Category: Rituals Throughout the Day

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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The Importance of Our Self-Talk

Much of what we feel, understand and accomplish every single day happens as a result of our self-talk. Our ability to work, solve problems and respond to our environment is controlled by this self-talk and the questions we ask ourselves consciously and unconsciously. It is critically important that we understand the importance of our self-talk.

Importance of Self-Talk

The basic purpose of our brain is to help us make decisions which keep us alive and self-talk plays a major role in this.

When you ask yourself a question, your brain searches until it finds answers that are acceptable to your conscious mind. What is acceptable is determined by what you have been conditioned to through language patterns, experiences and repetition over time. You can ask yourself any question and your brain will automatically find an answer.

How Questions Work

Questions, according to Tony Robbins in his quintessential book, Awaken The Giant Within, accomplish three things:

  1. They immediately change what we’re focusing on and therefore how we feel.
  2. Questions change what we delete. Often, we feel bad because we delete all the reasons we could be feeling good.
  3. They also change the resources available to us.
Questions can be Empowering or Dis-empowering

The questions we ask ourselves can either be empowering or disempowering. You can ask disempowering questions that make you think about things that make you feel bad and block you from taking action. Or you can ask empowering questions that make you feel good and motivate you towards achieving your goals.

For example, what is more empowering?  Asking what will happen if I fail or what will happen when I succeed?  Pretty obvious isn’t it.

Results of asking better questions?

As you get used to asking yourself better questions, doing so will become  more and more automatic. You will begin to ask yourself better questions, even without knowing it.

When you learn you to ask yourself better questions,  gradually over time, you will find that you are making better decisions. Additionally, you will feel more positive, motivated, and confident.

Empowering Questions that Tony Robbins Asks Each Morning

Some of this self-talk  can be routinized and given structure. 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?
Problem-Solving Questions

Here are some additional  questions that Tony Robbins recommends for dealing with problems that arise throughout the day.

  1. What is great about this problem?
  2. What is not perfect yet?
  3. What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it?
  4. What am I willing to do no longer do in order to make it the way I want it?
  5. How can I enjoy the process while I do what is necessary to make it the way I want it?

What new empowering questions are you going to ask yourself?  Let us know in the comments below.

Ritual for Staying on Track

Ever wish you had a daily ritual to help you stay on track?

Here’s a simple ritual you can use. Incorporate this “trick” into your day and you will find that you are more often on track for achieving your goals, both personal and business.

Here’s the trick. Throughout the day, take frequent short breaks (perhaps once every hour). During each break ask yourself these 3 simple questions.

  1.  Am I doing the highest income or highest impact activity that I need to be doing right now to move me towards my top goals?
  2.  What level is my energy at and what can I do to increase it right now?
  3.  Are my thoughts and emotions lined up for maximum performance right now?

Whatever the answer, make the necessary adjustments. Over time, you’ll find that you will train yourself to maintain a high performance attitude and behavioral pattern throughout the day. This will result in maximum returns on your energy!

Have You Yawned Enough Today?

Probably not. But you should.  Mindful yawning is a ritual that everyone should incorporate into their day as it is the fastest way to reduce mental stress caused by prolonged concentration and focus.

Olympic athletes yawn before they race, musicians and speakers yawn before they go on stage, snipers are trained to yawn before they pull the trigger.

What are other reasons for yawning? Yawning causes the release of dopamine, a hormone that keeps work-related motivation high. It clears away the fogginess of sleep and increases cerebral blood flow which enhances mental efficiency and quickly brings you into a heightened state of cognitive awareness. It has a similar effect on a person as having a cup of coffee, and it regulates the time clocks in your brain, helping you to sleep better at night!

Throughout your day, yawn as many times as possible. You should do it at least once an hour.

Yawn when you wake up, when you’re confronting a difficult problem at work, and whenever you feel anger, anxiety, or stress. Yawn before giving an important talk, yawn before you take a test, and yawn whenever you feel bored. But do it mindfully, paying close attention to how it affects your mood and awareness.

Conscious yawning is easy to do once you get past the idea that it is rude. All you need to do to trigger a deep yawn is to fake it four or five times. Try it now.

For more on how to stay focused and productive during the workday, see the following post.

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.

 

 

 

Rituals To Keep You Focused and Productive

Below are four rituals you can easily add to your daily routine that will help you stay focused and productive throughout your work day.

Start by downloading a mindfulness bell or setting alerts in your phone to go off every hour.

  1. When it goes off get up and move. Not only will your productivity improve, but it’s a proven fact that you will live longer than if you remain seated for hours.
  2. Next stretch very, very slowly to help release any remaining tension.
  3. Then take six mindful breathes. This will reboot your brain.
  4. Finally, before getting back to work, ask yourself  “What is the most important thing I could be doing during the next hour?” Then do it.

For extra credit:  Repeat affirmations to yourself. Doing so, while waiting at a stop light or during other delays will help keep your mindset positive and focused on your goals.

Try a few of these suggestions and let me know how it worked out for you.  Please comment below.  Till next time.

A Simple Way to Reduce Stress

Feeling anxious? Overly stressed at work?  Add this routine to your day and your stress level will drop

Throughout the day, stroke your palms and arms with your fingertips. Massage your scalp. Run your hands gently or firmly over your belly or chest.

These pleasurable sensations release dopamine, and the dopamine turns off the worry centers in your brain.

Self-nurturing (something every mammal and bird will do almost every hour) is one of the most overlooked strategies for maintaining a healthy brain!

Try it today.

Another Ritual To Keep You Focused & Productive Between 9 and 5

Last month, I presented four rituals to help you stay focused and productive throughout the work day.

Here is another ritual to try, from noted neuroscience expert, Mark Robert Waldman, author of NeuroWisdom.

According to Mark, yawning and super slow stretching are the best ways to improve work performance. He recommends taking at least one mindful yawn and one slow stretch every hour.

Yawning is the fastest way to “relax” your brain, and a single slow stretch (example: take 60 seconds to gently roll your head in a circle…you’ll feel more aches than you ever notice before) allows your brain to send a relaxation signal to your muscles.

If you haven’t already done so, download a mindfulness bell on your computer (or cell phone). Set the bell to ring at least once each hour. Take one mindful yawn and sixty seconds of slow stretching.

If you do this throughout the day, your stress levels will drop and work productivity will increase.

For extra credit: Set the bell to go off three times an hour. The first two times just stop to yawn and slowly stretch for 10 seconds.  At the top of the hour, do something pleasurable for 60 seconds as you contemplate the most important value you want to apply to work right now.

For additional success rituals to implement between 9 and 5 each day, check out the following:

Four Rituals to Keep You Focused & Productive Between 9 and 5

What rituals do you have to recharge and reduce the stress in your life?

Are you constantly under stress and in a state of overwhelm? Do you have any daily rituals to help you alleviate this stress?

Many of us live our lives in a constant state of stress, particularly those of us who run our own businesses.  These days, we all have so  many demands on our time and these never seem to end.  There is always something going on in the back of our mind.  We are constantly in a state of go-go-go.

That puts our brain into an excited state where its hyper vigilant. Remaining in this state ends up exhausting us.

Recharge rituals are ways of getting this stress out of our nervous system and brain. Taking short breaks throughout the day,  even as little as 30 seconds, will enable you to reset your stress level at a lower level.

Among recharge rituals you may want to consider are:

  • Meditation
  • Prayer
  • Massage (or self massage)
  • Getting out in nature
  • Visualization
  • Journaling
  • Reading
  • Spending some time on hobbies that we care about
  • Taking a nap, or
  • Yawning & Stretching

Pick two or three of these recharge activities and incorporate them into your day.  Do these at least two or three times a day.

Do this daily and not only will you experience less stress and overwhelm, at day’s end you will feel good, still have energy, and sleep better.  A pretty good return on such a minuscule investment.

 

Four Rituals to Keep You Focused & Productive Between 9 and 5

It’s also important to have rituals for your workday.

Below are four rituals you can easily add to your daily routine that will help you stay focused and productive throughout your work day.

Start by downloading a mindfulness bell or setting alerts in your phone to go off every hour.

  1. When it goes off get up and move. Not only will your productivity improve, but it’s a proven fact that you will live longer than if you remain seated for hours.
  2. Next stretch very, very slowly to help release any remaining tension.
  3. Then take six mindful breathes. This will reboot your brain.
  4. Finally, before getting back to work, ask yourself  “What is the most important thing I could be doing during the next hour?” Then do it.

For extra credit:  Repeat affirmations to yourself. Doing so, while waiting at a stop light or during other delays will help keep your mindset positive and focused on your goals.

Try a few of these suggestions and let me know how it worked out for you.  Please comment below.  Till next time.