Excuses are as common as opinions.
According to the High Performance Institute, the top 15% of the top 15% of high performers exercise five times per week. Exercise to them is a (near) daily activity. Interestingly and strangely, they don’t all look forward to this exercise. In fact, some of them find it rather dreadful. Those that perform the daily exercise find that first thing in the morning is the magic hour. There’s nothing to prevent them from doing it. There are no conference calls. There are no demanding children. Yes, there are emails, but they can wait. There is no better hour than immediately upon waking.
Benefits Justify Themselves.
Most people would find this suggestion unbearable. How can you wake up at 4:30 AM and exercise?!? It isn’t easy and no one can sell it that way. It is a lifestyle change, a move in the way you go about things, a shift in priorities. It is a mere suggestion because its benefits justify themselves: more energy; more clarity; improved physical shape; enhanced mental performance; and enhanced biological function. Who wouldn’t want those things?
Wheels-up time is a choice.
The difficult part of the early AM workout is we do not have the luxury of the opt-out. The opt-out is our choice — we choose to sleep in. We choose the easy alternative. We choose to dream rather than go make our dreams come true. We choose to dream about the Beach Body vs. waking up and working for the Beach Body. Regardless of what we tell ourselves and others, wheels-up time is a choice.
Excuses are as common as opinions.
Things will come up. Flights, children, what the boss said, poor sleep the night before, oh-gee-I-drank-a-lot-last-night-and-can’t-get-up-to-work-out, where-the-hell-is-the-coffee-I-thought-there-was-a-Starbucks-here, I’m-in-southern-California-and-I-hear-they-work-out-for-you. Excuses are as common as opinions. Don’t use either of them.
Morning people create.
There’s a common misunderstanding of morning people vs. night people. Night people don’t think they’re morning people and vice versa. Only it isn’t so. Morning people simply create and exhibit the behavior and exude the habits to be that way, to be perky, to be up, to be happy getting after it at 5 AM. That’s it. That’s the secret, night folks. Interestingly, morning people tend to create. Some of the greatest contemporary writers write first thing in the morning. As in our exercise example above, there are no phone calls, there are no distractions, nothing has changed in the social media space since last night, the news still sucks at 6 AM just like it did at 6 PM (and 10 PM and 11 PM), there are no excuses to not create first thing. It is just you and the blank canvas.
What will you create?
