Read our blog Morning Motivation for Leaders With Energy and Purpose for more insights and practical strategies.
Podcast Transcript
John Bullock:
Welcome to this Advance Performance Podcast. I’m John Bullock, and joining me today is Heather Wright.
Heather:
Hi.
John:
And today we’re talking about being motivated, but particularly in the morning, getting ourselves motivated in the morning. It’s one of the things that I come across sometimes where people get up first thing in the morning, and if there’s lots going on, let’s say they’re a little bit stressed. Let’s say there’s a few worries in the household or in the job or whatever it may be.
Heather:
They.
John:
They kind of, the moment you wake up, they kind of start to invade and they start to take over. Yeah.
Heather:
It’s funny this, because you’re right. I’m wondering if this is something that a lot of people suffer from. First thing I know there are people out there who say I’m a morning person and they leap out of bed, but they seem to be few and far between. So, when we’re talking about this, I think there’s something that happens overnight, and it might be subconscious worries that are infusing overnight. You might go to bed perfectly happy, but you wake up and those subconscious worries have got you. So, you wake. Wake up in a mood or something like that.
John:
Yeah. So, we know when we go to sleep, our conscious mind turns off. So we know that. And our subconscious is defiling cabinet, if you like. It’s all let out, isn’t it? So we’ve got lots of things going on, which is why we dream and all that kind of stuff. So what you’re saying is that all of these conscious worries that sometimes we have during the day, they start to kind of come out in the night time when we’re drifting off to sleep, when we’re waking up in the morning.
Heather:
Yeah. And who knows what we dream of? Sometimes we know what we’ve dreamt of, sometimes we don’t know what we’ve dreamt of. You just never know whether or not our subconscious mind is controlling that. So, the main thing is whether or not we can sort that out. The main thing is how do we control it when that happens to us? Because you can’t. Unless you’re going to lie there at night with headphones on listening to stuff while you’re sleeping, which would be very dangerous because you want to strangle yourself on the wire of your headphones is what do you do when you wake up in that kind of a mood and a lot of people just lie there and kind of. We have a tendency to wallow. It’s very, very easy to wallow in that.
John:
Yes, absolutely.
Heather:
I’m just not feeling it today.
John:
No, I think you’re right. And I think if that’s, you know, when that’s happened to me in the past, by the time I’m actually out of the door and going to the day job or whatever it may be, your brain’s starting, you are getting, you’re getting your head around some of those problems and it feels a little bit better. But it can be that first little bit, can’t it, in the morning. So, what can we do then? What can we do when wake up we feel a little bit low or we remember these worries. What can we do about it?
Heather:
Well, I think the first thing to do is to know yourself. So you’ve got to understand if that is part of you at the moment. And it could be a temporary situation or it could be a permanent situation. So we have to be careful not to think of it as permanent. So the first thing is know yourself. Are you that kind of a person? And then we have to put things in place. We, we have daily routines and we’re very disciplined about them. We get up, we clean our teeth, we have our shower. There are certain things we do in the morning and we have to attach to those things because it’s easier to attach to an already held discipline than it is to create a new one. So we need to attach something to them. So it might be that we put something on the bathroom mirror, it might be that we wake up to the radio, but make sure it’s a radio station that has a positive effect on you. You don’t want to be: If you wake up at the news. Yeah, that’s not a good thing, is it? So are we going to wake up to a piece of music or will we put an audiobook on it? Because nowadays technology works for us on this. My, my iPad can wake me up to anything I’ve got. So it could wake me up to an audiobook, it could wake me up to particular music, wake me up to nearly anything. And I think that we don’t make use of that enough. We make use of it for other things.
John:
Yes. So, I quite like the point you’ve made there. About often, often when we want, when we’re trying to change something, the advice we might get is do something new, which, which in it, which in itself is not bad advice. That’s fine. However, it can be quite challenging to do something new. So I really like the theory there of attaching something to things that you already do when you wake up. So if it is a little trigger card on your mirror that says you’re going to have a great day or it will pass or whatever the phrase is.
Heather:
One of mine tends to be more movable than that, which is about my purpose. So think about your purpose for the day. So I might have a card on my mirror that says, what is your purpose today? Now temptations go, I haven’t got one. But what is your purpose today? How are you going to make a difference? Which focuses you away from examining your navel and out to what am I going to do today? No matter where I am in the world, no matter what has happened to me the day before, it is now gone. I am moving into a new world.
John:
So it’s about changing that thought pattern, isn’t it? It’s about stopping the thing.
Heather:
Break the cycle.
John:
Break the cycle. Change the thought pattern by using some kind of what we would call trigger. But attach it to something that you already do. That is the easier and quicker way in order to be able to change your mindset.
Heather:
And I will talk out loud to myself while I’m in the shower. And it all depends. I know not everyone has that luxury if they have people them that are asleep and they don’t want to, but I will mutter to myself if necessary and I’ll keep going over it and going, today this is what I’m going to do. And what I’m going to do isn’t always about achievements, but it might be about mindset. So it might be, today I’m going to make a difference to three people, or today I’m going to make sure I smile at three people in the car. And you might want to focus on shorter term purposes. It all depends on how severe your morning mood is.
John:
Yeah, of course. Okay, well, look, we’re coming to the end of the podcast here. The key thing is if you feel a little bit low in the morning, find yourself a great positive trigger and attach it to something that you do every single morning.
Heather:
Absolutely. Determination.
John:
Fantastic. Thank you for your time, Heather.
Heather:
Thank you.
John:
We hope you’ve enjoyed this Advance Performance Podcast.