How To Craft Your Nighttime Routine For Winning Daytime Success

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Get your nighttime routine right and not only will you go to bed feeling fulfilled with a big smile on your face, you’ll also set yourself up for success the next day!

The rituals I’m about to share with you are the follow-up to your morning routine and are designed to help you prepare for a great night’s sleep and to also reflect and celebrate after your day’s activities.

I would definitely encourage you to implement a morning routine, but remember that having a nighttime routine is equally important to get the most out of your day. After all, there’s no point in starting off a race full of energy but then having no idea how to end it!

Maybe you are consistently crushing your goals one after another, but unless you take the time to celebrate the victories, then you’re definitely not getting the most out of your day.  You’ll be missing out on a lot of magic moments and a sense of fulfillment.

Before we get into reflecting and celebrating, let’s talk about the importance of sleep and how taking a few practical steps as part of your nighttime routine can make it much easier to be sure to get your ‘zeds’!

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Practical Steps To Include In Your Nighttime Routine

 

Did you know that 36% of adults in the UK struggle to get to sleep on a weekly basis?   In addition, almost half of all Americans say they feel sleepy during the day between 3 and 7 days a week.

Sound familiar?  Most of us have experienced times where we haven’t got as much sleep as we’d like, me included.  In fact, I’ve had many times like this.  What I’ve learned is that having a good nighttime routine and getting the practicalities right can help massively.

Here are my top practical tips to include in your nighttime routine to help you sleep.

• Cut out caffeine and alcohol in the evening.
• Don’t eat a big meal or exercise too late in the day.
• Set yourself a cut-off time for electronic, blue light-emitting devices.  Then make sure they are off by that time.
• Make sure your room is dark, quiet, and cool.   Use black-out blinds, earplugs, a fan.  Whatever you need to create the right atmosphere.
• Change your mattress and bedding to make sure you are comfortable.  No saggy old mattresses please!
• Try meditating for 10 minutes before bed.
• Get enough natural daylight during the day.  Sounds strange, but this helps to manage your natural rhythms.

Feeling well-rested is so important to how your next day goes.  I have more tips on how to get to sleep and stay asleep in this post.

 

Prepare For The Day Ahead

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As well as the practical tips for sleeping, I also recommend preparing what you need for the next day.  I admit I’m guilty of not doing this and then starting my day in a panic of ‘where are my keys?’ and ‘why do I have no clean pants?!’

A few minutes of getting your clothes, food and belongings ready for the following day can save so much time and stress in the morning!  It definitely gets your day off to a much better start.

Now we have the practical stuff in place, I promised you some nighttime routine rituals to really bring you winning daytime success.

Try these three things to really up your game!

 

1. Empowering Evening Questions

 

The main focus of this exercise is to reflect positively on the day which has just passed.

The best way to do this is by asking yourself positive and powerful questions.  These empowering questions are designed to help you reflect on your entire day and to help you shape a better tomorrow.

First of all,  find a quiet place, where you won’t be easily disturbed or distracted.  Then allocate yourself at least 10 minutes to reflect on the questions.

The questions you ask determine what you focus on. That’s the reason why the type of questions you ask yourself is extremely important.

Ask a lousy question, and the result is you will feel lousy.  Ask a good question, and you will feel amazing!

For example, if I asked you what were the things that happened today that you can feel good about, I’m sure you can come up with a list of things.

It could be any of the following:

• You’re alive!
• You went for a walk
• You’ve passed some fun time with your family
• You did a good deed
• Dinner was amazing
• Your to-do list is several items shorter

Whatever it is, you can always find something to be feel good about every single day.

Now let me ask you another question… What were the things that happened today that you feel awful about?

Again, I’d bet you can list out a lot of things. It could be that you procrastinated on your tasks, ate some nasty junk food, failed to pick up that call, skipped the gym, said some awful things to people you care for, and so on…

Ultimately, how do you feel after answering this question? Of course, AWFUL!

The fact is, there will always be good and bad in each day.  What you focus on determines how you feel about that particular day.

Since there’s always good and bad, doesn’t it make more sense to choose to focus on the good instead of bad?

Guess what happens if you consistently ask yourself empowering evening questions? Every day will be an awesome day for you and you’ll feel like a rockstar!

Now, think of the level of accomplishments, productivity, and fulfillment you’ll experience every day…

It all starts with your focus, and these empowering evening questions will help you to do just that.

Try asking yourself:

• What was fantastic about today?
• What’ve I learned today?
• What am I grateful for today?
• What was my biggest accomplishment for today?
• Why was today great?

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Write down your answers, but don’t JUST write them down.  Read them aloud and try to FEEL the emotions and energy coursing through your veins.

Do this with level 10 intensity – move, gesture, and smile widely as you answer them.  Allow yourself to feel proud, excited, happy, loved,
appreciated, etc…

Trust me, you’ll be amazed by what this simple exercise can do to your physical and emotional well-being. The more emotional intensity you put into this exercise, the more juice you’ll get from the exercise.

 

2. Seize Your Magic Moments

 

A life worth living is a life worth recording. – Jim Rohn

 

After you’ve gone through the empowering evening questions exercise, you are sure to be feeling positive.

But you don’t want to stop right there.  Take this opportunity to seize these emotions and feelings by journaling all your successes, accomplishments and magic moments from the day. Otherwise, they’ll be forgotten.

Take out a journal and write down everything from the day.   Note down all the powerful moments that you want to remember later on.

Time passes by so fast and we easily forget to really take in and appreciate the little things. At the end of your life, you won’t be able to remember everything, but only certain moments. So I want to encourage you to take your time and capture all your successes and magic moments in your journal.

I love doing this and then on days where I don’t feel so clever, I really enjoy going back and reading through all the good things I’ve noted down from previous times in my life.

By journaling your magic moments, you’ll be aware of what you were doing with your time and can celebrate your victories more easily.

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3. Celebrate

 

Last but not least, CELEBRATE!  Celebrate your day to your heart’s content, you deserve it!

This is a powerful way to positively reinforce yourself.

Don’t beat yourself up for things you didn’t do, tasks you procrastinated about, the food you ate and wished you hadn’t etc…Many of us do this and what do we end up feeling?  Awful and guilty about ourselves…

To make things worse, we then repeat this process every day and end up in a downward spiral that sets us up for more failures.

Why bring so much pain in your life when there are so many good things that happen every day? Start recognising these instead!

 

What gets rewarded, gets repeated

 

When you celebrate your victory often, you’ll invite more amazing things into your life. And soon, you’ll be conditioned to notice the good in every little thing that happens in your life.

This will help you to develop powerful habits such as gratitude, consistency, tenacity, and self-discipline.

 

How do you celebrate?

 

You really don’t have to complicate things. Celebrating means giving yourself pleasure. It could be as simple as patting yourself on the back (yes I know that’s a bit awkward) and saying to yourself ‘Good Job!’

You could treat yourself to a favourite meal, give thanks, listen to your favourite music, take a bubble bath, go for a walk or spend some time in nature.  Whatever you find pleasurable and feels like a treat (try to keep it healthy though!)

Oftentimes, we wait for others to praise, acknowledge, and reward us in order to feel happy, appreciated, and fulfilled.  Why not be proactive and reward yourself when you can choose to be happy right now?

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Summing Up

 

I hope that you’ve found these tips and ideas for an epic nighttime routine helpful.  To summarise, here’s what I recommend:

1. Get the practicalities for a good night’s sleep in place
2. Prepare for the next day
3. Ask yourself the empowering evening questions each night
4. Seize your magic moments
5. Celebrate!

Here’s to winning daytime success!  I’d love to hear how you get on, let me know in the comments.

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