Do you wonder why certain leaders can achieve with ease, while others always seem to struggle with motivation, overwhelm, or burnout?
How do leaders enter flow state?
I’ve distilled, and stress tested 25 years of high performance habits into a 5 minute YouTube here that my private clients have used on how I start and end my day to optimize peak performance by showing you, not telling you.
Morning Ritual Habits
Your mind is most fresh, malleable, and influenceable upon waking that first hour. The first 3 things you do reveal a lot of your current habits in who you’re becoming by the choices you make.
For me, this first hour is the most critical to cultivate your greatest asset–the mind. So that first hour upon waking is spent in meditation, purifying all unwanted habit patterns and suffering at the root.
Since attending my first 10 day Silent Meditation Vipassana Retreat where you meditate 10-12 hours/day for 100 hours total, I felt an inner peace like never before and made many major life decisions thereafter with clarity and alacrity.
Since then, I’ve been meditating one hour a day the last 3 years.
According to Yoginanda, author of bestseller “Autobiography of a Yogi” that was like the Beatles’ bible, 5am, noon, 5pm, and midnight at the turning of the sun is when the energy is most potent.
Whether you believe it or not, I like to aim for my first meditation 5am-6pm to amplify that energy.
I have tried to do work related things first thing in the morning to take advantage of a fresh, sharp mind but found it drains me more and I end up reacting more, plus jeopardizing actually meditating after that before the day runs away.
So I meditate.
Then l do the most important thing I might avoid at work or a deep thinking projects after meditation unless I need to drop off kids at the bus that day.
After meditation, I do 81 bowing movements to circulate energy, strengthen knees, and connect with my highest self as I chant an ancient scripture 9,000 years old based on Sundo philosophy called the ChunBuKyung.
Sometimes I do 1 min exercises for legs, core, arms if I don’t already have a class that day like kickboxing, hip hop, taekwondo, or mobility training. Then I head downstairs for my instantpot cooked oatmeal topped with sunflower seeds, almonds, raisins, chia seed, flax, and fresh berries.
I sit at a low asian style dining table that decompresses the back for good posture and core strength.
Midday Rituals
Now my mind and body are primed to be in flow state. Heading to my home office, my peak times to tackle bigger projects are between 9-12pm to move the needle in my business, by focusing on the top 3 things to get done that week.
I maintain my environment to pull for the best state of mind in my cleaned studio office with a standing desk and surfboard that makes my legs keep balancing.
It’s critical to harmonize Yin vs Yang, aka rest vs sprint cycles to optimize my energy and harmony within.
I set timers to track project time, body double using “Work with Me” youtubes or live power hours where you have another body working alongside you.
Then go outside for a walk, get fresh air, eat, clean, play piano, workout, or other actions to break up standing and using my brain too long.
Bedtime Rituals
After picking my son up by 3:45pm, we come home, I make him dinner and we connect. My husband gets home around 4:30pm and we only sit down for meals on weekends when we do G.L.A.D. Sharing. We go around sharing what we’re Grateful for, Learning, Achieved, and Delighted in (made us laugh). It’s a great quick structure my 14 year old is willing to do then have then the dreaded “How was your day?” question.
We all do our own thing for a couple hours, and I typically work a couple more hours if I don’t have evening workouts, school meetings, or friend hangouts.
By 8pm, I go downstairs to hang with the family. Our rule is no screens, just tea, reading, or playing music to settle the mind. Anytime we’re watching YT’s past 8pm–it doesn’t go well. It takes longer to get to bed, and even worse, I’m prone to then keep watching until midnight.
I have app restrictions that shut down apps by 8pm so I’m not tempted that I cannot override.
At 8pm,I prime my brain before bedtime, which is the the greatest productive period possible to feed your subconscious with your questions, goals, and vision to work on while you sleep. This also allows inner wisdom to percolate and arise the following day.
I journal what I’m grateful for and imagine being grateful for things that already happened for tomorrow, while drinking tea or taking an epsom salt bath. We brush our teeth and get ready for bed then do Acknowledgments.
Acknowledgements is a 20 year family tradition from a Landmark Communications Course where we go around acknowledging one thing each person did that day we appreciated, ending with acknowledging ourselves. We sometimes listen to a 10 minute meditation to help calm us down further, then I put my devices back on my desk.
If I fail to shut down my devices and watch youtubes instead, my mind is filled with the entertainment or YT or business personal growth I watched that I find can excite, but dilute my focus the next day–even if it’s healthy content.
In order to wake up naturally without an alarm requires training by going to bed at the same time everyday.
For me that’s no later than 10-10:30pm, so I can wake up by 5am. .
Pitfalls
- Expecting immediate results. Staying in flow state throughout the day is an art form that requires patience and lots of testing to see what will work best for you.
- Rigidity. What habits work best will constantly evolve with life changes of getting older, marriage and divorce, having a family, moving homes, changing career paths, or caretaking elders. Like business or parenting, the moment one approach works, the market, circumstances, or kids change and what used to work no longer does. Expect constant iteration and adaptability.
- Inconsistency. The trickiest parts are maintaining consistency through changes of school schedules, summer break, vacations, and travel. To set yourself up for success, start small with one tiny habit you know you can do daily for easy initial wins. Don’t go too far too fast, tackling many habits at once that you can do for a maybe a week then it fades. Instead, stick to just one small thing to be consistent with over a longer and longer period of time. When I first started bowing, I couldn’t finish 81, nor do it everyday for even 5 days in a row. So I just did 21 bows over 5 days. That was even hard to do. But once that got accomplished in a month or so, on day 6, I tried to get to 21 days. Again, failed many times and had many fits and starts. Then after 3-5 months, I was able to reach 21 consecutive days. Then I extended to 100 days and so on until it’s become very ingrained in me.
Now What? May you be inspired to curate your own perfect day to cultivate your next best you.
What moment to moment choices are you making to build habits that reflect your best self?
Pick one tiny habit that aligns with your belief of who you want to become (not who you are now). Operate as if you are that person (ie. I’m a meditator) then start small with 5 minutes/day for 5 days and go up from there. If you’d like guidance in building better habits, we have a 5 Day Boost Your Energy Challenge to learn the foundations for cultivating inner power habits, while releasing energy blocks so you can transcend to the next level of You in daily self – mastery.
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About the Author : Anna Choi is a 2x TEDx speaker, International Bestselling Author, Black Belt, and Founder of SolJoy, where she guides leading, high-achieving soulpreneurs to look and feel 20 years younger to optimize their energy for greater impact. Coaching NFL players, Harvard neuroscientists, 7 figure CEOs, and platinum artists, she distills ancient wisdom into modern day somatic mindfulness practices for thousands of students to detox their mind and body, focus their energy, and achieve self mastery.
A second generation Korean American social entrepreneur, Anna founded the non profit Peaceful Warriors funding community leader scholarships for wellness training programs.
She loves cooking vegan Korean meals, singing and songwriting on the piano, hip hop dancing, or relaxing in nature. Her proudest accomplishment is water birthing her son Eli, now a teen. She’s married to her sweetheart Leo of 21 years living in Poulsbo, WA with their cat Max. If you want to look and feel 20 years younger, book a discovery call here.
