To transform your life

All you need is just one hour

Early to bed, early to rise. Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

— Benjamin Franklin

What do you think would happen to you if you woke up an hour earlier than you always have, and spend that hour in quiet calm and peaceful surrender, and you did it every single day for the next one year?

You know, in that one hour, you don't touch your phone or any gadget at all. You just spend it in a meeting with yourself, in calm surrender, in the quiet, listening to the sound of silence, spending time reflecting on what could have been better the previous day, and then visualising how you want the day to look like, planning all the things you have to do that day to feel fulfilled and productive and then putting them down on paper, moving your body in exercise so you get enough energy, calling upon the force of the universe you believe in, and finally reading a page from a book in that same calm hour, and doing it every single day for the next one year.

I'll tell you what happens to you. You will become more alert during the day and record a lot more productivity than you ever thought possible.

You become more or less like a sage and a transformed person in one year, compared to how you were the previous year.

You will become a healthier person, a more informed person, a more present person, a more spiritual person, and overall, a more disciplined person.

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A healthier person because part of the first things you do is get your body moving. It is even widely recommended as the first thing to do once you're out of bed, because it not only clears off the sleep from your eyes, it also activates some hormones in your body that are responsible for your energy levels, giving you more energy for the day than people who don't move their body first thing. Imagine having extra energy everyday as a result of this exercise!

A more informed person because, before you even pick up your phone and turn on your data to let all the relevant and irrelevant (mostly irrelevant) news and messages that you have no control over invade your fragile subconscious and set the tone for the day, in that hour, you would have deliberately chosen to read something relevant that you have full control over and deliberately set the tone for your day.

You'd have read a page from a book even before 95% of the people in the world wake up. This keeps you a lot more informed.

A more present person because, unlike most people, you have meetings with yourself everyday. The first one hour in the morning is also like a meeting with yourself where you reflect on things you could have done better, you visualise the way the day will go and plan it accordingly so you know what to do per time, and generally who you want to be in that day. It keeps you more alert during the day than many other people.

A more spiritual person because praying and reflecting in the first hours of the morning helps you get connected to your faith, evokes a sense of gratitude for all you have and all you are in that moment, and keeps you in the realization that God, or a force in the universe, or whatever it is you believe in, is intentional about your life.

A more disciplined person overall, because you have refrained from taking your phone or any technology device first thing in the morning as you've been accustomed to and spent one hour away from it. More disciplined because you have woken up, consistently, constantly an hour earlier every day for 365 days to do the same thing over and over.

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Imagine becoming a healthier, more disciplined, better informed, and a more present and spiritual person than you are right now just by spending 1 extra hour with yourself daily. How would your life look like if you did that for 1 year? And then for 10 years!

This is not some vague theory, or untested methodology. Waking up earlier and spending time with yourself has proven time and time again to make high performers out of people who then go on to become successful on the strength of having one hour to themselves daily.

In his book, The 5AM Club, Robin Sharma who's a high level coach of peak performers, athletes, Fortune 500 businessmen and CEOs expressed this same method using the 20/20/20 rule. Each 20 stands for 20 minutes of the first hour of your day. And they also translate to Move/Reflect/Learn.

He advised that to be a peak performer, use the first 20 minutes of your day to move, exercise, jog, just make sure you sweat. It releases endorphins.

Use the next 20 minutes to reflect. Here, you pray, meditate, visualise, reflect on the previous day, and plan the new day.

Finally, use the last 20 minutes to learn. Read a book, listen to a podcast, or whatever it is you can do to get a new information.

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You might say that it's too hard to get up earlier. You don't get enough sleep as it is. If anything, you want more sleep.

Well, there's one trick Jay Shetty shared in his book, Think Like a Monk. He said, the only way to make it natural to be an early riser is to be an early sleeper. There's no other healthy way to do it.

It's simply the same advice we got everyday from our parents as kids. "Early to Bed? Early to Rise."

Structure your day such that you're able to get more done earlier and faster to help you go to bed earlier. The beauty of this is that waking up earlier would even get you to do more work with more energy than you would have if you woke up later.

Practice calm mornings. Everyone can do it, but they don't, and that's what causes them to record little to no growth.

You can do it. You should do it if you crave a better life.

The question is, will you?

To your growth,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired. ✨