been no Ego, there would not have been ‘The Ramayana’ or ‘The Mahabharata’.

When The Ravana, the most dedicated disciple of Lord Shiva gained control over his ego he was blessed with divine powers which were beyond the reach of a normal human being. But the same Ravana, when was taken over by his own ego; his defeat at the hands of Lord Rama entered the pages of Mythological History which will be enshrined in the minds of generations to come till infinity.

However, even Ravana showed some signs of ‘controlled ego’ as he had a very strong conviction of not forcing himself onto Sita until her own will. Such an exceptional control of seduction, lust and ego probably go missing nowadays when women; can rightly be termed as the largest minority of our country are subject to indecent and unexpected exploitation in a country like India where idols of women are worshiped as Goddess.

Therefore, at some instances, inheriting ego is also recommended. But where an individual has to get mild with his ego or where a human being has to be stringent on his/her stand subject to self-respect, understanding the correct timing of such switching is an art in itself.

There also exists a very fine distinguishing line between ego and self-esteem or self-realization and its interpretation also depends on the perspective of the viewer. For example, Medieval Indian History is observed as a dark age of bloodshed and ignorance which pushed India towards slavery at the dawn of the modern era according to the viewpoint and perspective of the British Historians.

However, the same age was glorified by the Indian Historians which witnessed a sea of Hindus ruled by able Muslim Rulers like Akbar. This era gave the human civilization hoards of world heritage sites like the Qutub Minar of New Delhi to Taj Mahal of Agra.

As it is rightly said by the Prime Minister of India Shri. Narendra Modi, “Mind is never a problem…Mindset it”, it’s the mindset behind these two opposite interpretation and perspective of viewing the same patch on the timeline. One engulfed with egoistic tendency of the Britons and the other enlightening thoughts of self-realization and actualization by the Indians.

With reference to the same context mentioned above, the Britons have started lagging behind on the world forum as well on many fronts just because of a conservative society and an egoistic tendency of being racially superior.  If we compare it to its former colony, the United States of America, the US, because of their liberal and progressive society have showcased tremendous progress within 300 years of their independence just because they weeded off the shrubs of conservatism and egoism way before the world could even realize it. It clearly shows that anything which embraces change at the earliest is far away from the evil of ego.

The same seesaw of Ego and Self Esteem is omnipresent when we talk about generation gap. Anyone tumbling off the balance is witnessed by collapse of the whole fabric of the relationship model.     

Like Happiness and sorrows, Love and hatred, Anger and revenge; even Ego is a part of complex human mindset which is clearly visible everyday around us in conflicts between individuals, for example, in the case of institution of marriage and divorce which we study in sociology to wars between Nations which forms the basis for contemporary International Relations and alignment, For example, Iran-Iraq war.

As the ups and downs of a tide self-realization and ego are indispensable. Therefore it is not at all possible for us to completely eliminate this human tendency from our society but it is always advisable “Letting Go of That Ego Before It Gets Hold of You"

Ways to raise your self-esteem and its significance in your life

High self-esteem is extremely important in every aspect of our life, be it personal, professional or social. Yet, many of us struggle to find it. But here are a few simple ways which can certainly help you develop good self-esteem and experience a profound shift in your life.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

Accept the fact that you are unique and special    

Every Human being is born unique with some extraordinary traits; you just need to recognize those special gifts you are blessed with. And to recognize those gifts, you will have to accept the fact that you are unique and cannot be compared with anyone else in the world because there is no one else in the world who is quite like you. Not only our DNA and fingerprints are different from everyone else, but our mind, our looks, our way of thinking and our approach towards life is unique too. Wherever we cast our glance we will find diversity which attests to the fact that our belief, thinking process and perception towards life will also differ. So if nature has made you so unique and special, shouldn’t you accept this uniqueness and embrace it as much as you can? Love yourself, because you are unique. When you’ll respect yourself and show the world your true self, the world will love you. And if someone doesn’t, let it be; everyone has their own opinions and choices.

Cut off all detrimental thoughts and beliefs    

Many people with low self-esteem are not expressive. In other words, they find their beliefs, opinions, and thoughts insignificant and try to conceal or suppress them. They fail to realize that their one thought and opinion can bring about profound changes in a situation or sometimes even in someone’s life. So it is wise to do away with toxic thoughts and beliefs and air your views, voice, and opinions which might not provide the solution all the time but sometimes can create a difference in somebody’s life or circumstances. The best way to enhance your self-esteem is to consider yourself equally significant as others and love yourself for the way you are.

Put your behavior in perspective

Generally, people with low self-esteem beat themselves up when they make an error of judgment or a mistake. They feel that they are good for nothing because they failed, lost a job or because they have been dumped in a relationship. But in fact, these events are a major part our lives which occur to bring out our hidden and true personality, to teach us lessons and to help us grow in life. How we perceive those failures and how we react to them is what shows our true characteristics. Hence, if you are likely to encounter such agonies in life, always remind yourself that it’s just a tiny particle of the multiple components and layers that make up the real you.

Positive outlook towards life and confidence in you and your abilities will help you sail through all the problems of life and you will learn how to ginger up and live your every day with unfathomable vigor and vitality.