Published:
August 1, 2023
Originally recorded:
September 2, 2022
Today we are talking about our morning routine.
How we wake up and start our day often dictates how the rest of our day goes. The Kabbalists have been on to this idea for a very long time. There’s a morning connecting called the 18 blessings. The second blessing of the 18 is "gives sight to those who are blind."
If you take this literally you’re going to miss out on a lot of information here. What it really means is may you have the clarity to really see in your life, to see aspects you want to change, that you want to connect with and grow. How you see your life is how you’re going to experience your life.
Each morning I want you to write down the things you’re grateful for. But let’s elevate your gratitude here. The probability of you existing at all as the unique individual you are is 1 in 400 trillion. You are an improbable miracle and you should wake up everyday with that consciousness.
You have all made it to day 25 of the 30 Days of Virgo Life Audit! Congratulations!
We’ve covered 8 of our 10 areas of focus, which leads us to mornings. Some of you may be thinking, what? The next area is about mornings? I don’t get it.
But what if I told you that every highly successful person I’ve ever met or read about has a morning routine that is so habitual, so written-in-stone, that it borders on being a morning ritual? And the reason behind their morning rituals is because it primes the whole day by grounding them in their intentions and goals and sets them up for success in whatever they do later.
So, it doesn’t really matter what your morning routine is, as long as you have one AND your routine eliminates decision-making.
Every effective morning ritual, whether it’s a plunge in icy waters or breakfast at the drive-thru, shares that one important commonality. It reduces the amount of decisions you need to make each morning. Your challenge today is to identify your morning routine, if you have one and optimize it by cutting out any decisions that you can. (Tons of successful people eat the same thing every morning!) If you don’t have a morning routine, get one!
Living a conscious life starts with making conscious choices. And one of the easiest ways to set yourself up for success in all the ways you’ve identified through your life audit journey is to start your day off primed for success.
Day 26! I can’t believe we are so close to the end of our 30-day life audit! I am so grateful and so humbled by how many of you are taking this journey with me. Thank you!
And that’s the perfect lead-in to today’s challenge.
Gratitude.
Literally, if the only thing you take away from these 30 days is a greater appreciation and awareness of the gifts and blessings in your life, that is no small thing. There is almost no practice or tool that can improve your quality of life, your levels of happiness, and your relationships with the people you love more than taking time each day to focus on appreciation and gratitude.
Whatever your morning routine looks like, I highly, highly recommend adding a gratitude practice. You can simply think of the things you are grateful for, write them down or journal about them, or include them in a prayer.
Every morning before I get out of bed, I pray. Kabbalists have a set of prayers that they say every morning, one of which is the 18 blessings which is a tool for connecting to appreciation for the blessings in our lives, from the sun rising to the ground under our feet. There is even a prayer that reminds us to be thankful for waking up. It’s a powerful reminder to not take anything for granted.
Yesterday, I asked you to look at your morning routines and remove as many decisions as you could. Now, let’s look at what you can add to your routine that would help you start off every morning energized, motivated, and primed for your best day yet.
Here’s a list of morning habits to consider adding to your morning ritual:
I’d love to hear your morning rituals! Share them in the comments
Welcome to the last day of the morning audit.
The gift of every morning is the limitless potential of the day ahead.
And the point of every morning ritual is to maximize your consciousness to prepare yourself to make the most of all the opportunities this day holds for you.
When we look at our lives, we usually assess them in weeks, months, and years, but in truth, we’re meant to focus on days.Within each day, there is a spark of Light that one is meant to perfect. We need to look at life in these terms. We’re not given 80, 100, or 120 years of life. We’re given 29,200 days; 36,500 days; 43,800 days, and within each one, we are meant to perfect a spark of Light.
The spark we’re meant to perfect today cannot be perfected tomorrow. Just as the spark we could have perfected yesterday cannot be perfected today. Each day has its own unique work related to a specific aspect of our soul that needs elevation. The kabbalists teach that at the end of every day when we go to sleep if we have done the work we were meant to do that day, it is sent up into our spiritual bank, where it protects us and sends more blessings our way.
“We are not given a short life but we make it short,
and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it…
Life is long if you know how to use it.”
-Seneca On the Shortness of Life
Take a last look at your morning ritual. And don’t be afraid to refine it, change it up, ditch some practices and add others. The point of it is to do whatever makes you feel good about the day ahead. There is no right or wrong morning ritual; there are only ones that work and ones that don’t. So, find what works for you!
One of the great gifts in studying Kabbalah is that we become more aware of the energies around us. Each day, week, and month has its own unique energy with differing powers that inform us. This month of Virgo is one of the most consequential months of the year, full of the energy of deep transformation. Over the next 30 days, we will assess, evaluate, and rethink 10 of the most important areas of your life. First, we will look at what is working and what isn’t working. I will help you identify your desire – the thing that you really want for that area of your life–not the thing you only think you want, or think you should want, or what others think you should want. From there, you will make your plan. You’ll make it actionable, doable, and motivating. I’m so excited and grateful that you are all joining me on this journey to rethink, reframe, recalibrate, and re-energize your life.