FBP 060: How To Have a More Productive and Creative Day with The Life SAVERS

In a previous blog post, I talked about how Hal Elrod’s The Miracle Morning has been transforming my life day-to-day. It’s the single most thing that I do, aside from sipping my favorite cup of Starbuck Veranda blend, that energizes me and get’s my mind and body started and revved up to tackle my day’s most arduous of tasks.

It’s not a single thing actually, but a series of things that I do called my Life SAVERS and I will tackle each one of them today:

SAVERS is an acronym for S-ilence, A-ffirmations, V-isualization, E-xercise, R-eading and S-cribing. I would like to thank again, my student and friend, Mike Grogan for introducing to me the Life SAVERS.

The principle of TMM is to wake up earlier than you usually do, about an hour earlier, so that you will be able to do each of the SAVERS before you even start your day — be it work, errands, creative stuff, etc. Studies show that we are most energetic, productive and creative between 8 am to about 11 am, and then the energy wanes after lunch time, when your body starts to focus most of it’s resources on digesting the food that you just consumed.
Therefore, it would be best to prepare your body and mind for the creative and thinking tasks in the morning like writing a blog post or an article, designing your webpage or painting your masterpiece. While in the afternoon, you can focus on the less creative or more manual stuff like answering your email, cleaning up your workstation or paying your bills.

Now let’s go and discuss the Life SAVERS and how I practise each one myself:

S-ilence

To quiet my ever loud and wandering brain, I do guided meditation exercises for about 5 to 10 minutes. I have never meditated before and found it boring but after trying it out for a few days, I noticed a significant improvement in terms of my creativity and overall well-being. I use the apps called Calm and Headspace, which are very helpful apps for beginners like me.

A-ffirmations

It took me a long time to create my affirmations, but I already have five now. Affirmations are positive statements that you want to happen to you in the near future but spoken or read as if it has already happened. An example of my affirmation: “I am in impeccable shape, running and exercising every day to my heart’s content.” I suggest to record your affirmation in your smartphone and listen to your affirmation 2 to 3 times a day.

V-isualization

I’m sure, like me, you have plenty of dreams when you were young but most of the time, for some reason, life happens and you forget about those dreams. The trick to not forget about your dreams ever again? You have to visualize your dream everyday. Create a vision board, maybe of your dream house or car, a picture of a million dollar check, anything you want to get or accomplish. Look at it everyday, and who knows, it can happen very soon. Olympic medalists like Michael Phelps visualize their routines in such a way that when the day of the competition comes, it’s automatic to them because they have been peforming on the big stage everyday — in their mind. I create my vision board using the free tool Picasa and use it as my laptop’s wallpaper.

E-xercise

I don’t need to convince you about the health benefits of exercising. There are tons of resources out there to inspire you to get fit. So I will just tell you what I do everyday. I simply walk around my neighborhood for about 15 to 30 minutes listening to my favorite podcasts in my smartphone. And that keeps me so energized and feeling so pumped that I am raring to start working.

R-eading

To save on time, instead of reading, I listen to a podcast as mentioned above. That way I hit two SAVERS with one stone – Exercise and Reading – in just 15 to 30 minutes. I have written about the power of podcasts and why it is vital for you to listen to podcasts. To read my previous article about that, just go to www.freelanceblend.com and search for podcasts.

S-cribing

Last but not the least, scribing or writing. I am actually doing it right now after completing the other Life SAVERS. Writing for just 10 minutes a day gets your creative juices flowing before you even start your day. If you don’t know what to write about, you can write about what you are grateful for that day or even top 10 ideas for anything. And the more you write, the more natural it becomes and who knows, you can even write your first book while doing the Life SAVERS.

And there you have it, the Life SAVERS from Hal Elrod’s The Miracle Morning.

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