Why Your Morning Routine Is Failing You

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If you start your days off with a plan, but it seems like by

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lunchtime everything is off the rails, your morning routine might be failing you.

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And on today's episode, I'm going to break down for you

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exactly why that is happening.

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And if you don't already have a morning routine, we're going to

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also help you figure out how to start creating one for yourself.

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And that's coming up next, right here on Unshakable Habits.

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The right habits can help you have it all.

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More time, better health, improved relationships, and less stress.

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But most people lack the tools to stick with those habits

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long enough to see results.

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That is about to change.

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Welcome to Unshakable Habits with your host, Stephen Box.

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It's time to take your habits from unsustainable to unshakable.

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Welcome back.

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You are tuned in to episode number 78 of Unshakable Habits.

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I am your host, Stephen Box.

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And today we are talking about why your morning routine is failing you and

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causing All of your well intentioned plans to fall completely off track

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by lunchtime every single day.

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Let me start off by saying that if you are currently in

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this situation, don't feel bad.

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I actually was in the same situation as you not too long ago.

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I'm a natural night owl, so for me Mornings have never really

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been my thing, and for a long time that was the story I told myself.

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I'm not a morning person, I don't need a morning routine, and I would

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just get up and go through the motions, and my day really wouldn't

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get started until after lunch, and then I wasn't getting things done.

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And then at some point I made a decision, you know what, I do

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need to have a morning routine.

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I do need to get into the habit of doing that.

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But again, being a night owl, I ran into kind of this issue where everyone else was

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already sending text messages and emails and phone calls and all this other stuff.

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And so as soon as I wake up, I'm now dealing with everybody else's stuff.

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And for me, it just didn't work.

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I still was behind.

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I still didn't really get to my stuff until after lunch.

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And I was no more productive with the morning routine than I was without it.

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And that's my individual story and a lot of that had to do with my

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sleeping patterns, but a lot of it also had to do with the way I was

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setting up my morning routines.

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Because, I'm still a night owl, I still don't get up super early, I still have

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all those people messaging me and sending me all this stuff first thing in the

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morning, but I handle it differently now.

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So today I want to give you some insights on things that might be causing

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your morning routine to fail you.

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and what to actually do about it.

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Specifically, we're going to focus on three areas.

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Number one is copying other people's routines.

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Number two, we're going to talk about not utilizing the other daily routines.

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And number three, overcomplicating your routine.

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So let's break those down.

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Number one is copying other people's routines.

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Please understand, I encourage you to look at other people, see what

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they're doing, steal their great ideas.

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But, acknowledge the fact that if you just outright try to copy someone else's

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routine, you Basically saying that you're going to take their life, their needs,

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their preferences, and you're going to try to insert it into your life.

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And that is like putting the proverbial circle into the square hole.

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It's not going to fit.

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Okay.

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It's not going to work.

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And this is a huge mistake I see a lot of people actually make.

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Because it's what society tells us to do, right?

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Study the habits of the successful and copy them.

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But again, it's okay to borrow.

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It's okay to take an idea, but we can personalize it and we

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can actually make it our own.

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If we just take someone else's routine or trying to fit what works for them into

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our life, it's going to fail every time.

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And on top of it You're going to end up not being motivated.

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Because you're going to get frustrated by the lack of success by trying

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to implement someone else's plan.

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Something that was never really meant for you is going to be very demotivating.

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Because it doesn't align with your natural rhythms and your preferences,

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so it's not going to be sustainable.

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The second thing is ignoring the other routines.

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Guys, you know I talk about the morning routine, the midday routine.

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The night time routine, the pre and post work routines.

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They're all important for a reason.

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And the one I'm going to focus on here is actually the night time routine.

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Because for a lot of us, if we just get up and we start trying to

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plan our day in the morning, it's going to be a disaster, right?

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It hardly ever works out the way that we're planning it.

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because we're Already in the midst of doing what we need to do

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pretty much the moment we wake up.

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But if you do it the night before, it can help you so much.

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If you actually write down the night before, I actually do this in my office.

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I have a little board where I write down tomorrow's big three.

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And every night before I go to bed, I write down the three things I want

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to get done the next day, right?

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And this is actually, if you want more information on this, you want to read

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a little bit more on this, HowlRod.

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The Miracle Morning, method is something that you might want to check out.

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he actually talks about this importance of an evening preparation.

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It's a critical step for a successful morning.

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So definitely, I recommend that you check that out as well.

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And then finally, Overcomplicating your routine.

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This is probably the biggest one, right?

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This is the one I think that affects most people.

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We think we have to do everything.

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And right, this kind of combines honestly with the last point

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I just made too, a little bit.

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Take advantage of those other routines because you can move things to the midday.

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They can be part of your pre and post work.

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They can be part of your evening routine.

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You don't have to do everything first thing in the morning.

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But that's what happens for a lot of us.

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We think, we're going to get up early.

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We're going to, work out.

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We're going to, see the kids off.

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We're going to have a healthy breakfast.

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We're going to do all these things.

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And what ends up happening is, we're You get up, you don't feel like working out,

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you've hit snooze a couple of times, now the kids are running around, you're

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trying to get them together, you skip breakfast, and you maybe find yourself

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holding to the fast food, drive thru or, Dunkin Donuts or wherever you get your

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coffee from, Starbucks, whatever, right?

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You go get your coffee and a couple hours later you have that

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caffeine slash sugar crash and it's just chaos from the word go.

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It just doesn't work out because we've tried to put way

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too much into our mornings.

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And a huge part of this I think is That's what society tells

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us we're supposed to do, right?

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This is what society has taught us is Acceptable to do and I just want

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to really highlight guys It's okay to not actually do that I mentioned

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a few minutes ago about it's okay to look at what other people do So I want

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to give you a couple of examples here This is actually from an article that

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I was looking up So Sarah Blakely, the founder and executive chairman of Spanx.

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If you're not familiar with Spanx, that's the clothes that are like super tight

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that basically compress down your, your fat to, to make you look better, right?

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there's probably other purposes for it, but that's generally the one I

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think of when it comes to, Spanx.

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But anyways, Sheesh lives here in Olienta and she gets up in the

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morning, does some yoga, and spends some time with her four kids.

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But then what she does is something a little interesting.

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She actually has a six minute drive to work.

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But she ends up spending an hour just driving around and no, that's not

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just because I'm related to traffic.

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Trust me, that could definitely be a thing.

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if you're, if you live in Atlanta, you get that one.

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If you don't, just no.

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But the thing is she drives around for an hour because she realized that

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she does her best thinking in the car.

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And so she's really set aside that time to be able to do that.

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And so rather than trying to do everything first thing in the

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morning, She says, Hey, you know what?

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Let me get up, let me do my yoga, spend a little time with the kids,

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have a smoothie, and then get in the car and do my thinking there.

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Just makes it a very simple process.

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Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon.

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He actually talks about how he likes to start his day early.

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in a very slow and calm fashion.

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This is very similar to myself actually.

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So after he gets his eight hours of sleep, he likes to take his time, ease into the

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day, and he actually has a hard rule.

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of no meetings before 10 a.

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m.

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the way he likes to say it, he says he's like to putter in the morning.

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So it's one of those things where he wants that time to just ease into the day.

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Very much the opposite of what a lot of us are told that we're supposed to do, right?

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It's We're told all you're supposed to get up.

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You're supposed to do all these things and no not at all Gary

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Vaynerchuk is another great example.

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He's up at 6 a.

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m.

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I'm not getting up at 6 a.

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m.

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But he's up at 6 a.

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m He's working out by 7 with his personal trainer.

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I usually does 45 minutes to an hour He doesn't have a super specific workout.

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He does They just based the work out on, what he ate, how much he's

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been traveling, stuff like that.

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Just, normal stuff.

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after his training, he sends his kids off to school And he

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starts his workday around 9am.

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the thing is, all of these people who are very successful, who are names

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that we know, they're not trying to dump everything into the morning.

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They're being very smart about their morning routine.

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They're prioritizing the things.

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You're the most important to them.

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So if you are struggling with your morning routine, if it's not working

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for you, and instead you are finding that no matter how much you plan out,

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your day is absolutely falling apart by lunchtime, I want to encourage

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you to look at those three things and ask yourself, which of those three?

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What are you doing?

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Which ones are actually having a negative impact on you?

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Three quick notes before we wrap up today.

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Number one, if you enjoyed today's episode, got some value out of it.

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Please share with someone else so they can also get that benefit.

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Number two, I do have a couple of limited spots available right now.

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for a free roadmap call.

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This is a no obligation call.

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we're going to help you map out what it would look like for you to be able

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to start creating these routines and building Unshakable Habits for yourself.

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So if that's something that you're interested in, make sure you

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head over to UnshakableHabits.

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com and click on the book a free roadmap call, or you can also use

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the link down in the show notes.

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And finally, be sure that you tune in on our next episode because we're

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going to be talking about how to create the perfect morning routine.

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With that guys, as always, I remind you that while none of us are born

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unshakable, we can all become unshakable.