The Miracle Morning Challenge: Day 30

A little over a month ago, I started the 30-Day Miracle Morning Challenge at my brother’s invitation to be his accountability partner. As a working mom of two little ones (one of whom is only beginning to sleep through the night), I’ve been struggling with:

1. Finding the motivation, energy and time to work on my passion project(s) and bring my personal goals to life, rather than having them collect dust.
2. Having the space to enjoy some peace, quiet and simple me-time.

After reading The Miracle Morning, I felt it could help me with these struggles, so I agreed to do this challenge with my brother.

I’m excited to share that I completed this challenge a few days ago! Yes… all 30 days! And now, I’ll give you the details of how it all went – getting up earlier than I usually do and practicing the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. – so you can see for yourself if this is something for you.

Basic Principles

The key principle of The Miracle Morning is that you wake up one hour earlier to prioritize yourself by working on yourself through self-development practices. In doing so each day, you can grow to become the best possible version of yourself. Now, who doesn’t want that!?

Want to more details? Start from the beginning of my Miracle Morning journey >>

Modifying My Routine to Fit My Needs

It’s currently crunch time for a big project I’m a part of at work. That said, I’ve been hyper-focused and putting in a lot of hours into it. At the same time, I didn’t want to fall off the wagon with my Miracle Mornings either, as I’ve been enjoying the experience and really wanted to see this challenge through.

So instead of doing each of the six habits for at least 10 minutes every day, I modified my routine and practiced the ones I really wanted to do. I focused on those and either shortened the others or simply didn’t do them. I also made the decision to put in much less time on this blog to focus on my project at work in the mornings.

It’s all about trade-offs, right?

During this time, the things I practiced the most were Silence, Affirmations and Visualization. This enabled me to still integrate the Miracle Morning into my routine while also focusing on what I need to.

And continuing to do the Miracle Morning each day, even though it was shorter or only consisted of two habits (meditate and affirmations), helped me feel ready for my day, energized and focused.

On Waking Up

I’m happy and proud to report that I’ve successfully been waking up at least one hour earlier.

In the last two weeks of this challenge, I’ve been waking up anywhere from 4:30 – 6 a.m. While I’m inconsistent with getting up at an exact time, I’m simply glad to have managed to wake up before my family did each day.

Related: Read how my first two weeks went >>

In a way, I feel this routine gave me better balance as I worked long hours on the project I’m a part of, and better enabled me to manage the intensity a looming project deadline brings.

Practicing the Life S.A.V.E.R.S.

The Miracle Morning recommends practicing six morning rituals called “Life S.A.V.E.R.S.” and here’s my experience with them over the last two weeks:

Silence: Out of all the rituals, I still consider this one of my favorite activities and therefore was most consistent with it. I’m not a pro in it or anything. I simply enjoy it. For the most part, I listened to this meditation every morning. Even though my mind wandered, or at times I’ve dozed off a bit, I really like the feeling I’m left with after meditating first thing in the morning. It helps me slowly rev up and get my mind centered.

Affirmations: After my meditation, I often listened to these affirmations. They left me feeling positive and motivated – like I can achieve anything and it’s been a great way to start the day.

Visualization: This is where I continue to struggle the most. It still feels unnatural and awkward to me. Instead of a traditional vision board, I created a digital slide show and saved it in my phone to illustrate and remind myself of what I’m shooting for. I’d watch this in the morning (when I felt like it), and although these are good to keep at the forefront of my mind, I don’t yet feel the magic or power that I hear results from this practice. Maybe I need to believe more? I don’t know.

Exercise: Confession… I got lazy with this one. As I shared in my 15-day review, I prefer not to work out in the morning and go to the gym later in the day. Problem is I didn’t make it to the gym later in the day. On a few mornings, I managed to do some light stretches and exercises like jumping jacks and squats. But that was it.

Reading: Although I couldn’t put in as much time into this activity – I enjoyed it when I did sit down to read. Like meditation, it helps my mind rev up for the day. As my project closes, I want to dedicate more time to this.

Scribing: For this practice, I kept it minimal. I’d quickly review my planner to see what I had going for that day and would jot down whatever tasks I needed to do so I wouldn’t forget. But I didn’t really put in a lot of time into journaling itself. When I would journal, I saved it for the evening before I went to bed.

4 Key Take-Aways from My Experience

• Get enough rest. In the book, the author, Hal Elrod, shares his theory that you can trick your mind into waking up earlier and that you don’t really need as much sleep as generally recommended. I disagree with this and don’t recommend waking up way early without going to bed early as well. Once in a while is fine. But to consistently go on minimal or less than ideal amounts of sleep can lead to negative effects. So, get a decent amount of sleep each night.
• Make it work for you. If done, incorporating the six rituals Hal recommends into your mornings can really do wonders to help you become the best version of yourself. BUT it can also be stressful to build in six new habits into your routine and remain Zen while you’re going through major life changes, have a toddler that still doesn’t sleep through the night or have any projects or life event(s) that’s consuming a lot of your time. In these situations, you can customize your morning routine to fit your needs and still benefit from it. Maybe pick two or three of the rituals to incorporate into your morning and only allot the amount of time that works with your schedule. You can even practice the Miracle Morning after your kids are situated with some activities, instead of first thing in the morning. The important thing is you do what you can – even if it’s a little bit. A little bit every day adds up. However, it shouldn’t add more stress to your life. It should enhance your life.
• Drink a glass of water first thing in the morning. Before reading Hal’s tip on drinking water first thing in the morning to help you feel more awake, I generally drank coffee first thing. I tried his tip with the goal of simply that – to trick myself into feeling more awake so early in the morning. While it has definitely helped me feel more alert in the morning, I also surprisingly found that it has improved the flow of my digestive system. I guess the fresh supply of water before consuming anything else helps not only hydrate my body, but it also helps jumpstart my metabolism and move things along – if you know what I mean. So, every night, I set a glass of water on our dining table. It’s one less thing I have to do in the morning when I’m still half asleep. And, I like that it’s room temperature. Drinking cold water in the morning is a bit jarring.
• My days feel successful. At the end of each day since starting this challenge, I feel more fulfilled and productive – even on days that became hectic and all over the place. Each morning, I’ve been inching my way toward my personal goals and making incremental progress. And it’s these small steps I take each day that leaves me feeling like I’ve had a successful day.

Did it Transform My Life?

Well, I wouldn’t say it’s transformed my life – it’s only been 30 days 😉

That said, if I keep this up, I can really see it transforming my life in the long-run. I’m already seeing and feeling the positive effects of this morning routine. Transformation and becoming the person we want to be takes a lot of work. The question is, are we willing to put in the time and effort?

Would I Recommend It?

When it comes down to it, I think that if you apply the habits and theories shared by Hal Elrod in The Miracle Morning to your daily routine – whether you follow it to a T or customize it to fit your schedule and season of life – it will improve your life. Making the time to develop yourself, is essential in growing and becoming the person we long to be. And, this is the key thing the book teaches.

That said, trying to implement all six rituals all at once into your routine can be challenging. But even more so if you’re going through major transitions, have some project like me, or encountered something that breaks your daily routine. It can actually add to your already piling stress. So in this case, I say focus on one or two things you’d like to incorporate and start there.

It’s so easy to get sucked in the weeds of our everyday lives and put our personal growth and goals on the back burner because it can feel like a luxury with everything else on our plates. But the fact is… if we want to be the best person we can be for our family and friends, and even to excel in our careers, we need to keep working on ourselves and keep growing. And no one but us can prioritize that for ourselves. We need to make time for it. We need to make time for us. And, the Miracle Morning is a great way to start.

What do you think? Are you interested in trying out the Miracle Morning yourself?

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