Morning Warrior - The Amazing Power of Routine

I recently connected with one of my clients about the powerful changes he is feeling from the adoption of a morning routine. He has been meditating for 5 minutes daily and this one act has now become a regular part of his morning. The consistency of this 5-minute ritual has led to powerful results such as an increase in focus and mental clarity at work and at home and the strengthening of his resiliency to stress, and the ability to avoid procrastinating. With a daily dedication to meditation, it took about 10 days for him to really experience noticeable results.

There are various studies (Lally, 2011) that have shown that a habit becomes a routine due to repetition on average after about 66 days. For some people, it may be shorter and for others it may be longer. However, the idea of following a routine is to become dedicated to achieving your goals. Establishing a healthy behavior, like spending 5 minutes in meditation or stretching in the morning can become a powerful means to set the tone for the day.

PEAK Health is built on the idea of instituting healthy behaviors such as meditation that become a daily routine. What’s fascinating is that longevity science has demonstrated that these behaviors may slow or actually reverse the aging process through the modification of our epigenome.

My client is committed to this one simple morning practice of dedicating five minutes to meditation in preparing for his day and he has reached a point where he finds that it would be difficult to skip this daily routine.

A future post will highlight various easy approaches to practicing meditation.

Phillippa Lally & Benjamin Gardner (2013). Promoting habit formation, Health Psychology Review, 7:sup1, S137-S158, DOI: 10.1080/17437199.2011.603640