One Billion Dollar Morning Routine

Have you ever wondered what morning habits geniuses, business leaders and super high achievers follow to kick start their day? Brain coach and productivity expert Jim Kwik shares below the best possible way to jump start your mind and body every morning.

Jim Kwik is the world’s leading expert in memory improvement and brain performance. He has coached many famous entrepreneurs and CEO’s as well as working with many top universities and Fortune 500 organizations.

 Jim Kwik takes you through his typical morning routine below and reveal his simple to implement habits that will take your productivity, positivity and peace of mind to a whole new level.

One Billion Dollar Morning Routine By Jim Kwik

We have all heard that if you could win the morning, you could win the day. One of the ways to doing that is to create regular rituals and routines, so you don’t have to think about what you need to do.

If you could set up routines and habits, especially early in the day, you could benefit from the science of momentum and create positive momentum as opposed to being reactive, like how a lot of people do; they pick up their phone the first thing, and they start reacting and driving distraction and reaction as opposed to proactively spending time with self-care and self-love and having a vision and a direction for your day. So let’s get into it.

Now as I jump into this, again, this is my ideal day. So sometimes I can’t do all of this, but I can do as many as I can. So the first thing I do when I wake up is I recall my dreams. When you are dreaming you’re actually processing and integrating and working on solutions; your subconscious mind to the things that you’re focusing on during the daytime but most people forget their dreams.

Make Your Bed

After that, I get out of bed and I make the bed. Now this is something that is obvious that most of you do, but if you don’t do it, take two minutes and make your bed because that’s a success habit. If we are talking about positive momentum, the science momentum, getting things done, checking things off, doing it with excellence, then make your bed.

It’s worth the one or two minutes because again, how you do anything is how you do everything and have a good check mark on something like making your bed is very powerful because it teaches you to be able to do something really well and excellent like they do in the military. The other benefit is when you come back at the end of the day, you come back to success. You come back to your bed already made.

Drink Water

After that, what I’ll do is I’ll go into the kitchen and I’ll have a tall glass of water because we use a lot of water and most of us are very dehydrated at night. I’ll take my supplements there. I take my probiotics, which is the big one because your gut is your second brain. We talk about Kwik brain, being your brain in your head, but you also have incredible amount of nerve cells in your gut and so I want to make sure that’s being fed and and healthy. So I take my probiotics.

Breathe

Then what I do is I do my breathing. I’m thinking about the things I’m focusing on here, I’m thinking about excellence. I’m thinking about hydration. I’m thinking about oxygen. Whatever your breathing technique is, I focus on breathing. So whether it’s box breathing or alpha breathing, whether it’s Wim Hof’s method, I do a breathing technique because I want to fully oxygenate my body and my brain, which is obviously part of my body also as well.

Meditate

I do my meditation in the morning and also later in the afternoon or evening, sometimes before I go to bed, but I always do an early morning meditation. I do it for about 20 minutes. Mindfulness is so important. So I want to have a clear mind as I enter the day and so meditation puts me in that space; 15-20 minutes. Some of you use the Headspace app. some of you use the Muse device, use some kind of technology. I meditate then.

Move

From there I do one or two minutes of just movement and this could be different. It could be calisthenics, it can be burpees, but I just want to get into my body after I meditate and so I move it, my body, pretty intensely for a couple minutes and if I’m in a hotel room, maybe I’m just doing jumping jacks, but I’m basically… Or I’m doing crunches for two minutes straight. I’m just waking my body. That is not my exercise for the day. It’s just for me to get my heart rate beating and getting some movement in my body.

Cold Shower

From there I take a shower and it’s a cold shower and I do believe in cold therapy. It works for me. It helps me to reset my nervous system. Ice baths are very powerful because it helps. If you hit your knee, you put ice on it to reduce swelling and inflammation. Cold therapy is a very powerful way of resetting your nervous system and reducing inflammation. So I take a cold shower.

Brain Tea

When I get out, I go through my normal routine of shaving and brushing my teeth, all that good stuff. Then I make a tea and my favorite tea is like a brain tea. It’s a combination of Gotu Kola, Ginkgo, lion’s mane, some MCT oil and some other gems. As I go through it, I sip my tea and that’s where I write in my journal and I’m a big believer in journaling. I’ve been doing it since I would’ve been in college and I feel like some of the most amazing thinkers of our time in history, they journal and they keep diaries. You think about Edison, Einstein, DaVinci, their journals are priceless.

Use a Journal

From there, right from journaling, since I’m writing, I like to write. There’s a lot of studies saying that handwriting is better than actually typing. Then since I’m writing already, I’m going to my to do list and we all have an ongoing, most of us have an ongoing to do list of things that we need to get done.

For me, the big thing is I just want to be able to accomplish as a total win, three things for work and three things personally and they don’t have to be all epic big things, but I just feel like that if I could get three of my work goals done on my to do lists and three of my personal things to do, then it’s been a great day.

It’s kind of like my friend Clay Hebert talks about a champagne moment. It’s like your champagne moment and when you’re looking back at the end of the day saying, “Yes, today was a great day. Today I crushed it. Today I won.”

To Feel List

In addition to my ‘to do list’, I also have a list ‘to feel list’ because I feel like a lot of our who we are is our states and emotions and I think I don’t want it to be just where I happen to feel a certain way by accident but by design.

It’s the metaphor I always talk about the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat. A thermometer reacts to the environment and I feel like sometimes if I act like a thermometer, I’m just going to react to everything that’s going on in my world and I just might have some good positive states as opposed to being a thermostat where I set in advance a standard, a goal for my ‘to feel list’ certain feelings I want to feel throughout the day so I could design it that way. To feel loved, to feel curious, to feel bewilderment, connection, gratitude.

I also have, besides ‘to do list’ and a ‘to feel list’, I also look at my ‘to be list’. Who do I want to be today? Do I want to be a good partner? Do I want to be a good friend and a good leader, a good teacher, a good coach? I feel into what I want to be that day! It’s kind of cliche, but there’s a truth to it, we’re not human doings, right? We’re human beings. So who do I want to be today?

Read

From there, if I have time, I will make time for the things that are most important, is I read. I read for about 20-30 minutes. So after I do my reading, then I go and I make my brain smoothie; brain berries, which are your blueberries and avocado and your leafy vegetables and water and everything and when I’m done with that smoothie, I go through my brain training in one of our Kwik learning online programs at Kwiklearning.com.

We have an online speed reading course, online memory course, thinking course, academic success course. That’s where I do my brain training. I like to do it in the morning because I want to jumpstart my brain, my mind and also my body. That’s the goal for me, of focusing in the morning. So after I do certain brain trainings, which are all on our programs, then I really start my day.

Take your brain to the next level with Jim Kwik: https://kwiklearning.com