Read The Miracle Morning for Free Online Page A

understatement. The fact was, I dreaded getting up in the morning, particularly waking up early, almost as much as I hated running. But the more I thought about it, the more a few things started to make sense.
    First, by committing to my personal development in the morning, it would give me a positive motivational kick-start to my day. I could learn something new in the morning. I’d likely be more energized, more focused, and more motivated for the rest of my day. I remembered a blog post that I read on StevePavlina.com , titled The Rudder of the Day . Steve, also the author of Personal Development for Smart People , stated:  “It’s been said that the first hour is the rudder of the day. If I’m lazy or haphazard in my actions during the first hour after I wake up, I tend to have a fairly lazy and unfocused day. But if I strive to make that first hour optimally productive, the rest of the day tends to follow suit.”
    Not to mention, by doing personal development in the morning, I wouldn’t have all of the excuses that accumulate during the day ( I’m tired , I don’t have time , etc.)  If I did it in the morning, before the rest of my life and my work got in the way, I could guarantee that it happened every single day.
    Finally, I just didn’t really see any better time to do it. Executing my personal development first thing in the morning was looking to be the most advantageous option, but it was already hard enough to drag myself out of bed every day at 6:00 a.m.—because I had to—so the idea of getting up at 5:00 a.m. seemed absolutely insane to me. Feeling frustrated and a bit defeated, I was about to close my planner and forget the whole idea, when I heard the voice of my mentor, Kevin Bracy, in my head. Kevin always told me, “Hal, if you want your life to be different, you have to be willing to do something different first!”
    Damn it. I knew Kevin was right, but that didn’t make waking up early any easier. Committed to making a change, I decided to overcome my self-imposed, life-long limiting belief that I was not a morning person and wrote into my schedule that I would wake up at 5:00 a.m. the next morning to do my first personal development routine.
    Our Second Challenge:  Doing What’s Most Impactful
    Then I encountered another challenge—what was I going to do for that hour that was going to make the biggest impact and improve my life the fastest?  I could read, but I’d done that before, and I wanted this to be special. I could exercise, but again, that wasn’t getting my juices flowing. So, I pulled out a piece of blank paper and I wrote down all of the most life-changing personal development practices that I had learned over the years, but never implemented—at least never consistently. Activities like meditation , affirmations , journaling , visualization , as well as reading and exercise .
    I chose the six activities that I thought would have the most immediate and dramatic impact on my life, assigned 10 minutes each, and planned to try all six the next morning. The interesting thing was, looking at this list got me feeling motivated!  All of a sudden the idea of waking up early went from something I dreaded to something more and more appealing. That night, I could hardly fall asleep, I was so excited for the morning to come!
    When the alarm clock went off at 5:00 a.m., my eyes shot wide open and I sprung out of bed, feeling energized and excited!  It was effortless, it was invigorating, and it reminded me of being a kid, waking up on Christmas morning. There had been no time in my life when waking up was easier, when I felt more energized and excited about my day, than I did as a kid on Christmas… until today.
    The Morning That Transformed My Entire Life
    Teeth brushed, face washed, and a glass of water in hand, I sat up straight on my living room couch at 5:05 a.m., feeling genuinely excited about my life for the first time in a long time. It was still dark outside, and