Your Routine Decides Your Route, And Then Route Decides The Fruit

3. Develop a Daily Routine to live in a Flow/Peak state

“Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled.” — Neville Goddard

Alright — so you’ve created a big picture vision that inspires you.

You’ve also set 90-day short-term goals to help you build confidence and keep you progressing on that path.

Now, you need a daily routine to keep yourself in flow.

If you can get yourself into a flow-state every single day, and live in and operate from that flow state, you’re going to feel really good.

It is your responsibility to organize your life so you can be in flow as much as possible. In positive psychology, a flow state, also known as being in the zone, is the mental state in which you are fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment.

In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one’s sense of space and time.

That’s a great way to live.

Flow creates high performance.

High performance creates confidence.

Confidence creates imagination and excitement.

Imagination and excitement lead you to thinking bigger and differently about yourself and your life.

With that in mind, it’s key to look at why most people are not in flow most of the time. Not surprisingly, it starts first thing in the morning. Momentum is activated with the first decision of your day. Rather than proactively putting themselves into a flow state, most people put themselves into an unconsciously reactive state.

People are not the product of habits, they are the product of environments (see point four below). According to Stanford psychologist and behavior expert, BJ Fogg, design beats willpower. Design is about how you’ve set things up. Most people have not designed their environment for flow. Instead, most people’s environment and life have been set up for continual distraction, which is the opposite of flow.

Flow is something that must be designed for.

You have to decide to live in flow. You have to commit to it. The reason flow is so commonplace in extreme sports is because extreme sports require a great deal of commitment, risk, and focus.

If a motocross rider loses focus while trying a back flip over a 100-foot dirt jump, they could die. Therefore, the situation evokes deep flow.

Flow comes by not over-thinking it.

Flow comes when you just let it happen.

For example, when I’m writing a blog post, my best writing is when I stop thinking altogether. I just let it rip.

That’s how high performance works. You put in the preparation, then you just let your body take over.

When it comes to morning routines, the primary purpose is to put yourself into a flow or peak state. There are some useful activities for putting yourself into flow.

First, you want to change your environment to change your mindset. Begin visualizing and imagining your desired future. Affirm powerfully to yourself that you are going to achieve that future. Florence Shinn stated, “Faith knows it has already received and acts accordingly.”

That’s what morning routines are all about. You put your mind into the mode of your future. You emotionally commit and connect with that future. You then be that future self.

You act as that future-self would act.

This is why the need for consistency needs to drop from your life.

Instead of being consistent with who you’ve been, you want to be consistent with who you’re going to be. If you’re going to be a millionaire, you need to start acting like one now.

Recent research studied the brains of actors with MRI machines. What they found is that, when the actors were in character, their brains showed significant change.

In other words, acting a different role changes your brain. And this is actually what you want to do every morning in your morning routine.

Rather than triggering the brain of your former self and addictions, you want to trigger the brain of your desired self, or character.

Who do you want to be?

Imagine that self.

Feel that self.

Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled.

Affirm the reality of that self.

Know that what you want, you can have.

Commit big.

Invest yourself in that reality.

Begin, right now, acting consistent with that reality.

Enjoy the rush of flow that comes from being present and congruent.