“You are what you repeatedly do.” – Aristotle
This quote got me thinking about “Who am I?” and “What was I doing over and over that led me to this point?” When I first asked myself these questions a few years ago, I recognized that I was half alive; no intentional practices were put into place, and the values I “believed in” weren’t consistently demonstrated because I was “too busy trying to make it happen.” Life was happening to me, and at the time, everything else was the culprit – except me of course. I was forcing everything. I was running on autopilot instead of on purpose.
When I was over that lifestyle once and for all, I decided to narrow down how I wanted life to feel and look. I started out general. I wanted to feel more joy and I wanted to experience [more] success – which I later defined on more specific terms of my own. So joy and success it was… that’s who I was setting out to be. Next, I had to decide what I was going to repeatedly do to “get to that happy place.” Over time, I accumulated quite a few practices and resources to live a more full life, but I started to experience my shift because I stuck to one thing that I knew would yield more results towards my personal development mission. That one thing was my morning routine.
From my days as a student-athlete, I had every minute of the day organized to ensure optimal performance in all of my tasks and activities. I figured now that I’m “adulting,” and in the workforce without the same level of accountability that I had grown used to, my route to joy and success didn’t have to be different. So to plug into the joy and success I wanted to advance, I began to implement the morning routine I adopted during my time as a student-athlete which is when I felt my happiest, most successful and fulfilled.
