Start Your Day With Purpose (and Without Social Media)
The first time I read The Miracle Morning was about 10 years ago, and something that makes it so special is that it is one of the easiest and fastest books you can read for surprisingly powerful, productive results.
I read it again for the second time this summer, and it really holds up. The ideas and routines are timeless, and as I reflected while reading, I realized that on the days I felt happiest and most productive in recent years I was still accidentally doing ‘the miracle morning’ throughout my day.
I highly encourage students to pick up this book to learn how to start an easy morning routine, or just read a quick synopsis of it to start using it in their own lives.
To quickly give a summary:
The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod is a self-improvement book about creating a powerful morning routine to improve your mindset, productivity, and overall life. The book teaches that how you begin your morning can shape the rest of your day. Elrod introduces the “Life S.A.V.E.R.S.” routine: Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, and Scribing (journaling). Even spending a few minutes on these habits each morning can help people feel more focused, motivated, and confident.
For students, one of the biggest takeaways is that this is a way to starting your day without social media. Instead of immediately scrolling and becoming distracted, students can begin their mornings calmly and intentionally (you may want to listen to something calming on YouTube during your routine, but I count this as intentional time spent, especially if you’re not scrolling and just listening). This helps improve focus, lowers stress, and creates a more positive mindset before starting work or school.
Personally, on days that I have a little extra free time I’ll read in the morning, write notes on what I read, and then workout in the afternoon while listening to a meditation or affirmations video on YouTube (and if you put it all together- that’s your miracle ‘morning’). If that more spread out method works for you, try implementing it that way! Including reading, writing, movement, affirmations, silence, and visualization (the latter can even be used to eliminate nerves about upcoming school assignments or presentations) at any point in your day is a win. These 6 components (and maybe I’ll add ‘time out in nature’ as a 7th component) are my natural inclinations to feel my best.
Now that I’ve reread The Miracle Morning, I’ve been deliberately squeezing these SAVERS in every single morning (I gave myself a 30 day challenge over the summer and it went well!).
If you think you don’t have time to try this, give it just 15-20 minutes in the morning. Sometimes I do a quick stretch, do some pushups or yoga moves, or do some sort of other body weight workout- anything that seems somewhat easy to accomplish but feels like I did something good for myself (and side note: you can cheat a little and exercise in whatever you want, and without shoes- whatever gets you moving without excuses). My trick is that while I exercise I’ll listen to a quick mediation, listen to a gratitude video, and listen to an affirmations video (I created my own YouTube playlist with some options to make this easy on myself- find some that work for you!).
One of the reasons I’ll continue doing my SAVERS in the morning is because I’ve found that it wakes me up even better than coffee (although I still have coffee afterward!), and really puts me in a good mood first thing. That makes my workday go smoothly and helps me to be more patient with my students and work tasks. All wins!
I know it’s easy to wake up anxious about the day, or get lost scrolling on your phone and feel like the whole day is shot, but the SAVERS in The Miracle Morning are a surprisingly easy alternative that is just so much better. Give it a try, and if you’re one of my current students, send me a message to let me know how it goes!
Happy learning and growing!