MORNING

RITUAL
STARTER KIT
 Morning Ritual Starter Kit
STARTER MORNING RITUAL

This is the basic starter Morning Ritual - every Morning Ritual will have these
6 components. They are an excellent starting point for your own Morning
Ritual, or act as an “emergency” Morning Ritual when you don’t have enough
time to do your own full ritual.

1. 500ml/16oz water
2. Quick stretch
3. Use washroom
4. Do breathing/meditation/priming
5. Look over goals and review day
6. Start MIT (Most Important Task)

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AARON’S MORNING RITUAL

This is Aaron’s variation of the Morning Ritual.

1. 1L of water with lime

2. Morning power questions
–– What am I happy about in my life now? Why am I so happy?
–– What am I excited about in my life now?
–– What am I proud about in my life now?
–– What am I grateful about in my life now?
–– What am I enjoying most in my life right now?
–– What am I committed to in my life right now? How committed am I?
–– Who do I love? Who loves me?
–– How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I’m
committed to?
–– What is my intention?
–– How am I going to work with obsession?
–– How can I add even more value and help even more people?
–– Why am I here?
3. Review my values
4. Quick stretch
5. Wash up
6. Make the bed
7. Get changed
8. Meditate for 20 minutes
–– App: Insight Timer
9. Appreciate yesterday’s wins
10. Review tasks and outcomes
11. Most important task

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THANH’S MORNING RITUAL

This is Thanh’s variation of the Morning Ritual.

1. Wash face with cold water

2. Drink 500ml water with lemon and apple cider vinegar
3. Go outside on balcony
4. Sun salutations
5. 15 pushups
6. Meditate for 10 Minutes
7. Review goals
8. Most important task

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ZACHARY’S MORNING RITUAL

This is Zachary’s variation of the Morning Ritual.

1. 16oz of water with lemon

2. Take supplements
3. Bulletproof Coffee
4. Stretch
5. Meditate for 10 minutes
–– App: Headspace
6. Make Bed
7. Review Goals
8. Journal
–– How has the resistance shown up today?
–– How is Nikida amazing?
–– What did I learn/read?
–– What did I do for exercise?
–– How was the cold shower?
–– What was I focused on?
–Morning:
–
–Day:
–
–Night:
–
9. 25 Minutes of Writing (MIT)
10. Walk Gus (dog)
11. Get inverted

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MY MORNING RITUAL
Use this space to construct your own Morning Ritual. Be sure to include the
starting components of:

1. 500ml/16oz water
2. Quick stretch
3. Use washroom
4. Do breathing/meditation/priming
5. Look over goals and review day
6. Start MIT (Most Important Task)

Please print this page or fill in the digital form fields below.

STEP COMPONENT
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TRANSCRIPTION
Zachary: Welcome to the Morning Ritual Starter Kit. We’re glad to have you
on-board. My name is Zachary Sexton. I have with me Aaron Lynn and Thanh
Pham. Welcome, guys.

Aaron: Hey, this is Aaron.

Thanh: Hey, this is Thanh.

Zachary: Today we are going to be covering the basic components to

morning rituals, also how you apply and maintain your morning rituals, our
specific morning rituals and some common sticking points. Let’s just dive right
in and talk about some of the basic components of every morning ritual. Aaron,
can you start with those 6 basic components?

Aaron: Sure. The 6 basic components of a morning ritual are, 1, to drink

half a liter or 16 fluid ounces of water in the morning; 2, to do some quick
stretching or movement; 3, to use the washroom and restroom; 4, to do some
breathing, meditation, or priming; 5, to look over your goals and review how
your day’s going to go; and 6, to get started on your most important task for
the day.

Zachary: All right. We’re going to dive deeper into all 6 of these
components. Briefly, can you talk about the first 2, Thanh, about drinking water
and doing a quick stretch because you were the one who introduced me to
these 2?

Thanh: Of course. Drinking water is absolutely important. That’s one

of the very first thing you should do as soon as you wake up. When you think
about it your body is made of water, about 70-80% of it. When you’re going
through a whole night, 7, 8 hours of sleep without drinking any water, you’re
going to be really dehydrated. You want to start hydrating as soon as possible
when you wake up. I really suggest within the first 10 minutes or so start
drinking water, preferably right away after you wake up. Start drinking about
half a liter of water, which is about 16 fluid ounces. It really signals to your
body and to your organs to wake up, to get going and to get ready to really
perform at a high level.

Then once you’ve done that, the natural step after that is to start stretching

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and moving your body a little bit. You get the body flowing. You get the blood
flowing. You get the water in the right places. You really just get ready to
perform at a high level. These stretches don’t have to be complicated. As you’ll
see through the other sections, as we talk about our own rituals, you’ll start to
see that those things don’t have to be complicated at all. Just a couple simple
movements and stretches is all you need to get going.

Zachary: All right. We’ve got water. We’ve got stretch. The third one is
hitting the washroom. Aaron, can you talk to us about that?

Aaron: This is exactly what it sounds like. You go to the bathroom or

washroom. You wash off and get ready for the day.

Zachary: All right. I thought you’d have a quick, short answer like that.
It’s nothing special, just whatever you need to get started. Brush your teeth,
comb your hair, splash water on your face. That’s step number 3. Number 4 is
something that I’m very into. We’ll talk a little bit more about when I’m talking
about my morning rituals but it’s breathing, meditating or some sort of priming.
This doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t need an app, although sometimes
guided meditations help but it’s something to set the intention for the day.
We’ll talk a little bit more about that.

Another thing that helps set the intention for the day is part number 5 which is
a goals and review. This is where you look at your goals that you have for your
near future, for the day, for the week and for the month and see where you’re
at with that so you can really drive that day forward and really just make the
most of that day. Number 6 is to segue into your most important task. One
book we really like is Brian Tracy’s book that talks about this. Thanh, could you
tell us about doing your most important task?

Thanh: Your most important task is the one thing you have to do that day
that will make you extremely productive. We all have 10 million things to do.
There’s really just one thing that is really important. You have to figure out
what that one thing is and then execute on that. That’s what we call the most
important task.

Zachary: All right. Those are the basic components. Now we’re going to
move on to applying the morning ritual. Aaron, I was wondering if you could

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give us just the overview of how you set these basic components into action.

Aaron: Absolutely. The simplest way to start applying the morning ritual
which you’ve just learned is to put it into a list. This can be as simple as writing
it down on a piece of paper and putting it up somewhere where you’re going
to see it in the morning, or it can be as “complicated” as putting it into say a
digital task manager application on your phone and pulling it up first thing in
the morning. The key is to actually have the steps written down in a sequential
order and look at it the first thing in the morning.

If you’re like most people nowadays and the first thing you reach for in the
morning is typically your phone, having it on an application or even just a
simple note on your phone is probably one of the best ways to make sure that
you know the steps and that you’re going to go through them first thing every
morning. If you want to go a bit more old school, put it on a piece of paper and
post it up on, say, your bathroom mirror, above the toilet or on your wardrobe,
that’s fine as well. Either one of those 2 things will almost guarantee that
you’re going to get started on the morning ritual pretty much the next morning.

Zachary: All right. This is the basics. Thanh, would you go a little bit beyond
the basics and start to talk about your why for the morning ritual?

Thanh: One thing I’ve noticed is that one of the common problems that
people have when it comes to starting on a morning ritual is that they’re really
good the first day but then they have trouble sticking to it. That’s something
we’ll cover extensively later on but an easy way to get started is to write down
why this morning ritual is important to you. It’s really this 3-letter word, “why.”
Why is this important to you? Why is this particular step important to you?

The reason you want to start off with writing this down and figuring out why
this is important to you is that it allows you to really clarify to yourself why
you’re doing this and what’s so important about it. If you can do that, then you
can start your day every single morning with excitement, with action, with the
anticipation of what you want to do next. Then that really sets yourself up for
success for the rest of the day. If you really want to get consistent with this,
you really have to figure out what your why is.

The way I look at it is the first hour of your day is like your hour of power. It’s

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the first hour that’s really the most important hour of the day. If you can make
sure that everything gets done within that first hour, you’re really setting
yourself up for success for the rest of the day.

Zachary: That word, “success,” I think, is key here. Success comes from
doing little things, the little right things, every day that accumulate. All of these
big things that people usually want out of life — having lots of money or being
physically fit, all these things ... You do 1 workout, you’re not going to be ripped.
You save 1 month, you’re not going to have a bulging bank account. These are
small accumulations of successes. Drinking water every morning will keep you
hydrated, will then allow you to function better during the day and will lead to
a little bit more success.

If you’re wondering a little bit maybe, “What does this mean to me specifically,”
think about the success that you’ll have with the accumulated results. When
we go over our morning rituals which we’re about to segue right into we’ll talk
about all the whys behind our individual steps. Aaron, why don’t you kick things
off with your morning rituals? Maybe go through them really quickly and then
dive in a little bit deeper with the how and the why behind your morning ritual.

Aaron: Sure. As Zack said, we all have our individual morning rituals.
They’ve basically come out of experimentation and adding and removing
different steps over time to get to the point of where they are now. The way
that I have my morning ritual set up is it is a checklist on a task manager app on
my phone. Typically, it’s one of the first things I reach for in the morning, apart
from water. I will go to my phone and then start running through the checklist
as I get started for my day.

Just very briefly, my morning ritual starts with a liter of water, usually with a
squeeze of lime in it. It starts with asking myself what I call my morning power
questions. It then goes into reviewing my values. I do a quick stretch. I wash up.
I make the bed. I get changed for the day. I then meditate for 20 minutes. Then
to start my day, I look over what I did yesterday and appreciate what I had
achieved or completed. I review my task and outcomes for the day. Then I start
with my most important task.

Let me break that down a bit more. The first thing I do is I drink a liter of water
with lemon in it or lime squeezed it into it. What I do is, the night before, I

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slice up a lime. I squeeze it into a water bottle and then add a liter of water to
it. I just put it in the fridge. The reason I do this ... Zack will go more into why
lime or lemon is important in water. He’s the one who introduced me to it. The
reason I drink a liter of water is because I’m actively trying to drink more water
every day. I figure starting the day with an entire liter is probably a good thing.

What I do is, while I’m drinking my liter of water, I’ll do 2 things. If the sun is
already coming up or if it’s already up, I’ll usually sit in front of a window and
let as much sunlight into my eyes as possible. That helps me to wake up though
that isn’t always possible in certain seasons, especially when it’s dark when
I get up at 4:30AM or 5:00AM in the morning. Also, while I’m drinking that
water, I will go through steps 2 and 3, which are my morning power questions
and my values.

My morning power questions is an idea that I believe comes from Tony

Robbins. It’s basically a series of questions that I ask myself every single
morning to remind myself what I’m doing and to set my intention for the day.
These are anything from asking, “What am I happy about in my life now? Why
am I so happy about it? What am I excited about? What am I proud about?
What am I grateful about? What am I enjoying the most? What am I committed
to doing, and how committed am I? Who do I love, and who loves me? How am I
going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I’m committed to? Where is
my intention for today? How can I add more value and help more people? Then
more existential, why am I here?”

After going through these questions, which I just answer mentally, I’ll go and do
step 3 of my morning ritual which is reviewing my values. All these are is I have
a note set up in Evernote that outlines the 8 values that I’ve worked out that
are important in my life and that I’d like to think about every day as I’m going
through my daily routine and my work. I go through these.

Usually, by that time, I’ve finished drinking the 1 liter of water at which point
I go into step 4which is I just get up and literally just do a morning stretch, the
one that you raise your hands above your head, stretch and yawn really loudly.
From there, I walk into the washroom. I wash up. I’ll brush my teeth. I’ll wash
my face. I’ll use the restroom. I’m really into health and fitness. I’ll usually also
measure my weight on the scale and write that down as well.

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Then the last phase of my morning ritual is I’ll make the bed and get changed
for the day. Even though I do work from home, I do like to make myself look
presentable every day. I try not to start my workday in pajamas. I think there is
some magic in the process of getting dressed for the day and making yourself
prepared for work, for success, for however you want to put it.

A more recent addition to my morning ritual is meditation. After I get changed,

I will sit down and do transcendental meditation for 20 minutes. I use an app
on my phone called Insight Timer for that. To get started with the day, as I
mentioned, I’ll start by looking at what I did yesterday and celebrating all the
wins that I had from yesterday. This is something I learned from a couple of my
friends, Mark and Angel. It’s basically about being grateful and appreciative
for what I completed yesterday and also being appreciative that I had the
opportunity to do those things yesterday.

I’ll then go into looking at my outcomes and tasks for the day which I usually
set up the night before. Then as the last of my morning ritual, I’ll actually
start the workday. This is usually a most important task but it could also be a
meeting because I live in Asia and typically work with people in the US. That is
pretty much my morning ritual every single day.

Zachary: Aaron, how long did it take you to get to this iteration that you’re
at now?

Aaron: I’ve been doing this for about 5 years now. It pretty much
started with the basic outline that we talked about at the beginning of this
presentation which is the water, stretching, the washroom, the breathing, the
goals and the most important task. Over time, I’ve added things. I’ve definitely
also removed things that didn’t serve any real purpose for my morning ritual.
This is the streamlined version as it sits right now.

Zachary: I just wanted to mainly ask you that because some people might
hear all that like, “How could I get into the habit of doing that? How could I
ritualize doing all these steps?” You won’t, not in the first week, not in the first
month.

Aaron: That’s true.

Zachary: It’s been 5 years. What I also really like about your morning ritual

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is how many different ones align to the various ones of breathing, meditating
and priming, as well as goals in review. You’ve got a number of ones. You’ve
really worked out a system that works well for you. On your list, you’ve got
number 3, reviewing your goals, and also number 2, your power questions, and
let’s see. number 8, you’re meditating and number 9, you’re celebrating your
yesterday’s wins.

All of these are really just aligned to get you in the right head space to have
that really highly-successful, highly-productive day. I like how you did that.
That’s amazing, that how many years in practice can really make things happen
for you. Do you feel since you’ve done this ... I know it’s probably been a long
time since you’ve started. Do you feel the difference between 5 years ago,
Aaron, and today, Aaron, with your days based on how you’ve set them up?

Aaron: Absolutely. I think one of the things that people are really
surprised about, especially when we’re traveling together or something, is how
consistently my days start. I know a lot of people have problems. Sometimes,
they will have months where they’re very productive, where they have great
days where they get a lot done. Then they’re like, “Okay, I was really productive
last month. Now this month is not going to be that great because I ‘burnt up all
my energy,’ or something like that, the previous month,” but the truth is if you
have a consistent morning ritual, one that sets you up physically, mentally and
I guess, environmentally for success, then you’re never going to have ... I don’t
want to say never, but for the most part, you will not have bad days.

It’s really hard to have a bad day when you start with your hour of power in the
morning and set yourself up for what’s going to be a great day really just by
doing some simple things first thing in the morning.

Zachary: I really like what you’re saying there because what you’re
essentially saying is that every day is a new start. It’s like a reset almost. You
had a really fantastic day. Then it ends. The next day, you just basically start all
over again. It’s like the gears start turning again in the morning by just doing
your morning ritual. Is that fair to say?

Aaron: Yeah. Actually, I think related to that is a misconception that some

people have that when you achieve a certain level of success or stability in your
life that you don’t have to do this stuff anymore. The reality is everyone does

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this stuff. All the really successful people, all the people who we look up to and
admire, they do this stuff every single day. For them and I guess for us now, it’s
just become routine. It’s just something that as soon as you wake up, boom,
you just start going through this checklist in your head, working out all these
things. Then you can start your day.

Other people only see you when you’ve gone through 6, 7, 8, 9 steps of your
morning ritual and you sit down at work but really the people who have it
figured out, the people who are consistently productive, who are consistently
successful, who have really great days, they do all these things first every single
morning. Thanh, can you tell us a bit about your particular morning ritual?

Thanh: Absolutely. I just listened to yours. I was taking notes as well. I

was like, “This is genius.” It looks so easy to do. When I was comparing it to
mine, it was pretty much the same thing. It goes back to the whole idea that if
you’re watching this and you’re thinking, “Wow, he has so many things,” just
think back to all those 6 components. It’s drinking water, stretching, using the
bathroom, breathing, some sort of meditation, goals and reviewing them and
then transitioning into your most important task.

What you’ll see is as I reveal my morning ritual, it’s that it pretty much
follows that with some minor variations but you’ll see that Aaron has those 6
components. I have them. Zack has them as well. Don’t get confused if you see
some sort of variation because, as we mentioned in the beginning, everyone
has their own morning ritual, but pretty much every successful person has
those 6 components in there.

With that out of the way, let me share what my morning ritual is. The first step
is as soon as I wake up, I go to the bathroom. I actually like to wash my face with
cold water. The reason I do this is because with cold water, I just immediately
wake up. Then as I do that and then as I wrap it up, I make my bed. That’s really
when I get started.

The second step is to drink half a liter of water. I know you’re going to hear it
just over and over and over again but we cannot stress this enough. Drinking
water is extremely important. This is something I actually got from Zack as
well is to add some lemon to it but I actually took it up a notch and actually
add apple cider vinegar to it as well. I have water with lemon and apple cider

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vinegar to make it really alkaline.

Then, number 3 is to go outside on the balcony. That’s really to get some fresh
air into my apartment and also to express some gratitude. Number 4 is to do
some simple stretches. I actually like to do a bunch of sun salutes. It’s nothing
crazy. It takes about 2, 3 minutes. It’s really just to wake up my body and to get
the blood flowing.

Number 5, and this is something a bit of a weirdo, but I actually like to do 15

push-ups. It sets the tone for the day that if I can do 15 push-ups, then I can
do everything else that comes my way. 15 push-ups doesn’t take that long. It’s
maybe 20 seconds at most. My excuse is if I don’t have time for this, I don’t
have time for anything else. If I cannot do 15 push-ups, I’m pretty much setting
myself up for failure. That’s always something I try to remind myself.

Number 6 is 10 minutes of meditation. This is just to get really focused and

ready. This is actually something I’ve learned from Tony Robbins which
is a slightly different variation of it, which is meditation combined with
visualization and also expressing gratitude.

The simple version of it is then you do 3 minutes of heavy meditation. You

breathe in, breathe out, pretty quickly for 30 seconds at a time. Then you
express 30 or I should say 3 minutes of gratitude for things that you’re just
grateful for. It could be as simple as the apartment that you live in or what
you’ve done yesterday that you were really proud of. Then the last 3 minutes is
the visualization exercise. This is where you close your eyes and visualize what
you do for the upcoming day or what you have scheduled for the upcoming
week, month or year even.

Then, the seventh step is to review my goals, so look at my goals and get
motivated on what I want to accomplish. Then, number 8 is to eat my frog or to
do my most important task. It’s the one thing that makes a difference. If there’s
only one thing I have to do that day, that’s the particular task I want to pick.
That’s what I call, “eating my frog,” based on the book by Brian Tracy.

As you can tell, all those 6 components are in there but I have a slightly
different morning ritual from Aaron and a slightly different one from Zack. Just
keep that in mind. If you can get those 6 components into your morning ritual

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and then over time create your own variation, it’s going to be super simple. I
can tell you if I can do it, you can do it as well. It’s not that hard. Because we
are going to give you all those checklists that we have personally and also a
blank checklist that you can use for your own morning ritual, it’s going to be
extremely easy to follow and implement your own morning ritual.

Zachary: Thanh, one of those things that’ll be on the checklist is the why
and actually why behind the individual steps of your morning ritual or the
individual routine that you go through. I know you have some strange whys out
there. Could you tell us about your why behind the 15 push-ups? There might
be some on the surface reasons why you do them but what’s your deeper why
behind the step number 5, 15 push-ups.

Thanh: You’re really putting me on the spot here but I think this is
important to know.

Zachary: We’re all friends here.

Thanh: I agree. I think we can just share this with everyone. 15 push-ups.
On the outside, it might look like, “Oh, Thanh is just doing a bunch of exercises.
Push-ups are really good for you. If you can do that, it sets the tone for the day.”
That’s all great. It definitely works. I know that if I can do 15 push-ups, I know
that I can do anything else that comes my way. 15 push-ups is not that hard.
You know that if you cannot do 15 push-ups, you’re really out of shape. You
really need to start exercising but 15 push-ups, no big deal. It takes about 20
seconds. If you can do that, you can do everything else.

Now when I was writing down on the surface level why I want to do this, it was
like, “I want to start squeezing in some exercise more,” but that’s our natural
inclination to express whenever we want to answer a question so this surface
level answer but if you go 1 step further and really go beyond that superficial
answer, you’ll start to figure out why this is important to you, really that key
motivator behind this. When I started asking myself, “15 push-ups. Why am I
putting this on there,” I really came to the conclusion that I know that if I can
do 15 push-ups, I feel masculine. I feel like I’m in alignment with my masculine
identity. I feel manly.

I feel that I can do anything. I feel like I have strength. I can feel like I can do

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what comes my way and just take care of it. That’s really why I do 15 push-ups.
It’s because it gives me that identity, that feeling, that sense of confidence, that
if I can do 15 push-ups, I can do whatever comes my way, whatever important
task I need to do. Even if it’s something that’s so difficult to do, I know that
because I can do 15 push-ups and I feel that sense of confidence about myself
that I can do anything I want.

Zachary: Thank you for sharing that, Thanh. To the people out there
listening, you don’t have to tell this to hundreds of people like Thanh just did.
Your why can be kept secret to yourself. If you’ve got ones that other people
might not understand, that’s all right. You can still write them down. You can
still know what they are in your heart of hearts and manage to start your
day intentionally with the real reasons why you want to start that. I guess I’ll
dive into mine. I’m the last one. Again, it will have all the 6 components that
you’ve seen so often. These are just my iterations of it. You can make your
own iterations as well. Like Aaron and Thanh, I start with drinking water. I got
them on the lemon water craze. I’m really glad I did. One of the reasons Thanh
mentioned was to get your pH balance on order. Most people with common
diets actually are a little bit acidic. If you can get your pH balance to be a little
bit more towards the middle at 7 out of 14, you function better. You get sick
less often. You think more clearly. That’s 1 reason behind lemon water.

Another is Vitamin C. It helps prevent you from getting sick too often. Another
reason is that the micronutrients in lemons actually scrub your gut. Drinking
lemon water first thing in the morning cleans out your gut for the rest of
the day. The only reason why Aaron who mentioned lime if you were paying
attention, the only reason that Aaron does that instead of limes instead of
lemons is because where he lives, lemons are much harder to come by. He has
to settle for the lime but he would do lemon if he was able.

Aaron: Absolutely.

Zachary: One thing where Thanh and I save some time is we’ve found some
products out there that have already 100% not pasteurized, not stored, no
sugar-added, lemon squeezed for us. That saves us a little bit of time in the
morning before we’re doing a lot of chopping and things like that. I think all 3
of us set up our water the night before so we don’t even have to think about it.

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That’s one thing. I always make sure the night before that I fill up ... I actually fill
up a 32-ounce bottle of lemon water and set it next to my bed. I usually end up
waking up a few times throughout the night and just swigging a few. I usually
end up with 16 ounces in the morning. Doing that first thing really manages to
wake you up. That’s my main reason. I know there’s health benefits to it but for
me, it wakes me up. I know I’m hydrated. I know I’m doing the healthy thing.

The second part is to take supplements. All of us take supplements. I just made
this part of my morning ritual. The 3 that I never miss are Vitamin D, fish oil
and a probiotic. These are things that I through some research found that are
missing in my diet. I add them in there. The next part is a bullet-proof coffee.
I’m trying to be a little more Asian-efficient these days and mixing tea in there
as well, green tea in there as well, but I’ve been using bullet-proof coffee for
the last 4 months

It’s a newer ritual for myself but what bullet-proof coffee is is normal coffee or
you can buy a specialized blend of coffee. I just use normal coffee and unsalted,
grass-fed butter with MCT oil. MCT stands for medium-chain triglyceride.
What bullet-proof allows you to do is for me not drink as much coffee because
of all the fat that you put into your coffee with the MCT oil and the grass-fed
butter allows the caffeine to be slowly released throughout the morning and
early afternoon.

It also is a way if you are looking to get into fasting which was a ritual that
Aaron introduced me to that I was crying out for a few months. If you’re
looking into fasting, this is a way to get your calories in for the day, not feel
hungry and still do that in a relatively healthy way rather than just being
hungry or relying on high-carb food to get you through the morning.

The next is a stretch. This one was from Thanh. I don’t know. It just took me a
while before my stretch started becoming a habit. What finally got it for me
was I realized, again like the water, that stretching really allowed me to wake
myself up in the morning. It didn’t have to go crazy. I have a foam roller. I roll on
that a few times. I do a few sun salutations. That not only allows me to limber
up and be a better-functioning human but it wakes me up as well.

Then I move into a 10-minute meditation. The app I generally use for
meditation is called Head Space. You can download it for free. Then you can

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pay for a subscription if you’d would like different types of meditation. I also do
other guided meditations that I find from time to time if I want to do something
new. I also do another meditation if I don’t have my app available or if I have
limited time. I just count my breaths in and out to 10 5 times. This meditation
takes only 3 minutes. It’s good if you’re running behind and you don’t have that
10 to 20 minutes to really devote to your meditation.

Then after my meditation. I make my bed. I feel like it sets the tone for the day.
Like Aaron and Thanh, I also work from home. Having an organized and tidy
environment is also important for me. Then I review my goals. Here is another
ritual that I knew it was important and that I really wanted to get settled in my
life but I haven’t been doing my morning rituals for 5 years. I’m about a year
into my morning ritual routine. I was having a hard time with it.

I used a little hack from a site called “If Then Then That,” so IFTTT.com that
sends me through a text message a link to my Evernote that has all my goals
in it. Now all I have to do is it’s set for 8:00AM. Every morning at 8:00AM I
click on that link. I review my goals. I haven’t missed 1 since I set up that. If you
need to rely on a little automation to get your morning rituals going, that is
completely fine at least in my book.

Next I move into journalling. We all influence each other here but Aaron is the
one who really got me into journalling. We’ve talked about this a number of
times before. I’ve iterated the questions that I’ve put on my morning journal
but currently as we speak my questions are how has the resistance shown up
today? This comes from the book The War of Art. The resistance is anything
that’s really preventing myself from doing the things that I need to do.

Often it will be I feel tired or I’ll make some sort of excuse up of why I don’t
need to be writing this article. I should be browsing the internet instead. I write
those things down to bring a little bit more awareness to when I’m not doing
the things that I really want to do that will bring me my long-term success.
The next question that I ask myself is, “How is Nikida amazing?” Nikida’s my
girlfriend. I’m trying to remember every day how she’s amazing. I also am
looking forward to the 100th of reasons why she’s amazing so I can show it to
her some day if I ever make her mad.

The next is, “What did I learn and read?” One of my goals is to learn something

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new every day. I put that on there so I can journal that. Then I ask myself,
“What did I do for exercise?” This is just to make sure that I’m exercising every
day. It also chronicles what I’ve been doing with myself. Right now, I’m in the
middle of a 31-day cold shower challenge. I ask myself, “How was the cold
shower?” It’s been getting some funny results. I tend to scream a lot. I’m not
going to sugar-coat it. It’s embarrassing. That’s one that’s only going to be on
there for a month.

Then I ask what I was focused on in the morning, the day and the night. That is
my journalling. That’s number 8. Like Aaron, I have 11 steps. My number 9 is
actually my most important task which is writing. There’s always some sort of
writing that I need to do either with an article or the podcast. That’s my most
important task. I always do one pomodoro of writing in the morning, so just a
25-minute writing session. Then I go outside, walk my dog.

A weird one that I’ve been doing for about 6 months now is getting inverted.
I do a handstand. It’s just a way to get some blood to my head. I don’t know.
I’ve always wanted to learn to do handstands and walk on my hands. I decided
to throw that in there. It’s been on there ever since. That’s mine. That’s all of
our morning routines. I think now a good thing to move into are some sticking
points.

I talked about how I was having a hard time reviewing my goals every day. I just
would forget to do it or I would skip it because I just didn’t feel like doing it.
Let’s talk about some of those sticking points, maybe a few more stories that
we have with it and some common ones that we can overcome. I don’t know
who wants to dive in. Maybe Thanh you can talk about a few of the common
sticking points that you know with starting your morning ritual.

Thanh: The first one is probably the most common one which is just
not being very consistent with this. There could be various reasons for this.
We’ll go into some of those a little bit later on but I think the first one is you
really have to, again, ask yourself this 3-letter word, why, W-H-Y. Why is this
important to you? If you can clarify this to yourself, then it’s going to be really
easy to be very consistent with your morning ritual.

An example of this is if you read someone else’s morning ritual, oftentimes you
read something interesting. You’ll see that this person does meditation. This

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person drinks this type of drink. You’ll logically think, “Hey, this make sense. I
could totally do that.” You see yourself picturing doing it. You’re like, “This is
going to be easy,” but then when you actually do it, it’s not that easy. The reason
is is that you don’t clarify to yourself why this is important to you.

If you see someone else meditating for 10 minutes and you’re constantly hear
it, you’re like, “This is important,” but you can’t do it, you have to ask yourself,
“Why is meditation important to me? Why is this important to me specifically?”
If you can really clarify that for yourself, then it’s going to be really so much
easier to stick to it. That’s why I said earlier when Zack asked me, “Why do you
do 15 push-ups,” superficially you might answer, “I’m trying to squeeze in some
exercise,” but when you really dig in it’s because you want to feel strength.

You want to feel a sense of confidence, that you seek to do whatever you
want to do. If you can do that for your morning ritual and then also for every
single step that you do, then it’s going to be so much easier. Then everyone can
literally do it for morning ritual. It’s not going to be that hard at all.

Aaron: Let me share a story about a particular step that I didn’t really do
much until this year. Zack and Thanh have been telling me for a long time to do
meditation. My take was always, “I’m a pretty quiet guy. I do a lot of stuff on
my own like go to the gym and workout. I don’t take classes or anything. I don’t
need to do meditation.” Earlier this year I was talking to another one of our
friends. He was telling me that ever since he started doing meditation that he
basically gets by on 4 to 6 hours of sleep a night.

As someone who is pretty obsessed about optimizing as much of my day and

time as possible I’m like, “Wow. If I can sleep 2 hours less a night, that would
be fantastic.” He credits it to 3 things, to exercise, to bullet-proof coffee and to
meditation. I was like, “I’m not a huge fan of coffee. I already do the exercise.
Let me try this meditation thing.” My reason why for adding it into the morning
ritual and for basically sticking with it every day since I started doing it was
that I wanted that extra 2 hours of day to do stuff as opposed to have to spend
it on sleep.

As it turns out, it did not lower my sleep time, not by 2 hours, but by a good half
an hour to an hour every day. I picked up all these other benefits when Thanh
and Zack have been telling me about for a very long time which I never really

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realized, some things like peace of mind, more mindfulness better-focused but
I guess the take-away I had is when it comes to reasons why, the reasons why I
really pass them onto you, we can tell you about all of our reasons why we do
certain steps. We can give you the science.

We can give you the case studies and the examples but you really need to find
a reason why that resonates with you, not only for doing the morning ritual
but also for each individual step that you may decide to add into your morning
ritual.

Thanh: I think that’s a fantastic example. I’ve been telling you abou this for
years. You’re like, “I just work out at the gym. That’s my form of meditation.” I’m
going to get to you at some point but then luckily 1 of our mutual friends got
you into it. What Aaron just shared is a really good example of you really have
to personalize this. At the beginning, we gave you the 6 steps. Those are the
universal steps that every single morning ritual should have.

If you can clarify each step of why this is important to you, great. Then as
you add variation to it, just remember to keep adding that why. I know, Zack,
you’ve been doing this as well, that I’m pretty sure from when we were hanging
out you were sharing about your morning ritual and when you added your
why component to it that it just became stickier. Can you share that with the
audience as well?

Zachary: Yeah. On both the automation things that I do made it stickier

but really understanding especially the health. I knew that I want to just have
focus and clarity every day, that I want to be able to be at my desk mentally
so I can help others and to help myself to have the most productive life. We
were talking about that when I was visiting you. Really getting clear on all of
the different reasons behind each of the steps and remembering those was
something that took it up another notch.

I knew this was something that I was doing for me. I wasn’t just doing it because
I was trying to check the boxes. I was doing it because I knew it would bring
me to the place that I wanted to be. Not only that but what Aaron was talking
about before. It allowed me to stay in that place where I want to be. Maybe if
you have a routine and you do it for a few months, you might be feeling really
like, “I’ve been doing great. I can slack off for a while,” but not really.

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You don’t want to think about it that way. You want to think about it, “I’ve been
dedicated to this. I’ve really been doing the things that I need to be doing for
myself. I’m going to keep going.” That’s what I believe we were talking about
that helped me take it to the next level. One thing also, and I believe, Aaron,
you were the one who helped me out a little bit more with this, is what to do if I
fall off the wagon but also what to do if I wake up late. You’ve been doing yours
5 years.

It doesn’t happen to you very often but maybe it was your comforting voice
that actually allowed me to have a little bit more self-forgiveness in this area.
Maybe you could talk a little bit about that, what to do if you wake up late or
maybe missed 1 or 2 days in a row.

Aaron: Sure. If you wake up late, you just do your morning ritual when
you wake up pretty much. I think for most situations, that will be perfectly fine.
After you’ve done your morning ritual for say a month, you know roughly how
long it takes. If you wake up late, well, you just add the amount of time it takes
to do your morning ritual to the start of your day, the time you wake up. That’s
the time you’ll be ready to go for the day so to speak.

I guess the one thing with that is if you have say an early morning appointment
that you need to get to, just one, try not to wake up late and two, if you do wake
up late and you need to skip a couple of steps, I would just condense down the
morning ritual into the 6 basic steps that we’ve talked about multiple times in
this program and just do those. Then get out the door. Then the next day, make
sure you get up on time. Go through the morning ritual as usual.

If you skip a couple of days or you miss a couple of days, it’s really not a big
deal. Just make sure that the next day when you wake up when the sun comes
up, you do your morning ritual as per normal. This happens to everyone,
especially if you’re traveling across 13, 14 different time zones or something,
when morning is actually gets a little bit screwy. You tend to miss a morning
ritual in between somewhere but when you land or whenever the next day is,
just do your morning ritual as per normal. There’s absolutely nothing wrong
with that. It’s perfectly fine.

Zachary: I think that’s the last sticky point we want to talk about before
we close things up, doing your rituals, your morning rituals, while on the road,

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while traveling. This is one of the more common sticking points. I think it was
the question that we got the most. When we were doing some research for
this, we reached out to the Asian Efficiency readers. That was their biggest
stumbling block. They would go on a vacation. All of their great work, all of
their great rituals, would just fall apart.

There’s some reasons behind that. There’s certain parts to rituals. We’ve
actually broken it down into 4 different parts of the rituals. When you’re on
the road, 2 of those parts are missing. Some ways to gain those back is to one,
and it’s going to sound silly and it’s going to sound simple but it really works,
especially in the morning when you’re groggy, you’re not going to be able to
think of all these steps right off the bat, is to use a checklist.

Using a checklist is just the exact routine that you want to have down and all
of the things that you need. For example, my morning routine I require butter,
MCT oil and some supplements. I need to make sure I pack those or have those
available where I’m going if I’m going to maintain my ritual. Another thing too is
maybe preparing some things. Thanh and I were just talking about how I visited
them. He doesn’t drink coffee.

I didn’t really have that coffee option in the mornings. I just used an alternative.
I use tea or I just went on a walk into Starbucks but I didn’t have my normal
bullet-proof coffee. That was okay. I was just okay with paring down my
morning ritual a little bit more. That just goes into just simplifying it and
breaking it down to the basics that Aaron just talked about.

The thing to remember here too is some people might just say, “You’re on
vacation. Just skip it or you’re busy on a business trip. You don’t need to worry
about your morning ritual,” but the analogy basically I’d like to make is with
muscles. If you are gone on vacation and you decide not to work out and just sit
around on the beach the whole time if you’ve been working out, if you’ve had
a very good ritual of exercising, your muscles aren’t going to stay where they
were.

The same with stretching. If you stop stretching for a week or 2 or if you go on
a trip every month and you drop that stretching ritual, you’re not going to have
those compounding results you would if you maintain a solid morning ritual
every day. That’s the way that you can think about it like, “These things still

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need to be done. They can be pared down and simplified but they still need to
be done.” The way to do that is just to have those checklists ready.

I think we’re about to wrap things up. Thanh, maybe we can finish things with
some action steps so people can walk away knowing exactly what they need to
do after this video finishes.

Thanh: The first thing we recommend you to do is to use the checklist

that we’ve provided you. As part of this starter kit, you’re going to have a list,
a checklist, that you can use. You’re going to have an example checklist of each
of our morning rituals but also a blank one that you can use to fill in and create
your own morning ritual. Remember, we have those 6 basic steps. Fill those in.

Then just follow it to the tee. Bring it with you so you can print it out, put it in
your favorite app or wherever you think is most suitable to get you to use it.
Use that particular checklist. Now if you want to get faster results, you want to
have some more coverage of how we do things and some actionable steps that
you can take to make it even better and faster if you haven’t joined the Rituals
course yet, you can definitely join there as well in which we cover extensively
on how we do everything else.

We cover some other rituals as well but just remember, use that checklist. We
created this just for you so that you can get your morning ritual all sorted out
so you really take the thinking out of the process. You just follow it 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6. You’re ready to go to take on your day and get started and be super Asian
Efficient.

Zachary: Thank you for that, Thanh. Everyone out there, thank you for
watching the Morning Ritual Starter Kit. Go out there and get started.

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