Crisis Proof Your Day

This is the Momentum Podcast.

If you're a leader in your business, then you're the most important person on the team every single day. The way that you show up on a daily basis is going to be reflected and received by your team. If you take care of yourself first, you're going to be able to take care of your team and be able to move things forward.

Today more than ever, as leaders, we need to be aware, present, and be able to make the right decisions. In this episode of the Momentum Podcast, Alex is going to show you exactly what it takes to create a system in your life that'll prevent crisis from doing any damage to your business. I hope you enjoy.

Alex: I'm Alex Charfen and this is The Momentum Podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum. So we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution.

Sure we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how.

While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority. The few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real.

We are the evolutionary hunters. Clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be.

Today I want to talk about a concept of crisis proofing your day. I want to show you and I want to share with you how you can crisis proof your day, but first I want to share with you where this concept comes from. When I go out and speak to entrepreneurs, one of the questions I ask is, who's the most important person in your business? If I'm in a room at about a hundred people, I'll say, who's the most important person in your business? Yell it out for me. People will say things like, "The customer, the last person we sold, my team, my assistant." Here's the right answer. The most important person in your business, if you're the entrepreneur in charge is you.

It is always you. It always will be you and it's hard for us as entrepreneurs to say that. Let's just take a minute and acknowledge that. It's hard for us as entrepreneurs to say I'm the most important person in the business. It's actually hard for us as entrepreneurs to say, I need more help than anybody in the business. It's really hard for us as entrepreneurs to say, this business is set up to provide protection and support for me. Protection for the things that I do well and support everywhere else, but that's really what business is all about.

like this, we are just less than a few weeks into this crisis and already people are having massive challenges. People are having health challenges, mental health challenges, they're having a hard time isolating being alone. I heard a celebrity recently said this week that the worst thing that we do to people in society is solitary confinement and now our entire team is in solitary confinement. We are in solitary confinement.

As leaders we need to do everything we can to crisis proof our day. To make sure that we are grounded, that we are not reacting. That our mind is ready and agile and ready to make decisions. Here's how you can crisis proof of your day and I know this sounds like maybe you've heard it before and maybe you've had this suggestion before, but now more than ever a morning routine will change your life through this crisis. Here's why.

Let's get real about what's happened. The world has shifted. There has been a tectonic shift beneath our feets, beneath our feets, beneath our feet. The market has changed. I've talked to a lot of people that are waiting for everything to go back to normal. I want you to understand something. There is no normal anymore.

We as entrepreneurs are going to get up every day and create the new normal because the world we knew no longer exists and if that's too strong or if that's frightening or if that's anxiety provoking, I want you to know I do all those things on purpose because I want you as entrepreneurs, as my tribe, as the people who follow me to understand that this is where we are and there is nothing that is going to stop that.

Already in just the early days of this crisis, we have lost massive numbers in the stock market. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people have lost their jobs. The entire world is going to shift. There's going to be changes in industries that have been teetering on the brink. The retail landscape is going to change. The hospitality landscape is going to change. The way we interact as human beings is going to change and this is going to in a lot of cases, create permanent and lasting change.

What do we need to do as a leader when the whole world is shifting and changing and morphing around us? We need to create stability for ourselves. We need to make sure that the first hour of our day is the best hour of our day because here's what happens to leaders in a crisis. Let's just get very real about what happens to you and me in a crisis. One, we're going to have to make more decisions. In fact, let this wash over you for a second. I don't know what day the crisis officially started for you, but for us it was a few weeks ago. If I look back at the time since the crisis kind of started and where we are now on a daily basis, I had been making infinitely more decisions. To say that I'm making more decisions is an understatement. I've been making a ton more decisions every day and here's what happens to you and I as leaders in a crisis.

When we're making more decisions, if we're not putting gas in the tank, if we're not calming things down, if we're not quieting things down, if we're not making process and routine easier in our lives, here's what happens. All of that decision making leads to decision making fatigue and decision making fatigue devastating for an entrepreneur because once decision making fatigue sets in, it's hard to make decisions. It can feel challenging and sticky like you're not doing the right thing.

It's hard to understand what to do next. Decision making fatigue will crush you in a crisis and here's why a morning routine will help so much with decision making fatigue. When you get up in the morning and you have a morning routine and all of it's laid out for you, here's mine. I use it every single day. I don't just talk about this stuff. I use it on a daily basis and when you have a morning routine that is written and you just get up and follow it, all the decisions are made for you.

If you include in that morning routine things like hydration, and movement, and breathing, meditating, calming down, doing a break, breathing exercise, going outside for natural light, eating the right types of food. Here's what you will know. Your morning routine will set you up completely so that the first hour of your day creates the foundation for the rest of the day.

As leaders, if we have a routine, it will calm us down, put us in our bodies, and here's another major effect it will have. When you have a morning routine and you are not being driven by getting up and getting after it, you will lower the adrenaline response. You will lower the cortisol response in your body right now. The world's in crisis, adrenaline and cortisol are the crisis chemicals that our body makes. They both help us in the short term but are very destructive in the longterm. We want to switch from adrenaline and cortisol to dopamine and serotonin.

Having a morning routine that you check off along the way. Having a morning routine that you actually go through and that you focus on will create dopamine and serotonin. It will create clarity. It will create momentum. It will help you move forward. Doing this is not an option for leadership right now. Doing this as a requirement for anyone in leadership. Here's where this is going to affect you.

Number one, for you, when you get up in the morning and you have a morning routine, if you've never had one, you don't know the freedom of routine. Here's what's interesting. A lot of people think, oh, I don't want a checklist that's constraining. I'm going to have to do the same thing every day. It's going to get boring. All of those things are right. It creates appropriate constraint. You do the same thing every day. It gets so boring that you can do it brainlessly.

What does that mean? It frees your mind to be creative, to think about solutions, to think about the situation we're in. To create your next steps. Has the world shifted? Absolutely. What will happen in this crisis like has happened in every crisis in history? Entrepreneurs will rise above the noise, identify the opportunity, go out and make it happen, and take the world with us.

So [inaudible 00:08:37] this journey, if you're with me, if you're ready to go out and make the solutions, make things go... Move things forward. If you can't turn it off and you don't know why anyone would want to, this is our time. We are being called to help the world in ways we never have been and this is time for us to step up. Taking care of yourself is going to help you do that. Your relationship with yourself, your presence, your awareness will be boosted through a morning routine.

Now second, this is important, especially in a crisis. If you have a team, if you have contractors that work with you, employees that work with you, if you have people that are helping you achieve what you achieve, you owe it to them to create a morning routine and do it every day because here's what we need to know as leaders. The way we show up, especially in a crisis like this, our team is going to show up just like us, only a little more.

So if we're frustrated and angry and upset, they're going to show up frustrated and angry and upset. If we're showing up, calm, clear, and collected, they're going to be almost as calm, clear, and collected as we are. How do we help our team? We go through a morning routine. We get grounded. We show up in a way that they can see us as grounded.

Remember, you're one of the top two or three most important people in your team's lives. If you show up unhinged, and upset, and frustrated, and accelerated and they can see that they're going to read into that, they're going to absorb that. You do not want your team upset and accelerated right now. If you go through a morning routine and you keep yourself calm, and present, and aware, your team will do the same. They will reflect you as a leader and that's going to help your entire company move forward.

Right now, there are leaders out there that don't have routine. That don't have clarity, that don't have a communication structure with their team. They don't know what to do and their teams are panicked. Create a morning routine. Get grounded every day and remove panic from your team. Help them get rid of panic, help them feel more safe, feel more present, feel more aware. Help them go into the future like I do with my team every morning. I tell them, "Hey, this crisis will end and when it ends we are going to... and on the way to it ending, we are going to help every entrepreneur we can. Create solutions, get into momentum, make things happen, and move the world forward. That is where we are going."

When I show up to my huddle, I've gone through my morning routine, I've done all the things I know that I need to prep myself physiologically, cognitively, and chemically for the day. I've been on a walk with my kids. By the time my team sees me, I am ready to go. Your team should have that same privilege.

Then now the third place, one for you a morning routine is going to be a game changer, for your team it's going to be a game changer. For your business this is crucial. Even if it never has been before. If you've never considered doing the morning routine before, now is the time to sit down and write one out and get clear about your morning routine.

In fact, you can download mine. Go to morning.charfen.com, morning.charfen.com it might have a little bit of our old branding on it. We haven't used this in forever, but if you go to morning.charfen.com you can download a couple of videos and my morning routine example so you can see exactly how to document this and have a morning routine for yourself because here's what it will do for your business.

If you clear the decision making you have to do in the morning, if you make it brainless so that you can just get through it. One, you'll start thinking about your business in the morning and a totally different way. You'll have clarity and brain power that you normally don't have.

Second, as you create a morning routine and you stop making all of those decisions, that decision making capability will come back to you. At a time of crisis, we are going to be making more decisions on a daily basis than a lot of people make in an entire year. If you're an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Most people don't have to make the types of decisions we make. Most people show up and decisions are made for them. In order to be a confident, and strong, and successful leader throughout this crisis, a morning routine will get you back in your body, present and aware, and capable of showing up in the way that you should.

If you haven't ever created a morning routine, here's your opportunity and I just want to share with you. This is the coaching we give our highest level coaching members. People pay us tens of thousands of dollars a year and in our platform there's an entire section on how to create your morning routine. It's very similar to what you'll get if you go to morning.charfen.com. Here's why we teach every one of our members to create a morning routine.

We watch it. When they come in there's stress, there's a lack of awareness, there's a lack of presence, there's far less process in people's lives than they need, and the reason we use a morning routine right up front is because if we can show people how to add process into their day to day every day, here's what happens. That process shows a massive, or creates a massive amount of momentum in the mornings. Once you've created momentum with one checklist, you can't wait to do it again. I want you to know something. Creating a morning routine won't just help you today. It won't just help you with what's going on. It will actually help you recognize that process is a game changer in your life, in your business, even in your relationship. I always joke that my wife tells people, processing your marriage may not sound sexy, but you end up having a lot more sex because you communicate so much better when there's process.

If you haven't yet, create a morning routine, write it down, check it off on a daily basis. Go through it so that it's real. Understand what it is that you need to do every morning so that you make the first hour of your day, the best hour of your day, and go to morning.charfen.com, download my morning routine.

Even though that sales letter doesn't say this is a crisis morning routine. I want you to know something. It will work for this crisis. It will work for anytime that you are in high stress and if you just want to optimize and show up as the absolute best leader you can be. A morning routine is one of the foundational parts of helping you do that. Go to morning.charfen.com, download my routine, and crisis proof your day. Thanks everybody. I look forward to talking to you again tomorrow.