The 5-Minute Morning Routine (Most Replayed Personal Development Wisdom Snippets) | #595

[Agi Keramidas]
Welcome to Personal Development Mastery Podcast. This is another snippet of wisdom, where I select the most insightful moments from previous episodes. Let's dive right in.

[Linda Bjork]
By trying to make these small and simple action steps as easy and pleasant as possible, I would love to give an example. I have a five-minute morning routine. It's MMWW, Music, Movement, Words, and Water.

And I'll explain quickly what to do, and then I'll explain why it works. And when you find out how easy this is, and how effective it is, with all my heart and soul, I hope to help people tip that scale into, oh, I can do that. So, for this five minutes MMWW, Music, Movement, Words, and Water, while you do, pick a song.

Something that you love, that you love. Something that makes you want to sing, something that makes you want to dance, something that makes you feel good. This is your timer.

So, most songs are between three and four minutes long. While you're listening to the song, we're going to do the next M, which is movement. We're going to move our body.

We can either do standard traditional exercises, your jumping jacks, sit-ups, that kind of thing. Or you can do yoga stretches, you can do shadowboxing, you can do tai chi, you can do whatever you love. My favorite is just to dance.

And, if you don't necessarily want to move your body, you can also just move your mouth by singing along. But whichever way we move, moving our body, moving our mouth, we are going to be interacting with that music. When the song is done, the M's are done.

Time to do the W's. The first W, Words. Grab a pen, a piece of paper, write five things that you're The last W is to grab a bottle of water and drink it.

Whole thing, you're done in five minutes. So, now let's talk about why this makes a difference. Let's go back to the first M, which is music.

Research shows that music is one of the most powerful tools that we have to affect the way that we feel. And not only does it do that, but also research shows that brainwaves tend to synchronize somewhat to the beat of the music. And we can use this in a couple of different ways.

If I'm feeling super, super stressed and I am upset, if I choose to listen to calming, relaxing music, it can literally help my brainwaves to calm down so that I can think clearly and help me to be able to relax. Now, if I'm struggling with motivation, let's say I have depression, I don't want to get up. I don't want to get out of bed.

I don't want to do anything. Then, if we listen to positive, upbeat music, it can literally help jumpstart our brains into action and help us to be able to get up off that couch and to be able to move and to be able to do and to be able to handle the day. Now, listening to music by itself is incredibly powerful, but when you interact, when you move with it, it takes it to a whole new level.

By moving our bodies, it helps to change the chemistry in our bodies. It helps to reduce the level of cortisol, that stress hormone, and it helps to increase the level of endorphins, those feel-good chemicals, so that we just feel better and have a better day. It also helps us to relax muscle tension.

It helps us to be able to elevate our energy so that we can take care of whatever needs to be done. It is amazing. And what's really incredible is in addition to exercise, which does all these amazing things, just singing does incredible things.

There has been so much research done on the effects of singing and our emotions, the way that we feel, and it actually has some of the same benefits that exercise does. For example, it helps to relax muscle tension. It helps to lower cortisol levels.

It helps to increase the endorphins and those feel-good chemicals so that we feel better. And research shows a connection between singing and the levels of improvement in depression and anxiety. In my favorite study, they took a group of people struggling with depression and anxiety.

They separated them into two groups. We have our control group, don't change a thing, just keep doing what you're doing. And then for the other group, they said, all right, the only change we want you to make is to sing every day.

30 days later, they came back to check and the control group, they were exactly the same as they were before. But the study group who had added singing to their daily routine had significantly lower levels of depression and anxiety. And the only thing that they changed was singing, which is so amazing because it's not that hard.

So we've gone through the MMs. We have music, we have movement, whether we move our bodies, whether we move our mouth, or whether you do both. Now you get into the words, gratitude. Now, I had heard of gratitude journals before, and I had even done them before I struggled with depression.

But I thought, you know, when you have real problems, it's time for some real solutions. Don't give me some fluffy, ethereal nonsense. I'm really struggling here.

But what's cool is the research shows that gratitude does incredible things for the way that we feel. They've done fMRI scanners and tested and found that being in a state of gratitude helps to stimulate the prefrontal cortex area, which is where our conscious thought and decision making take place. So it helps us to be able to act rather than to react when situations come into our lives, which is so important.

It also helps to improve the neuroplasticity of the brain, which is so incredible. That is absolutely necessary for any kind of healing, any kind of a change, and any kind of adapting. It helps us to be able to adapt to change.

[Agi Keramidas]
If you enjoy this podcast, can you think of one person that would find it useful and share it with them? Thank you. Until next time, stand out, don't fit in.