Category: Neuro Priming

Why do I need a morning ritual?

Why do I need a morning ritual? It’s likely you’ve heard from others that everyone needs a morning ritual and that is true, but why?

Why do I need a morning ritual?

Morning rituals are important because they help get your day off on the right track. They prepare your body and mind for having a happy, productive day. They ensure that your mindset is right. They give you a sense of purpose and ensure that you have a plan for your day.

This routine doesn’t have to be complicated or take hours of your day. You can accomplish a lot in just an hour and some days, even less can be beneficial.

Begin with Gratitude

Your morning rituals should begin the moment you wake. Immediately be grateful for the fact that you woke up this morning and you have another day of life. Not everyone was so lucky.

Express your gratitude, as you crawl out of bed, by repeating to yourself, Thank You! Thank You! Thank You?

Next proceed to list as many things as you can that you are or could be thankful for. Say to yourself “I am so happy and grateful that I …. ”

Ask Empowering Questions

You might also continue on by asking a series of empowering questions. Here is a list of empowering questions that Tony Robbins asks each morning:

  1. What am I most happy about in my life now?
  2.  What am I most excited about in my life now?
  3.  What am I most proud about in my life now?
  4.  What am I most grateful about in my life now?
  5.  Who do I love? Who loves me?
Other Empowering Rituals

Your morning routine can incorporate any number of additional empowering rituals.

Once you are up and moving, you might try these.

  • Exercise
  • Eating a healthy breakfast
  • Reading
  • Meditation
  • Reviewing your top goals
  • Visualizing your day
  • Priming your brain with affirmations
Summary

Each of these small steps mentioned above will help get your day off to a good start.

Doing them will ensure that you are living by your highest values and taking care of the most important priorities first. Once off to this good start, your momentum is likely to keep you on a positive track.

What is one ritual that are willing to commit to starting tomorrow morning?  Enter a comment below and let us know.

Next Steps

If you enjoyed this post, make sure that you check out some of our other posts on this website. Here are some posts that may be of interest.

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The Importance of Savoring Your Achievements

The daily ritual I want to discuss today is the importance of savoring your achievements. This is critical to your current satisfaction and to being able to seek greater goals in the future.

The importance of savoring your achievements

Each time you accomplish something, even the smallest task, your brain secrets a little dopamine (a pleasure neurotransmitter) into your consciousness.

The release of dopamine causes you to feel more motivated and if you deliberately take a moment to appreciate each tiny goal you’ve achieved throughout the day, you’ll train your brain to seek even greater goals and rewards.

Sadly, we don’t spend much time savoring the good things that happen in our lives. The brain doesn’t give as much weight to happiness and pleasure. We have placed the greatest value on memories that would protect us from danger. As a result, we end up with a brain-full of bad memories!

What to do?

Throughout the day – ideally, once every hour – write down every tiny goal you accomplish. Regularly look at your list and “savor” each of your accomplishments.

These “pleasure” rewards stimulate the motivation center (the nucleus accumbens) in your brain and you’ll immediately feel more energy and less stress as you begin your next hour of work!

Doing this also gets rid of negativity that you are unconsciously holding in your memories. So the more you are struggling, the more it is essential to savor the present moment.

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Four Quick Tips from John Assaraf

Four Quick Tips from John Assaraf

Want more success in life? Here are four quick tips from John Assaraf, CEO of Neurogym, that you can put into action today.

Here are tips on:  1) reducing stress, 2) vision boards, 3) utilizing mental contrasting, and 4) writing down your goals.

Three Minute “Innercise” to Reduce Stress

Stress is bad for you. When you feel it starting to weigh on you, take three minutes and “innercise.” Allow the stress to evaporate. Innercise is John’s term for mindfulness. It is to your brain as exercise is to your body.

3-Minute Innercise to Reduce Stress

Some stress, when it comes to performance, may be good for you . . . but too much will drain your energy and overwhelm your willpower. This simple 3-minute Innercise can dramatically reduce stress levels so you can relax and feel more focused and productive.

Posted by John Assaraf on Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Create a Vision Board

Create a vision board and look at it frequently throughout the day.

Vision boards contain pictures of your goals: what you want to become or want to have in your life. When you see these images, they turn on the dopamine receptors in the brain.

When you take those visions and see yourself doing the things that you need to do to achieve your goals, you activate the release of dopamine which causes you to feel  motivated and seek even greater goals and rewards.

Do Vision Boards Really Work?

Do vision boards really work? It’s a question I get asked all the time… and my answer is YES! Here’s why: It works because when you see images of the things you want to achieve, or do, or become, you're actually activating the dopamine receptors in the brain, the feel-good chemicals in the brain. And when you take those visions and you see yourself behaving in ways that are required to achieve that vision, you're actually activating the left prefrontal cortex, which is the CEO, genius part of your brain.Do you currently have a vision board?

Posted by John Assaraf on Monday, July 2, 2018

Utilize Mental Contrasting

Mental contrasting is a technique used by astronauts, navy seals, CEO’s and others to motivate themselves to take action towards their goals

To do mental contrasting, take a goal you want to achieve. Write down what that goal looks like when you achieve it and what it feels like.

Next, close your eyes and see yourself as you are today and see yourself as you want to be, achieving that goal.

When you create this mental contrast, you will motivate yourself to start taking action automatically.

Why Navy Seals and CEO's Love Mental Contrasting

Astronauts, Navy Seals, and successful CEOs all use mental contrasting. Why? Because it helps you achieve more of your goals!Here's how to put it into practice…-Pick a goal you want to achieve-Write down and think about how it will feel once you’ve achieved your goal. Really hone in on the positive aspects and emotions.-Now, write down and think about several obstacles that may make achieving this goal difficult.-Finally, close your eyes and visualize where you are today and see yourself overcoming those obstacles and actually achieving your goal. Do this frequently and you’ll start training your brain to automatically start taking action towards your goals!Let me know in the comments one goal you’ve been wanting to achieve…

Posted by John Assaraf on Monday, June 25, 2018

Write Down Your Goals

Write down your goals and review them daily.

Recent research indicates that writing down or typing our goals, makes us up to 42% more likely to achieve them.

Why? This happens because the process of writing them down, forces us to get clear about what we want. It also gives our brain a clear direction that this is something that is important to me. This is what I want to achieve. We need to figure out how to do this.

So don’t leave that goal in your head. Write it down on paper and achieve it.

Have Goals? Then Do This Now!

Here's this week's goal setting tip. In this video, I share one exercise that recent studies show will help increase your chances of achieving your goals by up to 42%. Commit yourself to doing this exercise this week and then let me know how the process made you feel.

Posted by John Assaraf on Monday, June 11, 2018

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Are You Visualizing Correctly?

Many of us involved in personal development visualize our goals daily.  Our gurus have told us to do that for years and we have made it an important daily ritual.  But for many of us, visualization does not work or at least not like we have been lead to believe it should.

It turns out that visualizing your goal is only the first step.  Much more is needed. The newest research, spearheaded by the psychologist Gabrielle Oettingen, shows that you must do 4 types of visualization: Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan.

She calls this WOOP and you need to do each visualization in the following order:

  1.  WISH:  First visualize your goal in great detail. This is essential.
  2.  OUTCOME:  Next, visualize in great detail all of the benefits you’d get if you achieve the goal. If you can’t do this, you may have picked the wrong goal.
  3.  OBSTACLE:  Visualize and write down all of the obstacles that are preventing you from attaining that goal. This is the most essential step that many people ignore or avoid. If you can’t clearly see all of the obstacles and problems involved in achieving a new and bigger desire, you’ll never find a solution.
  4. PLAN:  Plan a strategy that will move you toward your goal. If you can’t come up with one, ask for help, learn new skills, or change your wish. Once you have this plan, visualize yourself using it to overcome the obstacles you laid out in step three.

To appreciate the power of this simple technique, do it 2-3 times a day with small desires. Remember to visualize the obstacles and your plan for overcoming these obstacles. This is critical.

Also, don’t forget to take action and persevere. Your dreams won’t magically materialize! Visualization is necessary but not sufficient to achieving your goals.

Create Triggers To Keep You On Track

In his excellent book, High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way, Brendon Burchard writes that high performers tend to prime the emotions they want to experience. They think about how they want to feel, and ask themselves questions or create triggers that generate those feelings.

Today I am going to focus on triggers. A trigger, in psychology, is any stimulus that will precipitate feelings (memories) in an individual. It could be a sound, smell, taste, sight or touch.

The first trigger Brendon mentions, he calls a “notification trigger.” Brendon puts the phrase BRING THE JOY into his phone as an alarm label. He sets the alarm for three different times throughout the day.  He might be in a meeting, on a call, or writing an e-mail, and all of a sudden his phone will vibrate as the alarm goes off and displays those words. Of course you can select different words and you might set the alarm to go off more than three times a day. It’s up to you. One of my favorites is “I now accept and love myself every day in every way.”

Another trigger Brendon describes is a “door frame trigger.” Every time he walks through a doorway, he says to himself, “I will find the good in this room. I’m entering this space a happy man ready to serve.” This practice helps him get present, look for the good in others, and prepare himself to help others. What positive phrase or sentence could you say to yourself every time you walk through a doorway?

A third trigger Brendon discusses is a “stress trigger.” Whenever things feel like they were getting out of hand, Brendon will stand up, take ten deep breaths, and ask, “What’s the positive thing I can focus on and the next right action of integrity I should take now?”

In High Performance Habits, Brendon offers a number of other triggers that you might consider. Click here to order a copy of this great book.

What triggers can you think of that will help you stay on track and perform at your best?  Share YOUR IDEAS with OUR readers.

 

 

 

Your Morning Ritual: Setting Your Mindset For The Day (Updated)

It’s important that you get your day off on the right track and that is where  your morning ritual comes in. It prepares your body and mind to have a happy productive day.

This morning routine doesn’t have to be complicated or take a lot of time.

In fact, you can accomplish a lot in less than an hour and some days, even a few minutes can be beneficial.

Gratitude as part of your morning ritual

Your morning ritual should begin the moment you wake and gratitude is a great start. List as many things as you can for which you are grateful

  • Immediately be grateful for the fact that you woke up this morning and have another day of life. Not everyone was so lucky.
  • Do you have family and friends? There are many lonely people in this world.
  • Are you enjoying a warm, nutritious breakfast? Again not everyone is so lucky.
  • Do you have a job and an income to support your family?And that is just a  start. Most of us could go on for hours listing all the blessings we have in our lives.
Empowering Questions

Next, ask yourself a series of empowering questions.

Here is a list of questions that Tony Robbins asks himself each morning:

  1. What am I most happy about in my life now?
  2.  What am I most excited about in my life now?
  3.  What am I most proud about in my life now?
  4.  What am I most grateful about in my life now?
  5.  Who do I love? Who loves me?
Other Morning Rituals

Once up, there are any number of additional empowering rituals that you might incorporate into your morning routine.

For example, as you crawl out of bed, repeat to yourself, “Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!”

Other morning rituals to try include.

  • Exercising
  • Eating a healthy breakfast
  • Reading
  • Meditating
  • Reviewing your top goals
  • Visualizing your day
  • Priming your brain with affirmations
Conclusion

Each of the rituals listed above will help get your day off to a good start.  Doing them will ensure that you are living by your highest values and are taking care of the most important things first.

Once off to this good start, your momentum will keep you on a positive track.

What is one ritual that are willing to commit to starting tomorrow morning?  Enter a comment below and let us know.

Gratitude Rituals

Perhaps the most important morning ritual you can incorporate into your life is Gratitude.

People who practice gratitude, on a daily basis, are healthier, happier, more effective, and more resilient. They report better physical and psychological health, they engage in more healthy activities, and they are more willing to seek help for health concerns than individuals who do not consciously practice gratitude.

Additionally, if you believe in the Law of Attraction, the more you are grateful for what you have, the more you will have in your life to feel grateful for.

The moment you wake, immediately feel grateful for the fact that you woke this morning and have another day of life. Not everyone was so fortunate. Then, silently say “Thank you” at least ten times to place yourself in an even more grateful state of mind.

Next, write down everything that you can think of to be thankful for.  This might include things like family members, friends, your job, good health, opportunities, a car in good condition, a roof over your head, food to eat, clothes … the list is endless.

Begin each sentence with “I am so happy & grateful that I ….” or something similar. As you do this, truly feel grateful.

You should shoot for no fewer than ten things that you feel grateful for and with time you will be able to fill pages. The more you write, the more you’ll feel any negativity melt away.

Try it today and let me know your results.