Mindful Mornings for a Productive Day | EP239

What if you could kickstart your day with a burst of positivity and productivity, all thanks to AI? This episode promises to transform your morning routine by showing you how tools like ChatGPT can streamline business tasks, spark creativity, and eliminate the dread of a blank page. Discover the magic of incorporating gratitude into your daily practices and how this simple habit can shift your mindset and conquer mental blocks. I'll share my personal journey of weaving gratitude into mornings and evenings, offering practical methods to maintain a positive outlook throughout the day.

Join me as I unravel the secrets to enhancing peace of mind and reducing anxiety, even amidst the chaos of family obligations. By integrating small, mindful activities into your morning routine, you can achieve a significant boost in productivity and overall well-being. Learn how ChatGPT can serve as your creative ally, providing valuable prompts and ideas to streamline your processes. Plus, get ready for insights and tips from our mindset expert, Viv, who will be back soon to guide you through overcoming mindset challenges. Don’t miss this empowering episode that aims to elevate your mornings and set you up for success!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:40

You're listening to the Mindset in Action podcast, the place to be to grow and streamline your business. I'm your host, donna Eade. Let's jump into the show. Welcome back to the podcast, everybody, and welcome to this mini Mindset Monday episode.

Speaker 1: 1:05

So usually this would be the week that I have Viv on to talk about something mindset wise, but I failed to get myself into her diary quick enough for us to get it done for this week. So we're actually meeting the following week from when I am recording this to do our next batch of episodes. So she will be back in a couple of weeks time. So don't worry, she's not gone anywhere. If you do have questions for Viv, you can go over to the blog post for this episode or to the show notes and you will see a form there that says ask Viv or something like that, and if you have a question around your mindset that you would like to put to her, it can be completely anonymous. I won't say your name on the show unless you would like me to, but I can put a question to her for you and we can see if we can get some guidance about how you might maneuver around that block. Okay, so that is what is coming, but today I thought we would do something a little different. So today I actually I got AI involved, guys. I thought it would be fun to show you how you can use AI in your business, and I've said to you guys before that I have used AI to help me do my podcast outlines.

Speaker 1: 2:32

So what I will usually do is do a prompt that says I am looking to do a podcast on X, can you give me three points that I can talk about in a podcast outline? And it will do it. I do some version of that prompt. It's not quite exactly what I say, but it will then give me a podcast outline and I will read through that outline and I go do I agree with that point? Don't I agree with that point? Is that accurate? And I will adjust. But it just stops me staring at a blank page because if I go, I want to do a podcast on you know how to market your business in 2024,. I would just sit there and go yeah, I don't know, I don't know. I would just draw a blank because that's what my brain does. It just doesn't like to pull the information. But when it comes up with chat, I could go oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, that would be a really good idea, or no, that wouldn't work for us. So I could say this instead it starts sparking my own ideas. So that's why I like to use chat, but I thought I would share with you an exact sort of reaction from chat, from a prompt that I gave it in today's mini mindset episode.

Speaker 1: 3:41

So what I actually asked was what three things we can do in the morning to help us set up our mindset for the day. Okay, so this is the response, because we talk about the mindset blocks on the mini mindset Monday and how you can move through those blocks, but there are also things that you can do. If you start to create daily habits around mindset things, then you can start to improve your overall mindset, which will, in turn, help with some of these blocks. It may be that it can completely remove a block that you've got, um, but it also but if not, it is setting you up that it could that could lead you to unblocking that block. I think oftentimes our mindset is so shut down that we can't see the wood through the trees. We're not ready to listen to what people have to say. So if we can start working on our mindset ourselves with some simple practices. Then, when some, when we've got a problem that we really say, look, I need some help with this, we'll be more open to receiving that help. So that's why I thought we would do this episode today. So some of these things well, all of these things you probably already know, but it's always worth a reminder, and I just thought it would be interesting for you to see the sorts of things that you can get out of ChatGPT with a simple prompt like that.

Speaker 1: 5:17

So the first thing that ChatGPT suggests that we do to help with our mindset is practice gratitude. Now, this is one that I hear again and again in the space. I really do hear it so often and I'm pretty darn terrible at it. To be honest with you, I don't do it as a daily practice and it's something that I feel like I need to do. I need to practice this and oftentimes people will say this to do this first thing in the morning, like write down three things, and this is what chat says how to do it.

Speaker 1: 5:51

Take a few minutes to think about or write down three things, and this is what chat says how to do it take a few minutes to think about or write down three things that you are grateful for. This can be anything from appreciating a good night's sleep to being thankful for supportive friends and family, and I was having a conversation with my sister, um, about this at once and she turned around. She goes. Well, the thing is is when I wake up in the morning, I haven't done anything, so there's nothing to be grateful for. And I'm sure you could think of things, but I feel like it would become very samey, like, yeah, a good night's sleep, thank you for my husband, thank you for the roof over my head. You know, those are great things to be grateful for, and perhaps you want to be a bit more creative than that. So I think what I'm going to do when it comes to this is to write down one thing I'm grateful for in the morning and then write down three things I'm grateful for before I go to bed and read them the next morning to remind myself what I was grateful for. So that's what I'm going to do, because I think then you get things. Like you know, maybe you had somebody reach out to you in your emails and offer you help with something. That is really going to free up some time for you, or maybe a friend sent a card through the post that came unexpectedly. Those things you're not necessarily going to remember first thing in the morning when you wake up, but you were certainly grateful for them at the time. So at the end of the day might be a better day time of day to do that. So I'm going to do one thing I'm grateful for in the morning and then three things I'm grateful at night, and then I will read those the next morning to remind me of what I'm grateful for. And it then says why it helps.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Practicing gratitude can shift your focus from what you lack to what you have, fostering a positive outlook and reducing stress, and that is something that I completely can get on board with that. When you work from a place of lack, then that's, you know, negativity, desperation, hopelessness, all of those kind of negative words start to come out. But if you are working from a place of I have you, you come at it with a more positive. You're happy, you have, you're hopeful, you know it kind of gives you those more positive terms. So I can understand that. So hopefully that's something that can resonate with you and that you can see that that might be able to help you as well to get that mindset in the right place when you start your day.

Speaker 1: 8:27

The second thing will be something that the Far Too Fabulous ladies will be very excited to hear, and that is engage in physical activity. So this is Monday morning, and if you are listening to this, at any time between 9.30 and 10.30, I am probably doing my physical exercise right now, because I do piloxing with Catherine from Far Too Fabulous at 9.15 on a Monday morning, and that is a combination of Pilates exercises with boxing exercises put to music. So that's what piloxing is. If anybody's out there going, what on earth did she just say A swear word? No, it is a physical activity that I enjoy doing on a Monday and a Wednesday. So in court it says how to do it incorporate some form of physical activity into your morning routine, such as stretching, yoga, a quick workout or even a brisk walk, so anything that you can do to get your body up and moving.

Speaker 1: 9:29

I'm going to add a fourth point of my own, which is again why I say I like to use Jack GBT, because it gets my mind thinking and it says it helps with physical activity, helps release endorphins, a natural mood lifter also helps increase energy levels and improve concentration, setting a productive tone for the day. So my extra is to get the sun on your face. So this is why a nice brisk walk can work in the morning Get the sun on your face as early as possible. Not always possible, especially in the UK, the sun doesn't often make a appearance, but if you wake up, you open your eyes and you see that sunshine, you go and stand in front of your window and get some sun on your face, because that really helps lift my mood and it's also vitamin D and it is known to help improve your mood. So that is my little addition to that.

Speaker 1: 10:22

The third thing is mindfulness and meditation. So spend five to ten minutes practicing mindfulness or meditation. So spend five to 10 minutes practicing mindfulness or meditation. This can be done through a guided meditation, using apps like the Calm app that I use to do my daily meditations, deep breathing exercises or simply sitting quietly and focusing on your breath. So whichever way you want to do it, five to 10 minutes of just taking a moment, even just putting your hand on your heart and taking five deep breaths in and out, can really help. Mindfulness and meditation help to calm the mind, reduce anxiety and increase your awareness and presence. This practice can help you start the day with clarity and a sense of peace. So there we go, guys.

Speaker 1: 11:11

Those are three things, plus my sunshine tip to do first thing in the morning to help you get your mindset in the right place for the day. If you have got to get up five to ten minutes, 15, 20 minutes, half an hour earlier than everybody in your household to get this stuff done, I would highly recommend doing that. If it means going to bed half an hour earlier than everybody in your household to get this stuff done, I would highly recommend doing that. If it means going to bed half an hour earlier, do it, Because doing these things in the morning and, yeah, if you've got the school run to do and you have to go out and do the school run and you can come back, even if you can come back and just take some time to do these things, make the brisk walk, the walk to school, and if you can do these things, it's just going to help to set you up for the rest of your day.

Speaker 1: 11:56

So, even if it's a case of you've got to do the school run and the family stuff in the morning when you come home. If you do these things it's just going to send to you, bring you that sense of peace, reduce that anxiety, reduce the stress and set you up for your work day. So I hope helps. I hope that was an interesting view into how chat GPT can help you with your mindset, but also can help you with prompts and ideas that are just going to help you to spark further ideas, like it did for me just then, and help you to streamline your processes. So I will be back on Thursday with a full episode. So join me then and I will speak to you soon. Bye for now.