One of the things that I really like to do is listen to thought leadership and some of the top business minds. I've read the books. I've watched the YouTubes. I start my day this way. It's a great way to learn from those that come before you. Now, one of the things I've heard over and over and over again is that you've got to outwork, you've got to out hustle. you've got to outwork, you've got to wake up at 5AM, you've got to outwork. And believe it or not I'm just about to totally disagree with that idea. I have a client who thrives on these thought leaderships. He's taken the courses from the top people and paid tens of thousands of dollars for a single course or a single weekend  He loves being in this space and he's a big believer of like I'm up at 4AM, I'm up at 5AM. When I work with him, it's a constantness of this is what I'm doing and this is what I'm doing and there's a dadadada to it. It works for him, and what it does is it just drives and pushes him and pushes him. And he gets more energy based on having those accomplishments of getting up early and working hard. It's a way for him to kind of rev his engine and his battery by being that way. 

I have another client who this topic comes up in my conversation with him. He was messaging me. He's like Rachel, I've been trying to wake up at 8 AM every day I just can't do it. There's something about the mornings and it doesn't work for me And he was making himself so wrong and feeling so bad because he was listening to the same thought leaders saying you need to be up by 4 AM, you be going to the gym, and all that. It was actually making him feel so small and making him feel like he just could never achieve because his body, his systems did not function that way. 

I actually completely disagree with some of the big thought leaders in business that it's all about the hustle and all about the constant pushing and working. What I do believe is you need to find out what works for you. If you're someone who's a night owl and you find that your brain works better after the sun has gone down, and you have a little bit of vampire in you, then do that. Everyone has the same amount of time. We all have the same amount of hours in the day. The question is what do we do with them. If someone's waking up at  5 and they're working for 10 hours straight, it's the same as someone who wakes up at 10 and works 10 hours straight. The best suggestion I have for you is really listen to your body. Pay attention to when your brain works the best. Pay attention to what you need to put in place for you to be at your optimal work. If you're sitting at a computer forcing yourself to work your productivity and the amount you're going to output is going to be so much lower. Versus if you take care of yourself care and you take care and you do the systems that you need  when you sit down to work you're going to be so much more productive. and I actually believe that's the key. The key is to be productive and to find  those systems that are productive for you. We all know those people who sat at a computer all day and you're like what in the world did you do. And we all know those people can sit at a computer for two hours and it feels like they got tons done. 

For me, it's not as much about when I wake up. I have little kids so I right now have un-snoozeable alarms so I wake up early. I've always been an early morning person. As I've got older, I've stopped setting my alarm and I'm letting myself sleep because what I found is that if I get a certain amount of sleep, I'm more productive the next day I could force myself to get less sleep and I could buy myself more hours but I can tell you I'm not going to be as productive in those hours as I would have been if I would have got my good night's sleep. That has taken me twenty years to figure out. That's something just to watch in yourself because all of us have a certain rhythm and certain amount of hours we need to sleep and all different based on us. You need to be careful not having this as an excuse. 

I've seen people, and I work with people, who always use the self-care as an excuse. I need to do my self-care, or I can't do that until I do my self-care. Be very conscious, there is a fine line between self-care you actually need and using it as an excuse or a crutch. And I have no patience for using it as an excuse or a crutch because self-care for mental and self is super important. To me it's not something to be throwing around just because you can. For me it's all about my rhythm and I do believe we all have rhythms and finding your rhythm is important. For me my rhythm consists of doing certain things throughout my day. I'll do an entire different video at some point about how I create flexibility in my day which if you are interested in that let me know because I am very proud actually. And I would love to share that and see if if it makes an impact for anyone else. There's certain things I do and doing it what it does is that it mentally preps my mind for the day. One of the things I do is I listen to a thought leader and I do that every morning when I get dressed. Every morning I do my makeup. Every morning I... You see my videos, sometimes I'm in yoga gear but I still get up and do my hair and that kind of thing because it's a ritual. It's a time for me to be quiet in self and it's a time for me to listen and set the tone for my day. So the importance of it is not the looking good. The importance for me is the time to focus on me and focus on the vibration I want for the day. Some people do that with exercise. Some people do that with meditation. Some people don't need it at all. Again, I don't believe there's one thing that fits everyone. It's really figuring out what works for you. 

Another part of my routine is I work with my compost. I love composting don't get me started on that topic. And then I feed my birds. Outside birds, we don't have birds in the house, but we have a feeder on the window I feed them in. There's a prepping point. Getting my office prepped for me is part of my setting the stage. Opening my windows, setting my oils on, that type of thing. What I'm getting at, in this little bit of a rambling, is that finding what those little trigger points are for you is important. Finding little things that you can anchor yourself with to get in productive mode is important. If I dig into anyone who is really successful, really productive I can guarantee that they have systems and triggers like that. They have certain patterns. If it's getting coffee, if it's doing this, that really gets them in the state of mind they need to be in to be super productive. If you find yourself as someone who's sitting on the couch or laying in bed or you can't seem to get yourself out of bed then that's the time to go get a coach. I am not the coach for this and I can tell  you it's time to get a coach. There's a video I did I'll put it down in the links where I talked about how you can pick a coach or consultant  and what to look for and what red flags  to look for. I would go check that out because if you're a space where you're like "I don't want to get out of bed today" or you're not motivated to do stuff or you find yourself on your phone and you're just going through YouTube or Facebook or Tik-Tok and all you're doing is spending time on wasteful things like that then there's something else that needs to be tweaked. What this video really is about is that you can pick when you're productive and that there's not a one-size-fits-all. And that saying I have to be up by 4 a.m. and forcing yourself to do that is probably not the best solution for everyone.