First Hour, Best Hour

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the Momentum Podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot diggers, 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're 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 under 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.

First hour, best hour. This is a concept I've taught high producing entrepreneurs for over 20 years. The concept of getting up in the morning and having a pre-programmed, intentional setup, morning routine that you go through on a daily basis to the point where your morning routine is like an exercise in getting things done. It's like an exercise in productivity. It's an exercise in efficiency and getting up in the morning and making everything that you need to support you for that day happen in the first hour or hour and a half that you're up.

This is how most people start their day these days. They get up, they roll over, they usually grab a phone, look at email and start reacting. That reactivity becomes pre-programmed into our psyche. We know when we wake up, we're going to be reacting. We're going to be looking at things we're going to be doing things that we have to react to.

When you get up in the morning and you check email first thing in the day, I want you to understand you are proactively making the decision to let the people on the other side of the email, manage your productivity for the day. We all know how important early morning email is, like, overnight. What did you get something from Costco, an email from Groupon, some other promotion and emails that you don't really need to look at. Yet we start our day almost obsessively getting up and looking at things we should react to.

There's a better way. If you make the first hour of your day the best hour of your day, you change everything. See if you get up and you proactively, instead of reactively, you proactively avoid electronics for the first hour you're up, take care of the things that are going to give you momentum for the day. The basis of physiological momentum are the following four things breathing, hydration, nutrition and movement.

So if you get up in the morning and you create a morning routine where you breathe, you meditate, you take on oxygen, you hyper oxygenate, you get your body physiologically ready for the day. Then you hydrate. You don't just hydrate you, hyper hydrate. Go to getthirstynow.com and take the 10 day natural thirst challenge so you learn how to hydrate in the morning and stay hydrated all day.

You move. Get up in the morning and go out for your primal walk. Listen to my podcast on why that is such a chemically valuable way to get your body physiologically, cognitively and chemically ready for the day. And then nutrition have a hyper nutrition shake or a green smoothie, something that loads your body with the nutrition you need to get through the day.

When you get up in the morning, and rather than reacting to a whole series of things like the vast majority of people in the world do today, and instead, you choose to get out of the crowd to be proactive, avoid electronics get up and support your body and your physiology, everything in your life will change.

I recently had a conversation with a CEO that I work with, Emily Hirsch who is absolutely brilliant. She's I think 23 or 24 years old. She runs a multimillion dollar company. She's a mother of two. She's a committed wife. She's like a superhuman. I mean, I don't really understand how she does it all. And we were recently talking about morning routine. And she was telling me that before she learned this concept of first hour, best hour, putting together the things that are going to physiologically support you in the morning, she thought she was doing the right thing.

She would wake up in bed lying next to her daughter and start checking email in bed and Facebook messages in bed because at least she was "productive". What we don't realize when we do that is that we are setting our mentality, our consciousness up to be reactive. We immediately set ourselves up to be managed by the rest of the world. We eliminate any type of productivity because we're now reacting to what we're receiving.

And this was interesting and talking to Emily. She now avoids the phone completely. She connects with her kids and her daughter and her son and her husband every morning. She drinks a hyper nutrition shake. She moves functionally. She breathes. She hyper hydrates. And here's what she told me. She said, "You know what's weird is, I'm not being business productive in the first hour or hour and a half of the day, but I feel connected to my daughter. I've alleviated the mother's guilt that I have. It makes me feel better about what I'm doing and I find that I get way more done every day."

Emily's aware. She's hyper aware. She's incredible, and I loved listening to her reaction to this because so many of us have this feeling, like if we give up any minute of productivity, if we're not connected and on and making something happen, then we're not really creating momentum. And it's so counterintuitive to say, "I'm not going to react in the morning. I'm not going to join the crowd. I'm going to pull away from what everybody else does. And instead I'm going to go through a morning routine where I completely and totally support myself." You would be one of the few. If you do this. You'll be like Emily. Creating productivity in a way that most people don't even understand how.

Because here's what happens. If you get up in the morning and you start to react to everybody in the morning. And that's what you do all day. You are going to have a functionally reactive day. You're going to be reacting all the time. You're going to be trying to figure out what happened to your day because you've now conditioned yourself to get up every single morning and react all day long.

Now, here's the opposite of that. If you get up in the morning and you're proactive, and you avoid electronics, and you connect and you hydrate you breathe, you take on nutrition, you've now set yourself up to have an increased percentage of productivity for the rest of the entire day. Rather than getting up and reacting and getting some "productivity" in that first hour by checking email or doing something else, you are proactively setting yourself up for success.

Any athlete that plays a pro sport knows that they have to proactively set themselves up for success. They have to hydrate, they have to eat, they have to rest, they have to be ready to go out and execute that game day. Well for entrepreneurs, people like you and I, we only have game days. For people like us, every day is a game day. Every day is an opportunity. Every day is ready cash, let's go out and spend it the best way we possibly can. And your life will shift completely. As soon as you put a morning routine in place where you cut off reactivity and you start training yourself, your mind, your body, the chemical composition of how you exist, you start rewiring it to be proactive.

My morning routine is relatively intense. I wake up, I put on eye protection, I get my physiology metrics recorded. I rinse my mouth so I get rid of any bacteria from the night before and this is all written down. I actually put checks next to each box on the sheet of paper when I go through this. I hyper hydrate, which means I take on 16 ounces or more of water. Usually for me, it's closer to the 30 or 40. So, I know I'm connecting my mind and body. I have my hyper nutrition shake or green smoothie. And then I go into planning and solitude, which is about a 20 minute period where I set up my day. I look at what I want to get done. I review my vision, the goals that I have for myself, for my company. I look at my weekly commitments. I review my calendar and then I asked myself, what's my intention for the day? What do I want to get out of the day? Then I asked myself, why was I uncomfortable the day before? So, I start alleviating those things and I eliminate discomfort in my life. Then I review the day before and I create a to do list and then select the top three items that I know will get done.

Then I asked myself, what should I do and what should someone else do? And I asked for help immediately with clear outcomes. When I'm done with planning, I hyper hydrate again. Then I take the supplements that I should take on a full stomach. Then I do my daily alignment with my wife. This is usually 6:00am. Cadey and I sit down 15 or 20 minutes, and we align. We ask each other, what's going on? What happened the day before? And where can I support you? And I asked her where can I support her? So, that we can create as much momentum as we possibly can as a couple.

Then we wake up our daughters. We go out on our primal walk, which is a 20 minute walk outside either in functional shoes or barefoot. I do my primal squats, which you should listen to the episode on primal squats, but it's squatting all the way down to a squat position with the heels elevated so that your heels are touching the ground. You might have to do it on the downhill.

Then I finish my planning and solitude. And once we get back from our walk, I hyper hydrate again. I'll do any type of workout or physiology that I'm going to do that day. Jump in my sauna for 20 minutes. Take a cold shower. Do some primal foot care, which is moisturizing and taking care of my feet. And then I'm done with my morning routine.

When I'm done with this, I've done more for my body, for my family, for my life, for my momentum and for my relationship than most people will do in a week. And I do it every single day.

What would happen in your life if you approached each day with that level of intention? What would happen in your life if you started every morning executing at that level? Because here's what happens when, I get through my morning routine, productivity is at an all-time high. I feel fully engaged and alive. My mind and my body are connected like crazy and I'm ready to take on the day.

How would your life change if you did the exact same thing? You can start tomorrow morning. In fact you can download my morning routine right now. Go to morning.charfen.com. Morning.charfen.com.

When I studied successful people, the discussion of routine and morning routines and preparation and putting the right things in place to be able to execute, was nonstop. When you look at the lives of successful entrepreneurs throughout history, they leaned on routines. They relied on routines. They counted on routines to make it so that they could actually achieve.

And as entrepreneurs today, we have this incredible opportunity to set up each day proactively so that we can go out and create as much success as possible.

So tomorrow morning for you, before you get up and react, before you reach for the phone, before you get on electronics, ask yourself, how do you take care of yourself? How do you take care of the four pillars of physiological momentum, breathing, hydration, nutrition, and movement? How do you get together with your family and align with your wife or your significant other, connect with your kids? And then go out and have one of the most productive days you ever had.

If you want to use my morning routine, like I said, go now to morning.charfen.com and don't wait. It's made for you. It's ready. If you don't have the time to create a morning routine. If you're thinking, "Oh, I'll do this in a few weeks." Download mine and use it. There's no reason you shouldn't. Thousands of people are using it already. It's there in a PDF that you can modify ... you can download in a PDF. You can modify it, you can change it, you can make it your own, but at least it will give you a template to start with.

Because when I coach, the highest producing entrepreneurs on the planet, when I talk to people about the levels of success that are extraordinary, that are uncommon, hitting 10, 20, 30, $100,000,000 run rates, one of the first conversations I have with them as morning routine. Because if you're an entrepreneur who believes that you can go out and create massive momentum. If you know somewhere in your heart, somewhere in the back of your mind that you are meant for more and meant to create massive outcomes in the world, then the reality is you have to learn how to take care of yourself on a daily basis. Keep yourself out of reactivity. Stay mind-body connected. Grounded, present and aware and ready to take on the world.

The best way I know how to do that is to create a morning routine. Execute it daily. Increase your confidence levels every single morning that you do it and create massive momentum. Take a minute right now. Go to morning.charfen.com, download my morning routine, and tomorrow morning, maybe the most productive you've ever had.