12 Better Ways to End Your Day
Solidify a Transformative Evening Routine

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #585: 12 Better Ways to End Your Day: Solidify a Transformative Evening Routine

Jeff Sanders
So I'm Maisie Sanders and I usually put my pajamas on, then brush my teeth, then read a book, and then get two songs, and my mommy usually sings it to me.

And Rosie, what do you do at night to go up, ready for bed?

I usually eat at night.

You eat? What do you eat?

I eat apples. They do straws.

Her bedtime routine's basically the same as mine, and I'm Maisie Sanders again.

I like silly songs.

And I like silly songs, which is the best that daddy sings me.

Yeah, my mommy sings me.

are daddy's

and Rosie silly songs

And do you guys like those?

Yes.

And I love my Mommy kiss me good night.

Yeah.

And it's the best.

When we hugger and kiss her and say good night and it's just the best.

Optimizing your time extends beyond your morning routine and beyond your workday.

The last few hours before bedtime are often the most overlooked.

So let's take a good look.

This is The 5 AM Miracle, episode #585: 12 Better Ways to End Your Day: Solidify a Transformative Evening Routine.

Good morning and welcome to the 5 a.m. Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders, and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm,

create powerful lifelong habits,

and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer,

specializing in delivering high energy,

interactive, and action-oriented presentations and workshops,

focused on productivity, wellness, and personal and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com slash speaking.

Now, in the episode this week,

I'll break down about a dozen strategies to make your evening routine the best it can be.

Let's dig right in.

So as you just heard at the top of the show, my daughters have a very specific way that they prepare for bed.

My wife, Tessa, and I have worked for years to give them the best possible routine.

teen so that they have the things that they want and they actually go to bed on time.

If you know parents or you are a parent, you might be aware that bedtime is one of the most obnoxious parts of our day as parents,

mostly because our kids fight us and they never want to go to bed.

But that's why we have the routine.

It's because that's what gets us into the groove.

That's what transitions us from one phase of the day to the other.

And so having a very specific protocol, not just for children, but for your,

yourself as well, that's going to give you the best possible chance to optimize

those hours of the day. As I said before, I'm very good at optimizing my morning

routine, my workday routine, but one of my biggest personal weaknesses has been

the nighttime hours, those last few before bed. It's one thing to say I've got a

specific bedtime and I know it's coming. It's another to actually make use of those last

few hours. And also leading up to this conversation today, I'm actually a lot more

tired than I have been recently because my sleep patterns got thrown off.

There was this really wacky scenario for a few days where my wife was traveling

for work and I had to go to the airport to pick her up and the flight didn't arrive

until after midnight. So we got to bed very late that night. And then a few days later,

I had an awesome chance to be on a serious XM radio show here in Nashville.

and the recording time I had to be at the studio at 5 a.m. downtown.

So in a couple of days, I went from staying up super late to being up early,

way earlier than normal.

All that to say, it just reminded me yet again of the importance of sleep,

of the importance of habits and routines,

and of this necessity for us to have these rhythms of our lives,

to say that we get up at the same time each morning,

We go to bed at the same time each night that because we have those rhythms built in, we are then able to find that sense of flow.

And an evening routine is a fantastic way to help you flow, in this case, into sleep.

And then the next morning, assuming you're well rested, you then flow into that morning routine, whether you do bounce out of bed with enthusiasm or not.

At least you've built a system that sets you up for success, which is the point.

Now, in the last couple of months of my life, I basically doubled down on my sleeping routine.

I got really serious about going to bed on time and waking up on time because for the few months prior to that, my life was all over the place.

There was a lot going on.

I didn't have that sense of rhythm that I really thrive on.

And so I took that seriously and said, no more of this nonsense.

I'm going to really get serious about sleep.

And then when I did, I found a rhythm that absolutely works.

And it reminded me yet again of just what life looks like, of the before and after,

of the chaos to the systematized, of the life is unpredictable and reactive,

to life is very methodical and intentional and pre-planned.

And to a certain degree, I kind of miss the spontaneity of my life being unpredictable,

but I know that my best self is not there.

my best self shows up when my bedtime is consistent, when my wake-up time is

consistent, and then I can build my life around that.

So this week on the show, we're going to really focus on those last few hours

of the day to guarantee you get to bed on time, which is the argument that I've

made on this show for 12 plus years, which is if you get to bed on time and you get

that great sleep, a 5 a.m. wake-up call is not difficult.

And in fact, you literally can bounce out of bed with enthusiasm.

It is true.

It is real.

It is possible.

But it is only possible if you get the sleep you need, which then reverse

engineer this.

You have to go to bed on time.

And for that to be true, you have to have a transition from your workday where

you are busy and caffeinated and doing things and have this period of time where

you slow the pace so that sleep is possible and high quality.

So there are a lot of ways.

is you could end your day. I'm going to discuss 12 of those here on the show this week,

but I want you to think of a few key questions as I go through all these possible ideas.

The first and most important one is what is an ideal way to end your day?

What does that look like? What do you want from your routine? And this is important

because most intentionality for most people, most discipline, is applied early in the day.

it's applied during the day, but by the time the end of the day shows up,

you might find yourself distracted, tired, less able to keep yourself held to a certain

ideal. I know myself, which is that once I get tired, whatever plans I had for that

day are basically out the window, meaning if I don't have a sense of energy and focus

or have boundaries in place to force my hand, if I get tired or when I get tired,

I'm just not going to do the things I said I would do.

There may be a list, but I'm going to ignore it.

There may be things I would like to do.

There may be an ideal, but it just won't happen because I'm tired.

And so you may feel the same way where your evenings are basically just kind of lethargic.

You might just lay on the couch and watch Netflix.

You might just eat a big meal and crash.

And yes, on a certain level, that is a powerful way to end your day too,

because if you had a hard day, you need a break.

I'm not against those at all.

But I do feel this draw to have more intention built in in these key hours.

So we can start from that question of what is an ideal?

If you could have the best possible end to your day, what would that include?

And a part of that answer is the next question, which is what would then set you up for success for tomorrow morning?

If you want a 5-A wake-up call, if you want to bounce out of bed with enthusiasm or just get out of bed at all on time, what would make that possible?

What has to be true for that to be your life tomorrow morning?

And so we build that system today.

We execute that tonight.

And by tomorrow morning, you feel fantastic.

and then you consistently repeat that process over and over again.

All right, having said that, idea number one,

the very first thing I thought of what I was considering my own personal best way to end my day,

was to just not do it at all.

And that is, go to bed early.

A few months ago, I was thinking through better ways to end my day.

This is the middle of winter.

It was very dark outside all the time.

I was tired all the time.

And I caught myself in these kind of bad rhythms of basically watching late night comedy news shows and just mindless nonsense to end my day.

And to a certain degree, I was okay with that.

There were funny shows.

It was good.

But it just didn't feel like the best use of my time.

And so I made a pivot back then to simply stop doing that stuff and just go to bed earlier.

And then I got more sleep and I felt better the next day.

And I thought, well, this actually makes more sense, which is not to pick a better TV.

show to watch or pick a better activity, but to pick no activity at all.

Just in the day, put my girls to bed as they do around 8 p.m.

And then my wife and I can just literally be in bed and asleep by 9.

I sound like an old person to be saying that going to bed at 9 p.m.

But I've been preaching a 5A wake-up call in this show for 12 years.

And to get 8 hours of sleep, a 9 p.m. bedtime is the time you would shoot for,

at least sometime near then.

Now, historically, I don't get a full eight hours of sleep.

I do just fine on seven.

So I tend to go to bed around 10 p.m. anyway.

But if I have that, let's say that window there,

if 8 p.m. when my girls go to bed and 10 p.m.

when I tend to go to sleep, what do I do for those two hours?

What does that look like?

Well, one clear, obvious answer is don't have those two hours there, just go to bed.

And then if I do, well, then tomorrow morning, I'm now more well rested, have more energy.

and I'm able to get more stuff done first thing in the day.

That's the transition that I made a long time ago, tested for a while,

backed off on it, tested it again.

I never seem to have the same routine that I preach here,

mostly because I change my mind all the time on what it is I think is best for me.

But one idea that just I cannot escape is this reality that if that time is not as useful as it could be,

those last few hours are not super productive.

Sleeping is a very productive use of your time and will give you the ability to then function better tomorrow.

So if you are considering what do I do with my evenings, just go to bed.

That's it.

Just go to bed sooner.

You know, take some melatonin if you need to, knock yourself out and get some great sleep.

All right. Idea number two to have your best possible to end your day is reading.

Now, I am very hit and miss when it comes to reading at night.

And I say that because the kinds of books that I tend to read are just like this podcast.

They are personal growth books.

They are filled with strategies and ideas.

They're the kinds of books that just fire me up.

They are great books to read first thing in the morning.

They are great books to give you tons of ideas to move your life forward.

I don't want those ideas at 9 p.m.

Like the last thing I want to do is get fired up at 9 p.m.

It's just not helpful.

I won't sleep well.

And so my big personal pivot in this arena has been to find any kind of re-materials.

that is not that.

One strategy I tried way back in my probably early 20s, mid-20s,

was I shifted to watching non-sistical cartoons at nights,

mostly like family guy or shows like that.

And what I noticed was that these shows that are just, they're silly, right?

They're funny.

They're comedies.

I would fall asleep really fast and really easily when that was the last thing I did before bed.

And I think the reason was because it's a low stakes program.

It's a very simple, easy, no big deal thing to ignore, turn off whenever you want to, pass out in the middle of it.

It doesn't matter.

There's nothing tied to it that's really valuable for my day to day life.

But it was really helpful for that transition from, you know, there's a lot of my mind and I'm busy and I'm stressed and I have a to do list and there's chaos going on.

And then I watch something silly or read something that has no real, you know, direct tie to my day to day life.

And then all of a sudden, my brain can quiet down.

everything gets a lot easier and next thing you know i'm asleep very simply very

easily our third strategy is what i'm calling artistic expression or basically saying

the last couple of hours of the day could be spent on doing something that is not

necessarily tied to anything else you do in life it's it's hobby time right in my

world that could be paint by number which i've done a ton of in the past especially

in the winter months i love to do paint by number

because it just doesn't matter in the grander sense.

Like it's just an activity to get me engaged.

I can work on something for an hour or less or whatever the case is.

And I feel like my time has been used well because I've produced something.

And yet I don't have to do it at all.

It's completely optional.

And it helps me to then make that transition once again from the day to bedtime.

I like to choose activities here that just don't require a lot of brain cells.

but they might give you a focus that's creative or fun, possibly productive,

maybe in that grander sense that something of values taking place.

Well, I'll use a good example of the last couple of months.

I worked on this painting project for my house.

So it was literally painting the walls and doing drywall work,

all this great stuff there.

Well, that kind of work is also no brain cells required.

I just, you know, you paint and then you walk away.

And that was a great evening activity.

I'm kind of sad that it's over now.

and I'm thinking of new ways to reincorporate things like that, because that's a good example of work that is both productive, but also just kind of optional.

I can do some and then walk away, and then tomorrow night do a little more and then walk away.

That's a fantastic use of those hours where something's taking place that you find valuable, but it doesn't have to happen.

And if it happens for 15 minutes or an hour and a half, great.

Either one is going to be fine, and you make that shift to bedtime.

All right, the fourth strategy, and this is one I do not get enough of one-on-one

time with my spouse or your partner.

This is your chance to actually see your person one-on-one and have a conversation

and be present.

It's really difficult to do that if you're at the very end of your day and you're tired

and you're stressed, and yet somehow that is the only real time,

a lot of people have with their significant other is those last few moments before

bedtime. And I know for Tesla and I, that tends to be the case almost every single

day, every single workday at least, which is that the two of us have these

independent, very busy lives that then come together for a very short blip,

and then bedtime happens and it's all over. And one thing that tends to be true for the two

of us is that that's our time. It's maybe an hour at most, but it's our time. And we

We might watch a TV show together.

We might just talk for an hour.

We may just find another activity, but we are not, we don't have time otherwise.

And so one amazing way to spend your evening is that relationship building time.

My wife and I will also call the grandparents for our daughters.

And so they have the chance to connect with them there.

That's a great time for communication with other people because during the work day, oftentimes you're doing your job.

You're doing your thing.

So when does the personal time take place?

The life take place.

Well, oftentimes it's going to be at an hour of the day where no one is expecting

you to do anything.

This is why this time works.

It's extremely unlikely your boss is going to be demanding that you do things

at 9 p.m.

If that's the case, your job is difficult.

But if that's not the case for you and that is your moment, then you want that

time to be spent well.

And I know for Tesla and I, that is a high priority time.

for us. And we really do our best to make that work. It doesn't work a lot of the time, but we know it's valuable and we reconnect there as often as we can.

All right. The fifth strategy is to go back to that example of family guy, which is to watch what I'm calling pre-selected videos.

And let me clarify what that means. Pre-selected means intentional. It doesn't mean mindless. It doesn't mean turn on cable TV and just see what's on.

We're talking about things you have chosen in advance that specifically help you make this transition.

So it's not mindless nonsense.

In this case, you might watch a documentary.

You might choose a specific YouTube channel that has videos on there that you have pre-selected that are valuable for you.

A while ago, I purchased the YouTube premium subscription, which gives me ad-free YouTube content.

And that has been an absolute game changer for me.

And not just because I like YouTube.

everyone tends to like YouTube.

The real value here, though, is because it's ad-free content,

I feel more willing to seek out the best content I can find,

and there's a lot of it.

And one thing I've watched recently is a video series on engineering.

I chose that because it's interesting.

I'm learning a few things.

Once again, it's low stakes for my life.

If I happen to apply a strategy that I discovered, awesome, if not, no big deal.

But I'm looking for that kind of content that is,

educational on some level, informative, interesting, but also low stakes and allows me

to get to sleep. It can take a while to find the best content out there because

a lot of stuff out there is, I would classify as nonsense. And a lot of stuff is just

useless, uninformative, not helpful. But on the one hand, I'm making the argument that

stuff is actually good to help you fall asleep. So if you struggle with going to bed

and your mind is racing late at night, that could be your answer.

So I'm a little torn on this one, right?

I say pre-selected videos because I think it's best for us here to really acknowledge, once again, what this time is for.

Is it for nonsensical time?

Maybe.

Maybe that's your best way to end the day is just to watch a fictitious TV series that you just love.

Great.

But what I don't want to see, my real kind of issue with kind of, kind of,

the evening routine being less intentional is that you might tend to fall to the level

of your systems and previous habits, which is a James Clear concept, which is

that if you tend to look at social media, you scroll through your feeds, you

click through channels, you watch random stuff on Netflix, if you feel as though

your evening routine has been hijacked by online entertainment, video content,

social media, this is where I get a little bit.

kind of stuck.

Because on the one hand, I think we do need some of that time in our lives.

But I think the issue for most of us is we get way too much, way too much

throughout the entire day all the time.

And it just doesn't work anymore.

It goes past the point of value and becomes a distraction and a bad habit.

And it keeps us up later at night.

We get worse sleep.

This is a double-edged sword.

And so I think the real answer here is you have to know yourself.

and make an intentional decision about the boundaries you want to set around what you consume and what you do not.

And then if you choose to consume that kind of content, which I still do in my day too, it has boundaries around it.

And I don't want to bust past those boundaries because I was just kind of lazy that day.

I don't want that to be my story.

And so the intentionality around video content specifically and social media and the internet, it's so important to have boundaries here.

and to be intentional on what you choose to consume, and most importantly, what you do not.

Okay, to help with all of that, strategy number six is to learn a new skill.

So back when my daughters were first born, I got really into woodworking as a personal side hobby.

And I built this workshop in my garage, and I got really obsessed with woodworking and building.

And I have a garden bed and all these different tables and chairs and just random things that I built just for fun.

And it was amazing.

Learning a new skill gave me so much ability to then apply it to a thousand

different places in my life.

It was just for fun.

It was very engaging and kept me moving forward in a way that was so much more

productive with my time than just mindless television.

And so one of my goals for my evening routines for a long time has been asking

the question, do I have a specific hobby that is tied to a skill set that allows

me to have personal growth in this area?

Well, my recent painting project in my house where I taught myself how to drywall

and do some basic plumbing and electrical work and HVAC work.

And I learned a lot of stuff in these last few months.

It was incredible.

And I didn't even see it coming.

My house fell apart for all of these goofy reasons and I was basically forced to rebuild certain parts of it.

But then I got interested in other parts.

Next thing you know, one thing leads to another.

And I'm down this huge rabbit hole of home improvements and massive DIY work.

And it blew me away.

because I didn't plan for it.

I just found myself there.

And once I was there, I then realized this is a new skill set.

All of these are new skill sets.

And all of these can help make my time more valuable.

So my evening routine for a few months was doing that manual labor.

And it was a really fantastic use of my time.

So you might use your evening routine for something like that, DIY work.

You might learn new language.

You might watch YouTube videos to teach yourself a new skill set.

and then apply it in any other area of your life you want to dig into.

But the goal here is personal growth.

It's skill development.

One thing I've seen that this is outside of daily routines is in my career.

If I want to make a big step forward in a new direction, if I want to see massive growth professionally,

almost always the difference between where I am today and the next big step forward is a skill gap.

And if I can learn a new skill, I can absolutely push myself.

forward in that arena. So if you want to take advantage of career development or any

other area of your life, learn a new skill. Use these hours well and have that be your

story. And it will work over time. It will, you know, maybe only be an hour per day,

but an hour a day is a lot of time when it's compounded over months and years.

So really dig into this arena. This is a really fun way to use your e-monds.

All right, number seven on the list this week is to organize one thing.

I love productivity and I especially love organization when it comes to cleaning up messes.

And one strategy that I started doing probably around the time I bought my house about 10 years.

years ago was to organize various places around the house to really move in well.

And so I would organize a drawer or a closet or a box in the garage.

Later on, I applied this to my business and digital life.

So digital files and folders and apps and all the ways I structure everything in my life.

And what I discovered was that organization is a long-term game.

You're never going to be done with this, right?

It's an ongoing thing that's a lifestyle.

And the only way to tackle this is in small doses over the course of your life.

And so if you do this, though, you take this seriously and say, you know, each night, I'm going to do one small thing.

I'm going to organize a piece of this closet, you know, this one drawer of clothes I have in my cabinet.

I'm just going to find these little pieces of my life that I can clean up.

What you'll see over weeks and months and definitely years is that you're very organized.

All your stuff is literally put away and cleaned up.

and the stress has been reduced because the mess has been reduced.

It just adds up to a cleaner, better, more organized life.

I really can't think of a much better use of time late at night than to organize things because of the immediate value you get.

You emotionally feel better when you do it right then and you get the benefits down the road of having another part of your life or work, clean, and ready.

And it's just awesome.

And speaking of that, number eight this week.

week is what I'll call admin cleanup. Now, this is where we're going a lot more of the

digital space of inbox zero, so in all of your emails processed, or your other

inboxes as well, your physical mail, your desktop, your what I call home base

zero. I have this whole concept that I call equilibrium zero. It's in my very first

book, the 5A miracle, same name. In that book, I discussed this idea that you want to be

able to get to zero in all these parts of your life, which really means all the inputs that

your email, your physical mail, the messes around your house, that you have a plan

for those and you process them at least once every 24 hours to get back to zero,

get back to a homeostasis, back to a state of organization.

This is subjective.

You define what that means, but then once you do, on a regular basis, you get back

to it again and clean up whatever has shown up.

This process for me is basically built into my regular workday.

So there's not a lot of this for me at night, except once my girls go to bed,

there's definitely a mess to clean up.

There's a lot to put away.

So that's been a new part of my life.

But aside from that few minutes to make my house look decent, the real question

is where can you in your life get cleaned up so tomorrow can be better, right?

Are you behind on your emails?

Are you behind on a pile of physical mail?

Where you're behind is the area that needs your attention.

And when you give your full attention to those areas that are the most messy, the most stress inducing, well, that's where you get the most benefits.

That's when you emotionally feel the best because now the stressor is gone.

Okay, number nine, the list this week is what I'm calling brainstorming slash journaling.

This is a new one for me, and by new I mean old.

It's new because I'm doing an old habit again.

I love this kind of process of going way back in the day and asking the question, what did I use to do?

And what did I used to do well?

What brought me a ton of value in the past that I just got out of the habit of doing that I can bring back to my life today and find a new perspective on it and have a new way to move forward?

I used to do a decent amount of journaling and a lot of brainstorming.

I spent so much of my time thinking through how could I approach this next project, what kinds of

projects, could I pursue? I bought tons of whiteboards and would always spend

my time asking myself tons of questions. And the evening hours can actually

be a decent time to do this kind of work. I wouldn't spend a lot of time on

creative brainstorming, but I would spend a lot of time at night on the journaling

aspect of this, which is to reflect. It's to spend time asking the question,

how do I feel now, how do I want to feel tomorrow? What were my wins today? My successful

big pushes forward. What would I love to see happen tomorrow to improve upon that

and really push me in the right direction? It is a forward thinking process.

Having said that, there is a product that was shipped to me by this company called

FluidStance. You may have known them from years ago in the podcast. I talked about

a balance board that they sent me, this is probably 10 years ago now, that I used

at my standing desk for years. And so FluidStance makes these amazing products for

doing all kinds of daily, functional, practical things.

And I used that balance board at my desk for years and loved it.

Well, they have a new product out called Heavy.

That's H-E-A-V-Y, heavy.

And this is a very different type of product that is actually based off of you reflecting at night

and then revisiting that reflection the next morning.

So what you do is they'll send you this little card, and at night you will write down on one side of the card things that are heavy.

things that are weighing you down that are on your mind that you are potentially

stressed about let's say and then there's a rock they send you and you put the

rock on top of this list physically and then let it go and you go to sleep with

the intention of letting those things just move on from your mind the next morning

though you wake up and you reflect on those items and ask the simple question

are these things still heavy are these things still weighing me down are they

still an issue and the intention i believe behind this is to give

give you that sense of letting things go.

And to really acknowledge the next morning, those things that I thought were

heavy yesterday are not nearly as heavy today.

And it's a great personal growth opportunity to let things go mentally.

One of the things that I have seen with my life as I have aged, especially,

and have more responsibilities, more obligations, more family and house and business

and life to be in charge of, all of that adds up to potentially more stressors

and more things that you could be thinking about that would stop you from sleeping,

that would stop you from being your best self.

I think a practice like this, whether it's this product or a different journaling habit in general,

can be super effective for you to let things go.

David Allen and getting things done talks all about getting ideas out of your head and onto paper.

Make it external.

And when you do, it's not in you anymore.

It's somewhere else and can then be processed, managed,

acted upon, completed, and moved on from. That's the process here. We want to be

able to have a system in our lives to end our day in such a way that we can let the

hard stuff go. We can get it out of us and then feel refreshed and ready the next

morning. Okay, number 10 list this week is light exercise. Now, I waited on this one

to be lower on the list only because I have a personal tendency to be very aggressive when

to working out. And the last thing I want to do is get really pumped up late at night.

However, there are plenty of things you can do to lower the volume, still get some

value at this time. Stretching and yoga are the most obvious places to begin, things where

you can really kind of engage with your body physically, but not to this sense of

now you're white awake. And it's 10 p.m. and you can't sleep. What I have found to be helpful,

and this is a program I actually might restart, was a stretching program that I found.

designed for adults and people who are not flexible to be able to do the splits.

And I don't personally care if I can do the splits or not, but I like the challenge.

I really like the idea of being able to say that my body is limber and flexible and fluid,

and then I'll feel better tomorrow and potentially have a better workout tomorrow

because I stretched in the evening last night or tonight.

I just want to be able to say I can bring my best self to every day.

And flexibility is something.

that I tend to ignore quite a bit, and if you're going to use your time at night

doing some kind of physical activity, whether it's walking or yoga or stretching,

something that allows you to engage at a low volume, low level, but still get value

from that time.

That's going to help you fall asleep better and be more flexible, more energized

the next morning.

Number 11 this week is meditation.

Now, I have been very, very hit and miss meditation.

I talk about it on this show more often than any other strategy that I then probably do not do.

It's the one thing in my life that I love to talk about and I love to try once and then forget about, not care about it move on from.

So if I have any personal area to grow in the most, it is this one.

Now, meditation for me in the past has been fantastic later in the day.

However, there's an obvious problem here, which is that if you choose to meditate late at night, you are very likely to then fall asleep while doing it.

And the research I've done on this basically says that's not the point.

We're not trying to meditate to sleep.

You're trying to meditate to do a thousand other things for your mind and your body to be focused and relaxed, but not with the intention of actually falling to sleep.

So my personal take on this is that meditation, though is an effective strategy,

you need to test it yourself.

Find out what the best time in the day is for you to do that so that you don't

wind up missing the point of the activity unless the point for you is a transition

into sleep, in which case, awesome, it's the best thing for you to do.

So if that's the case for you, awesome, meditate, get the value, make it happen.

For me, I'm going to push for the next session of meditation to be in the late afternoon.

Fingers crossed, I stick to that.

Okay.

And the final strategy, number 12, is actually a rotation of all the previous ideas that I just mentioned.

So to my point about the fact that I don't tend to meditate well or don't stick to it very well, there's a lot opportunity in your life to try a thousand different things.

And of all the things I have done in the personal growth arena, my leaning into

experimentation has been the bedrock for all of it, meaning I am willing to try and

fail a thousand times and a thousand things until I find the couple of things I love.

If meditation, for example, does not work for me, I'm fine with that, as long as

I find the one or two strategies that are absolute game changers for me.

And I think the best strategy here for you is to try these ideas out.

Rotate through them.

You know, find one you stick to for a week and then next week, try a new one.

And over the course, the next 11, 12, 13 weeks, try 11, 12, 13 different strategies and see which one of these make you feel the best.

Does your evening work well?

Yes or no.

You know yourself.

But you may not know yourself as well as you think you do until you've actually gone through the motions to really try these strategies out.

implement them, take notes on them, reflect on them, and find your best way to get to sleep.

Find your best way to make bedtime awesome again because that's going to make your 5 a.m.

miracle the best it could possibly be.

And for the action step this week.

Of course, go choose one new routine to test out for yourself.

You know, everything is an experiment.

So try something new and see what happens.

Not every idea here is going to be for you, but a few of them could be.

So take the next few weeks and try a few ideas and transform how your day will end.

Of course, subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app or go to 5am Miracle Premium.com to become a VIP member of this podcast.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5 a.m. Miracle podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life.

And all that fun begins bright

and early.

Or maybe dark and late.

Either one or both.

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