A must-do 5 minute morning practice

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The thoughts you have about yourself are the ones that impact you the most. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, it matters what YOU think. In today’s podcast I’m sharing with you the must-do 5 minute morning practice that helps shape your thoughts so that you start your day thinking and feeling successful and confident. If you don’t have a morning routine, no problem, this is the only practice you need to do.

Topics in this episode:

  • If your thoughts are like a car, which would you rather be? A Ferrari or an old truck?

  • What is missing from your morning routine?

  • Why our thoughts about ourself default to negative

  • 2 questions that shift your that can make you feel amazing and confident

  • Why your employer should pay you to do this 5 minute practice

Show Notes & References:

  • Supplemental episodes:

  • Schedule a free coaching call to learn how to end the negative self-talk and start feeling like the amazing working mom you are. Click here to schedule your call: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book

  • Don’t forget to leave a rating and review to help spread this resource to other working moms!

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Transcript

Intro

The thoughts you have about yourself are the ones that impact you the most. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. It matters what you think about yourself. In today's podcast, I'm sharing with you the most important five minute practice that I do every weekday morning that helps shape my thoughts so that I start my day feeling successful and confident. I will share all about it right here. You ready? Let's get to it.

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.

Good morning, Working Moms. I say good morning because it is, in fact, morning for me. As I am writing this podcast, you could probably hear it a little bit in my tired, groggy voice. And I am writing this podcast right after one of my morning routines. And this practice that I do every workday, it feels so life changing and transformational to me and my clients. I just felt completely inclined to write an immediate podcast that I can then turn around and share with you. 

So let's talk about this routine. Now, really, all you have to do, of course, is just Google morning routines, and you're going to come up with a whole list of routine ideas and statistics that indicate the importance of a morning routine. Successful routines usually include things like eating breakfast and exercising and making your bed and planning for your day, maybe even meditation. Morning routines across the board are linked to increased productivity and feeling less stress. And while all of that is true and probably enough of a reason to have a morning routine, there is one practice that is often ignored or dropped off. If there isn't enough time to get through your whole routine, that is by far the most important and life changing one. I would rather you not exercise and not plan your day out than not do the one I'm going to talk to you about.

You want to know what it is?

Intentional thinking.

Specifically, intentionally thinking positive thoughts about yourself, your capabilities, and your workload. Let me tell you why this is so important. Your thoughts are the driver behind your feelings and your actions. Now, I have several podcasts that dive deeper into the connection between your thoughts, feelings, and actions. I'll link those in the show notes in case you want to go back and want to listen and understand thoughts and their connection to our actions better. But for the sake of this podcast, I want to use a metaphor. I want you to imagine your thoughts are like a car. Now, I'm not much of a car person. I don't know a ton about cars. I can't often look at a car and tell you the make or the model of the car at all. But what I can tell you is that there is a big difference between getting behind the wheel of a Ferrari or a Tesla. Then there is a used truck or a car that doesn't have power windows or locks, which was pretty much my first three vehicles. I want you to imagine you're sitting behind the wheel of a Ferrari. How do you feel when you sit in that car? When you drive that car around town, it's pretty badass, right? There's confidence. You feel strong. There's likely maybe even a little bit of arrogance. Like, holy smokes, look at me, I'm amazing. You feel so good when you're sitting behind the wheel of a car like a Ferrari. I personally have never sat behind the wheel of a Ferrari, but I can imagine what that entire experience feels like, where the controls are kind of tailored to you, where everything feels so accessible, like it was just meant for you to be there. The design of cars like this are so high quality that it's going to feel totally different than getting behind my Toyota Sienna van, that I have right now, or even my Honda clarity that we have right now. So I want you to imagine yourself sitting behind the wheel of a Ferrari. You have these amazing thoughts about yourself. Now imagine yourself sitting behind the wheel of a rusty, old truck. One that sort of sputters when it drives that bounces really hard because it doesn't have great suspension. The image that comes to mind for me is Tow Mater from the cars movie. How does it feel to sit behind the wheel of that one? A little embarrassing. You might feel a little timid, a little ashamed. Probably don't want a lot of people seeing you in that truck in the same way that you probably would like them to see you in that Ferrari. Both types of vehicles are going to get you to the destination. They both get you from point A to point B, but they feel completely different when you sit in it. You feel differently about yourself when you sit in it. Now imagine you taking your Ferrari energy and confidence into your workday. Feels pretty good, right? You feel confident. You feel ready to tackle the day, able to prioritize. You kind of have that little beat in your step as you walk. You care a lot less about how people are thinking about you, making sure that everyone is pleased because you feel so good about yourself. There's this kind of I know what I'm doing. I know that I'm good at what I'm doing and have a badass attitude. Now imagine you bringing that beat up truck energy into your workspace. Feeling uncertain about yourself, a little embarrassed, probably needing to really prove to people that you're better than that old beat up truck that you're driving right now. Can you feel the difference between those two? Your thoughts are the driver behind what you feel. And based on how you feel, you're going to show up differently at both work and home. And the good news is that you don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to feel amazing about yourself in that Ferrari. You don't need to buy a Ferrari car in order to feel amazing about yourself. You just simply need to set aside time every day to cultivate thoughts that make you feel amazing and confident and badass at any time, regardless of whether you are ever going to sit in a Ferrari or not. 

Use this practice at the beginning of your work day.

That is the significance of this daily practice. Every day you get to sit down and decide if you're going to work today in a Ferrari or in a Tow Mater. And with my clients, I encourage them to do this sort of intentional thinking practice. And I'm going to get more specific on what that actually looks like in a minute here. I encourage them to do it right at the beginning of their work day. This is 100% the most valuable thing that you could do to start your work day every single day. And your employer should be paying you for it. Because you show up differently to your tasks and your to-do’s and your team, and you strategically think differently and you problem solve differently. You lead differently when you have Ferrari thoughts and Ferrari energy instead of beat up truck thoughts and beat up truck energy.

So there should never be an excuse that there isn't enough time to do this practice, because you can do it at work. And you probably should do it at work right before you start your work day and before you turn on your computer or do anything. Now, you could be a mom that has Ferrari energy and thoughts about yourself when it comes to your work. But you have dump truck energy thoughts about yourself when it comes to your mom life. Now, if that's you and you have a lot of kind of negative judgmental thoughts about yourself as a mom, then this exercise is probably better to be done right before you're with your kids, maybe in the morning or between work and home, like before you enter your family time, right? So you're taking that energy with you into your family life. And that is why the timing is so important, because it creates energy. And I want you to capitalize upon that Ferrari energy as you start your work day or as you start that family time.

Fuel your day with good, positive thoughts about yourself.

Now, another reason why this practice is so important to do on a daily basis is because your brain easily forgets your amazingness. It forgets that you have Ferrari energy. Your brain is wired for survival. It's wired to show you all of your faults and why you're failing. Those negative thoughts about yourself, they're going to happen 100% throughout the day. That's how your brain is hardwired. It's the human existence. But what this practice does is it's going to make confident, amazing thoughts about yourself more accessible in your brain. Now, I like to think of your thoughts sort of like a filing room. Imagine a big filing cabinet in a massive room where a bunch of paper files are stored in vanilla folders, that sort of thing. And you have this little old woman in your brain, and what she has to do is go into that room and go pull the amazing thought file. If she has access to that file recently, she probably knows exactly where it is and can walk straight to the cabinet, open the door, and find the file. It comes easily, it doesn't take too much time, and those confident, Ferrari like thoughts become easy to access. But if the little old lady in your head has not looked up those files very recently, if you haven't been intentionally thinking amazing and wonderful and awesome things about yourself and your capabilities and your life, it's going to be hard to find those files. She's probably going to have to go over and open a whole bunch of drawers in different areas of the room, leaf through all of the paperwork, and it's going to feel very tedious and hard and it's going to take a while. The amazing Ferrari thoughts, they are there, they're somewhere in the room. It's not as if they don't exist. You just haven't accessed them in a while, or she hasn't accessed them in a while, and so they take more effort to find. So this daily practice of really thinking amazing, Ferrari like thoughts about yourself every single day is going to fuel your day with good, positive thoughts about yourself. So you feel amazing going into your workday. And whenever you fall out of that energy, which is inevitable, you will be able to get right back into it quickly because you have access to those amazing thoughts about yourself on a regular basis.

Positive thinking begets more positive thinking.

And that's why this practice is so important, I would argue more important than anything else you can do. And you might argue with me a little bit. You might be saying something like, exercise is really the most important thing, that you need to lose weight and so forth. But I'm curious, are you more likely to work out and follow through with your workout when you're having Ferrari thoughts about yourself in your life, or beat up old truck thoughts about yourself in your life? Of course the Ferrari thoughts are the thoughts that are going to get you to feel motivated to show up to your workout every day. More so than Tow Mater thoughts, right? Positive thinking begets more positive thinking, and negative thinking just fuels more negative thinking.

Consistency over quantity.

So we've talked a lot about why an intentional thinking practice is so important. Let's talk about what it actually looks like. I love to give myself about 15 minutes to do a practice in the morning, but even just five minutes, if that's all I have, can make all of the difference in my day. In my book, it's more about consistency than it is about quantity. There are really just two parts of this practice. The first is to write down exactly what it is you want to believe about yourself. You get to believe whatever the heck you want to about yourself. Now, you might argue with me for a moment and say, well, what if those thoughts about myself aren't actually true and I'm lying to myself? Girl, let me just tell you, it is always true. You may not be feeling amazing in the moment, but that doesn't mean it's not true. You get to believe that you are capable, that you are strong, that you are successful, that you are brilliant, that you are rich, that you are the best at your job, that you are adequate, that you are enough, that you are amazing, that you are a badass. You get to believe whatever it is you want to believe at any given time. And it starts with writing down some of these thoughts that you want to believe about yourself, but might be having a hard time believing about yourself. The second part of this practice is to find evidence for how whatever it is you want to believe, how that is already true. Write as many things down as possible. When you first start doing this practice, it might be just a few things that you could even find that support why you're amazing, that supports why you're successful, that supports why you're rich, that supports why you're adequate and amazing, or good at your job, or a wonderful capable mother. Whatever it is that you want to believe about yourself in the beginning, it might take some effort to find those, and you might only write down a few. That's okay. But I guarantee after several days of having to open files in your brain, more and more evidence is going to come to light for you.

Conclusion

Now, you can use this two-question framework to cultivate intentional thoughts about whatever it is you really want to believe. Always the most significant thoughts, the thoughts that really hold the most weight are the ones that we have about ourselves. But it is also significant to have positive thoughts about your workload, about your time, about your success. What do I want to believe? How do I know it's already true? Two questions to ask yourself every day to get yourself into an intentional space of feeling amazing about yourself so that energy then fuels your day. If you are a working mum stuck in a negative self-talk loop in your head, this practice is going to make a huge impact on you. What would make an even deeper impact? Hiring me as your coach. As your coach, I will be able to hear you talk about your life at work, your life at home, your workload, your goals, and will pinpoint for you the exact thoughts that are getting in the way of you experiencing happiness and balance in the way that you want. And then together, we will work to cultivate Ferrari-like thoughts about yourself and your life. The negative loops in your head don't go away unless you start making intentional decisions to change them. Deciding to coach with me is like deciding to hop on the expressway toward a fulfilling and balanced life instead of just taking the back roads. If you're interested in coaching, I invite you to schedule a free coaching call with me. I call that a breakthrough call, and you can do that by going to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book. I hope that you have a Ferrari thought sort of day, and I will chat with you next week.

Hey, before you go, I want to take a moment and tell you about an opportunity to speak with me directly. If you've been listening to this podcast and still feel like you need help balancing a fulfilling career with motherhood, then I encourage you to schedule a free breakthrough call. On this call, we will get crystal clear on exactly what it is you want out of your career and how you want to balance that with motherhood. And then we'll craft the next steps for you to start moving toward a more calm and fulfilling working, mom life. Head over to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book to apply for this free call. Until next week, bye working moms. Let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson