At the beginning of this year I started a new habit: waking up early and doing a morning walk. For most of my life I have been a night person. I naturally come alive at 10pm. It can even be difficult for me to fall asleep at night because my mind does not shut off. I know what “silence is deafening” means. I use to find myself battling my mind and the silence in the house in order to fall asleep at night. Once I started an early morning ritual all that began to change.

I was amazed at how many benefits I started enjoying once I made waking up early a habit. Too be honest I have received way more then 5 benefits, but here are a few of the main ones you will experience if you develop the same habit.  There is a lot that I do for my morning success ritual but to keep things short I am going to focus on early morning walking.

1. An Opportunity to Clear Your Mind - When I first started my morning ritual, I started by jogging in the neighborhood as a way to get my exercise in for the day. However, due to some major lower back pain that I was experiencing I had to slow down my pace. At first I was very frustrated because I was focused on heart rate and calories burned, but I ended up getting so much more out of the whole experience. I now call it “My Morning Walkabout” and I use it to clear my mind for the day. It is an opportunity for me to go on a walk with God and just talk with Him.

I now get some of my best ideas and solutions to my problems during my morning walkabout. I come back to the house with a clear mind and ready to go after the day.

2. Ability to Stimulate Your Senses – Slowing down caused me to take in the scenery I was experiencing. I am not naturally a sentimental person, but there is something spiritual about the early morning and a sunrise. We live near the back of the 2nd phase in a subdivision. The 3rd phase in our subdivision has paved roads and street lights but no homes (see pic on home page). It makes a great walking and jogging track as there is nothing back there but nature and the early morning sounds.

Slowing down and taking in the sunrise, the early morning steam off the ponds, and the birds as they start the day is refreshing. It centers your day and helps you take a deep breath before you jump into your hectic paced life.

3. Direct Your Focus for the Day – I also use my morning walkabout as an opportunity to narrow my focus for the day. I am a big believer in focus and momentum. Life today can easily pull you in many directions. One of the best habits I have formed in recent months is to decide on 1-3 tasks that are MUST DO tasks for the day. I start with the first one as early in the morning as possible and try to create some personal momentum for the day. I have even started as early as 4:30 am (I know it sounds crazy) and have had all three must tasks accomplished by 7:00am. I cannot begin to describe the rush and the adrenaline hat you feel for the rest of the day.

4. Meditate on Gratitude – I also like to use the morning walkabout to think about everything that is working in my life at the moment. Aren’t we all guilty at times of sleeping to the last possible moment and then rushing out of the house into our busy, hectic work day? I force myself to rattle off everything that I am grateful for and it always starts my day with a smile.

5. Ability to Fall Right to Sleep at Night – This one was a shocker for me. I know it should be common sense, but by waking up early you actually are tired at night. Like I mentioned earlier I have always had a difficult time falling asleep at night. My mind is always racing and ideas flow continuously. Once I started waking up early I noticed that I began to sleep better and wanted to go to bed.

There are so many more benefits to starting this habit. I would encourage you to try it for 7 days and write down the benefits that you receive from the experience.

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Have you ever had these discussions with yourself? I sure have. I have stumbled so many times 70×7 seems like a small number.

The Big Revelation

A few years ago (after one of my major screw ups), I was praying, thinking and contemplating my life when I had a revelation. When it comes to your bad habits (lack of exercise, overweight, overspending, fill in whatever bad habit here ___________) you really only have two choices:

1. Live miserable and let your bad habits control you
2. Decide not to quit


Giving Up is Not an Option

I decided that day that giving up was not an option. My life, my family and my God was too important. So, if you are discouraged about where you are in life at this moment, make a resolution deep in your soul: Giving up is not an option! It will be freeing to your soul.

The 3 Simple Ideas for Breaking Habits

1. Get a Lofty Vision for Your Life – Mark Batterson discusses this idea in his book “The Wild Goose Chase.” He goes on to explain that personal vision is the cure for sin and bad habits.

One reason that many of us get entangled in sin is because we don’t have enough God-ordained vision to keep us busy. The more vision you have, the less you will sin. And the less vision you have, the more you will sin. It is vision from God that keeps us playing offense spiritually. – Mark Batterson

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Find a God-ordained passion and pour your life into it. It will draw you into a more meaningful existance and trade short-term gratification (bad habits) in for long-term satisfaction (good habits).

2. Decide to Do the Good Habit Anyway – Right after we have fallen into a bad habit our mind begins playing tricks with us. For example, you say: “Well, I ate one peice of cake, might as well have another.” It is almost like the Christian life is constant pent up demand. We try to live so good for “x” number of days and then decide that if we are going to fall let’s go down hard! We live the Christian life in extremes and it turns into Bipolar Christianity. In order to overcome this you have to decide that you are going to still do the good habit no matter what. After we eat the chocolate cake we tell ourselves that it is no use exercising today so I guess I will just start tomorrow. Don’t do that! Decide that you are going to exercise today anyway and keep the good habits rolling right along with the bad ones.

3. Employ a Tough Love Accountability Partner -  Adding an accountability partner can be one of the most difficult (yet rewarding) things that we can ever do. We live in a “Surface Society.” By that I mean, we know many people but very few if any really know us. No one knows the deep parts of our life as we keep everyone at arm’s length. Finding someone to show you tough love can be just what the doctor ordered. Go buy two cans of dog food. Give one to your accountability partner and keep the other one in sight.

Set a goal to do one of your good habits in a consistent manner (like a week). If you do not fulfill your obligation, tell your accountability partner that you will open the dog food and take a bite. Yuck! I know this is a extreme example, but hopefully I got your attention. I guarantee one thing: the next time you want to roll over you just might be motivated to get out of bed and exercise (or whatever good habit you have chosen).

Let me leave you with this thought: “The difference between where you are and where God wants you to be may be the painful decision you refuse to make” -Greg Groeschel

What is your painful decision that you are avoiding?

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