7 Daily Habits I Cannot Live Without
And Why You Should Adopt Them Now

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #583: 7 Daily Habits I Cannot Live Without (and Why You Should Adopt Them Now)

Jeff Sanders
Nothing beats a great habit.

If you had to choose just one area of life to master that would produce more results than any other, it would undoubtedly be optimizing what you do over and over again.

This is The 5 AM Miracle, episode number 583: 7 Daily Habits I Cannot Live Without (and Why You Should Adopt Them Now).

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 seven daily habits

that significantly boost my health

and productivity every single day.

Let's dig in.

I recently returned to daily exercise.

after a short hiatus of sorts, and I was instantly reminded about the power of daily habits.

Of all the changes you could make to your life to bring about new and incredible results,

nothing beats daily habits, and I mean nothing.

Big explosive actions are great, but they are rarely sustainable.

Running a marathon one time sounds great on paper,

but I would rather hear that you have run three months,

miles a day, five days a week, for decades. So this week, let's create those

habits that will transform you into the best version of yourself that you and I both

know are possible. So these are seven daily habits I cannot live without, and yes,

these are personal to me. You do not have to adopt any of these. However, I can't

miss the opportunity to express just how powerful these habits have been for me, and I want to

Double down on these habits right now. I discussed habits the entirety of this podcast

in the last 12 years, and I love habits. I cannot escape them. They just come back

again and again to remind me of the power they possess. And the ones I selected

this week are very intentional. Some of them are repeats from past episodes. Some of them

are new, but all of them reflect this very intentional perspective that I have on

my life in this current season.

And by this season, I mean, I turned 40 last year and something snapped, something shifted.

Midlife crisis, I don't know what it is.

Very positive, though.

And this positive change that I experienced was this incredible realization that my life is nothing more than the combination of the things I do every single day on repeat.

When I was younger, I had this perspective that life had a lot of variety.

and it can over time, but the day-to-day existence that we have is repetitive.

It is Groundhogs Day.

It is essentially doing the same things over and over again.

And the power of the compound effect is back to Darren Hardy's book for many years ago.

The power of the compound effect is that what we do every day adds up.

And if you were to make positive choices every single day for decades,

well, those are going to compound over time and you'll have,

phenomenal success and results. But the opposite is also true. If you make poor

decisions each and every day over and over again, those also compound. And the

results speak for themselves. And they're usually consequences. And so what we're

trying to do is to identify those areas of our lives where we're not seeing the

results we expect of ourselves. We want more. We want better. And yes, there are a lot

of ways to approach habits. And I'm not going to tell you how to do these things,

but I am going to express the importance of what they are, and then I'll leave

it up to you to decide how you want to make that part of your life, if you do so at all.

Okay, enough banter on my part. Number one, the very first habits is waking up on purpose,

and possibly early. So being the 5 a.m. Miracle podcast, yes, this is number one,

but also I have listed these habits essentially in order of how the day progresses.

from the beginning to the end.

So number one, of course, wake up early, right?

But more importantly than just waking up early,

the thing that has changed my life more than any other

in regards to this concept is being intentional.

I love the experience of literally bouncing out of bed with enthusiasm.

It's the thing that drives me every morning to say,

today's a new day, I'm excited about it, I want more from it,

I've got awesome goals, awesome things to pursue.

And if that's going to be true, which it is a lot of times, well, then I have to wake up in a way that makes that possible.

And the only thing that I've seen that leads to that is an intentionality around sleep itself, which means going to bed early.

And now in the last seven months of my life, it means going to bed sober, which is a big shift and an amazing one.

But if you do that, if you go to bed, sober on time, and you wake up intentionally at the time,

you sat ahead of time, well, then what happens? Well, you're well rested. And then

you wake up at the time you said you would. And then because you're well rested,

because you feel good and feel healthy, you now have the physical and mental

ability to do the thing you said you would do. Of all the things that are going to

stop you from your next action, it's going to be you in some capacity, your physicality,

your mentality, your lack of sleep, your stress, whatever the thing is.

is the biggest bottleneck in your life is you. The biggest bottleneck in my life is me.

Like, that's how we operate. And so all of these habits are designed to get us out of our

own way and to allow us to do the thing we said we wanted. And so if I personally choose

to bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, that means I have to live a life where that's

possible. I have to create a scenario where that can be true more often than it's not.

And there are certain specific habits that I have that do allow that to be my reality.

And it has been for quite a while.

And I want that to continue.

And so waking up on purpose is a lot more than just here's a 5 a.m. alarm clock.

That's actually not the answer at all.

It's actually very annoying.

I don't like a 5 a.m. alarm clock.

What I like is to wake up at the time that I said I would feeling fantastic and being excited for that first activity.

because I chose it on purpose. I built a life around it, and now I get to go do it.

Get to go do it. It's an opportunity that I'm allowed to opt into.

This morning is a good example because this morning I got up at the time I said I would,

which was 5.45 a.m. and I went to the trail for a hike. And it was fantastic.

It was the perfect beginning to my Friday morning. It's Friday right now. And it changed my day.

It absolutely did.

You're hearing right now an extra dose of enthusiasm for me that you've not heard in a while.

And the reason why you hear that beyond caffeine is the fact that I did the thing I said I would do.

I woke up on purpose.

I was well rested.

I hit the trail early.

And I'm getting the physicality and the mentality from that, the long tail benefits from that experience.

because I did the thing I said I would do because I chose that thing on purpose

because I know it makes me the best version of me.

That's it.

This is not difficult on paper.

It is theoretically so doable.

The execution, though, is everything, right?

We say we want something, but do we do it?

We promise ourselves, we'll make this thing happen, but we fail again and again.

Why?

We are the bottleneck.

We are the problem.

We need intentionality.

We need purpose.

but more importantly, we have to be truthful with ourselves.

That if the problem is us, we can fix us.

It's possible.

We can change our habits, change our structures, change the way that we operate every day,

and then finally get those results that we know are possible from ourselves.

So I'm going to argue to the end of the earth, until the day I die, that not that a 5 a.

Miracle is awesome, but that intentionality is everything.

you waking up on purpose, regardless of the exact time, is going to change your life.

And it's the very first thing you do in the day.

And nothing is going to set the tone better than that first decision to wake up possibly with a smile on your face.

That's possible.

I know.

Crazy.

And when that happens, then all of a sudden, we get to live today.

We get to experience today.

And that's a phenomenal gift.

All right.

Habit number two is morning cardio.

I just mentioned that I went to the trail for a hike.

And one thing that I really doubled down on in my 20s was running marathons and

ultra-marathons and specifically spending time on the trails here in Nashville where I live.

And the thing that stood out to me without question is that the trails change me.

They make me a version of me nothing else can.

Not a walk in the neighborhood, not going to the gym for a lift or sauna time or stretching, not a yoga.

yoga class, not anything that's physical in nature, nothing compares to me spending

time in nature.

And that could be walking, could be hiking, could be running, could be camping,

could be mountain climbing.

I just know that I am personally just alive in a way that nothing else breathes

into me like being in nature does.

And the funny thing this morning was my hike was actually just pretty mediocre.

It wasn't even that surprising or amazing.

It was just a casual 45 minutes in the woods.

And yet I feel better now that I have felt in weeks

because I have spent more time on the trails than ever in the last few weeks.

And it's changing me.

It is changing how I operate, how I think,

and I can't express not just how powerful the trail is,

but even more importantly, morning cardio.

Now, there are a lot of theories on physical fitness,

about when to do weight training versus cardio, and I'm not going to get into that

conversation today.

But what I am going to say is that my personal experience is one of when I do cardio

in the morning and strength training in the late afternoon, that tends to work

best for me.

Now, not every day is a two-a-day workout.

I have done those before, though, and they're great.

But I am arguing that you want to find the rhythm that works for you, the one that

really, once again, breathes life into you and makes you feel alive.

and I know for me that morning cardio on the trail is my best ideal activity.

If I can't get that, I may go for a walk in the neighborhood, I may find time to do cardio later on the day.

There's always a way around these kind of ideals to find something close.

But the real point here, once again, is to be intentional, to know what the best is and then strive for that as often as you can.

And one thing I know, let's go back to the 5 a.

Miracle concept, if your intention is to wake up earlier and to feel good about a 5.m. wake up a morning call, I have found that morning makes it a lot easier to fall asleep on time and then wake up the next morning and physically want to move.

There's an experience I've had for years that I can't really explain, but I think I understand it, which is that if I go for a morning run consistently, let's say,

three, four, five days in a row, about day five, six, seven, what I'll notice is

that when my alarm is going off, my legs are literally itching to move.

My body is literally physically twitching to the degree that's dragging me,

it's bouncing me out of bed.

Like literally, I can't stay in bed any longer because my body wants to move.

Your brain is predictive of your behavior, habits or everything.

When it comes to how you operate, and when you embed these.

types of habits into your routine in a way that is consistent, your body, your mind,

will respond to those things.

And so, once again, if you want these results, these early morning wake up calls,

these habits, there are ways to make it possible.

And my morning cardio sessions, they are life-changing.

They're absolutely life-changing.

There's a lot of arguments about just simply getting your heart rate up first thing

in the day.

And, of course, breathing fresh air, having sunlight on your face.

Lots of these benefits are wonderful.

We don't get them all all the time.

But once again, if you know the ideal and you strive for that,

you will get more of these benefits more often than not.

All right.

Third habit on the list this week is to define your

days must do tasks. So now we're in the world of productivity. You have woken up early

on purpose. You've gone potentially for some morning cardio time. And now it's time to

define what today is truly going to be about. Now, you could argue that this should

be decided the night before. And I would say very smart. Yes, it should be. But let's

imagine you didn't do that last night. And you're going to pick today's activities right

as the day is starting. One thing I have seen for myself in that regard is I, as I

will choose the best tasks for tomorrow morning in the evening before.

But then the morning of, I tend to change my mind.

I tend to fluctuate quite a bit with that.

So I will review my list.

I'll make changes.

I'll move things around.

I'll cancel things, add new things in.

I'm very flexible when it comes to what I'm actually going to do every day.

But I want to double down on what I said was the most important and clarify that that is still true.

So what this really represents is being intentional about how.

how your day is going to progress each and every day with the intentionality

on prioritization.

So if you are able to say, I have seven things to get done today.

Well, do you have seven things?

One conversation in productivity that I have to have is the conversation around

this, I'm going to call like a false reality.

We think we have to do it all.

We think because there are seven things on the list, we have to do all seven

things and do them today. What I have seen, though, is that if you have seven items,

there's a very good chance. A few of those never have to happen at all.

In my second book, I refer to this as nonsense. Nonsense, meaning we spend time on

things that have no value that should never take place whatsoever. So my first goal,

when I define my day's tasks, is to ask that question first. What can I cut? What

list shorter because that's going to immediately make you feel better.

Your stress will reduce.

Your enthusiasm for the tasks you have remaining will increase because the list is

not as long.

Long lists are stress inducing.

Long lists will make you feel anxiety.

Like that's not the goal.

A great to do list.

A great to do list is short and manageable and exciting and fulfilling and productive.

Like that's what we're going for.

And so at the beginning of every single day, you want to clarify that day's task list based upon that simple reality that I don't want to do nonsense and I want to do things that mean something.

So take seven and make it four or three.

And then you define your day based on a much shorter, smaller, manageable list.

Which then flows into the fourth daily habit, which is the execution of that list.

So the fourth habit is to go deep on one, maybe two core tasks for the day.

This is a conversation about F bots.

F bots are focused blocks of time.

I've discussed these things forever and I will forever discuss F bots because focus is productivity.

Focus is execution.

Focus is how anything ever gets done.

And it's the only way to do creative work, to do quality work, to do work that matters,

is to do it in a focused way, to truly go deep into something and do it with

everything you've got.

So let's say, for example, that you chose your top three tasks for the day.

You know what they are.

Now it's 9 a.m.

You're at the office.

You're ready to work.

Well, what do you do?

You schedule a focused block of time immediately, starting right now, to do the first thing

on the list.

You know, of all the productivity strategies that I have doubled down on over the last

10, 12, 15 years, focus blocks of time are it.

They beat everything.

They beat review systems.

They beat task managers.

They beat all the bells and whistles of apps you could possibly use.

Nothing beats focus.

So if the tasks for the day you decided upon are legit, they're good.

You have three must-dos for the day.

You are clear on those things.

You know your next actions.

The only other question you could possibly ask, how do I guarantee it?

it. How do I guarantee that these things I said must get done actually get done?

Because what I want is when the day is over, and it's now 8 p.m. I'm reviewing the day's

tasks. I'm looking forward to tomorrow. At the end of the day, I want to look back and say,

I had a few things to get done, and I got them done. I was focused. I executed well.

I was truly in the zone. Those are phenomenal moments. And the reason why I know that is not because I

I've done focus blocks.

It's because of the emotional release you get when it's over.

This is a classic example of writers have this common theme where they say,

I don't love to write.

I love to have written.

Past tense.

Well, with focus, it's the same thing.

It's not that I love to focus.

It's I love the feeling of having just focused.

I love that emotional release of that successful endorphin rush of just, wow,

I just got something done, and that is enticing.

It is addicting.

It's the kind of feeling you want to have over and over again because you know how much progress got done.

You know what's possible for the next focus block.

And so if you have your top three things for the day and the first thing gets a focus block and you do it, you know, 90 minutes go by, let's say as an example, and you got that task completed, only take a short break and then the next focus block kicks in.

and you dive into that.

Now, I'm making a lot of assumptions here about how your day progresses and where you work and what you do and that focus blocks of time are even possible for you.

But what I am arguing here is that these concepts can be applied to your day in a variety of ways, right?

The intentionality of when you wake up, the intentionality of a healthy activity that day, the specific nature of defining today's tasks, the reality that focus matters.

You can find a thousand different ways to incorporate what these principles are,

but they're still there.

They're still true.

And they're still very, very powerful.

And your only question is how to make sure these things are incorporated into your life and into your work in the most effective way that you have available to you in this season.

Life operates in seasons.

And in some seasons, these kinds of strategies are just hard.

They're just really hard to implement because you're busy.

You've got a life, you've got a family, you've got a job, you've got goals and hobbies, and there's a lot to it.

And I'm not arguing that the goal here is to add more.

In fact, if anything, these strategies that I'm discussing are designed specifically for you to do less and to have clear boundaries around what you do and when you do it.

And so if you implement these habits and this becomes part of how you live, where you're actually going to experience is less every day.

and then you'll get more from the less.

That's just what this is.

It's how this works.

Sometimes that requires major shifts, like changing careers or moving to a new house or changing spouses.

I have no idea.

There's a lot of ways to view this.

But I do know that these principles matter and that they work and you'll be better because of them.

So that's the intention.

The fifth habit this week is, I'm not going to call it controversial, but it's the kind of

conversation that causes people to fight with me. It causes people to disagree with my

perspective, which is fine. You can feel free to not agree, but hear me out. You're

already here anyway. Let's do this. So the fifth habit is to reply back to everyone,

every single day, every single time, which is a kind of glorified way of endorsing inbox

zero. Well, let me back this up before I actually break that part down. Let's imagine that

goal is to have a great marriage, a great business, a great friendship.

You want to make sure that the things that you do and the people you're with

are the best they can be.

In other words, the relationships that you have matter to you.

Well, what I have seen that is true in life across the board, personal,

professional, regardless of what this is, your relationships will define your

success.

They will define your ability to connect with your clients, your customers, your friends,

your neighbors. If you have strong relationships, you have a great life.

This is just true everywhere. And what's the backbone of a great relationship?

Well, it's not having things that are similar or in common with each other.

It's not similar activities you do together. No, no, no. The thing that makes it work is communication.

Open, consistent, reliable communication is the backbone to every great relationship.

A big part of why this podcast has done well over the last 12 years is because I'm here every week.

I'm consistently communicating every single week.

You can reliably put your clock to me being here every week.

That makes this relationship, the one between you and me, a lot stronger because you know I'm always going to be here.

And that's what allows great marriages and great businesses and great contracts to be signed and long-term partnerships to work or fail.

is based on communication.

And so one of the habits that I adopted and have doubled down on it, triple down on for the last, I don't know, 10, 12 years, is this simple idea that I will always reply back to every single person, every single day, every single time.

Now, that is an inbox zero concept applied across the board.

So inbox zero being the very simple concept that you will clear out your email inbox by processing.

every single message that arrives into that inbox.

David Allen and getting things done has this entire concept around

inboxes and those can be in your email, in your physical mailbox,

your text messages, social media, DMs.

There are a lot of places for inboxes to exist.

In our world today, most of them are digital,

which actually gives you a great opportunity to then consolidate these responses

and the ability to understand who to reply back to and when

and why, and you have full control over that process.

So what I committed to years ago was an inbox zero concept or a processing every

single message every single 24 hours that goes by, which means if you contact me,

you text me, you email me, you call me leave a voicemail, you send me a letter

in the mail, I will process that message within 24 hours.

And then if it warrants a reply, I will reply.

every single time without fail.

What that has done for me is absolutely incredible.

Number one, I'm never behind when it comes to communication.

I'm always on the ball.

Number two, I don't burn bridges.

No one is going to fault me for ignoring them.

No contract will then go unsigned.

No marriage will go unfulfilled.

All of these things will move forward because I'm here and I'm responsive and I

and I'm invested and I want these things to do well.

Now, I fully understand that a lot of people will balk at all these concepts, basically say,

well, Jeff, I'm too busy.

I get too many messages.

That's too much to ask.

Okay.

You don't have to do it.

What does that mean for you?

What is the outcome of a decision to not do these things?

To ignore people.

To not reply back on time.

to not process what shows up.

I think, and what I've experienced is the consequences of that decision are far worse than any time or physical investment on your part to reply back consistently.

You can test this.

You can prove me wrong if you want to.

You're not going to, though.

You can try.

But the reality is that this works without question, without fail, every single day.

Commit to communication and do so in a way.

that is sustainable for you, not asking for you to burn yourself out here,

but understand the value, appreciate it, commit to it, and live it out.

And when you do, you will have better relationships.

You will have a better business, a better marriage, better friendships.

You'll love your neighbors more.

I mean, it's just, it works so well.

Be alive, be human, be in contact.

It just works.

habit number six don't overeat this is a toughie for me this is a personal one

I wrote this one down for me by me this is a Jeff Sanders personal issue

for a long time, I used to run marathons and I went vegan in my mid-20s, and I've cared a lot about my personal health.

But caring a lot does not always equate to the actions that I would prefer.

And so despite the fact that I have done awesome things in the past and I have values I care about today, I also have bad habits, I'm also a person.

And so I make poor choices frequently.

And one of the things that I think has been underlying my whole kind of health and fitness journey, especially the last 10 years, has been just food addiction in general.

And one of the habits that has really helped to change all of that is acknowledging what I tend to do and what I tend to lean towards.

And when I acknowledge that, when I say it out loud, I write it down, I clarify, this is how I tend to operate.

Well, then I have the power to change that.

I have the power to drink more water.

I have the power to test things like fasting, you know, not eating for a certain

period of time, which I still do today, and it's a fantastic practice.

The one that has worked best for me is the 16-8 fasting protocol, so I will not

eat for 16 hours of the day, and I will eat for the remaining eight.

There's a lot of ways to test the waters of fasting, but that has worked really well

for me.

Another thing I've tried that works well is to avoid really large meals.

as someone who loves to be productive,

the last thing I want to do is feel lethargic and tired and groggy

after I eat because I want to keep moving.

I want to get more stuff done.

And I'm not going to get great stuff done if I eat a large meal and then get tired

and then don't feel like doing anything.

And so the underlying concept for me to feel my best,

to be a healthy and productive high achiever is I have to avoid overeating.

And that will play out in my life.

in a thousand different directions, but it could lead towards things like weight loss,

better physicality, better fitness, more productivity in general.

I'll just look and feel better if food is not an obstacle.

It's not a bottleneck to my success.

And so the real conversation here has to do with your relationship with food,

your relationship with yourself, and how that plays out in your daily habits,

in your possible addictions.

We all have these in a variety of ways.

It's really a question of, are there consequences in your life because of those habits and possible addictions?

And if there are, what are you going to do about it?

How are you going to change your life with the focus on a habit, with the focus on daily activities that move you forward?

You know, I just mentioned fasting.

Fasting is very interesting to me now because I have tested it before and I overdid it and I lost a lot of weight and then I gained it all back.

It was a yo-yo diet catastrophe.

But my approach to it now is a very different approach.

It is one of it being sustainable and being a habit I can continue literally seven days a week if I want to.

And I have found a rhythm that works for me.

I'm not going to promote fasting.

I'm not a doctor or nutritionist.

But I will say that when you find those types of habits that work for you and you can double down on them and you can keep them going in a way where you feel your best and you are losing weight, you are.

more physically fit. Well, then you're going to keep doing those things.

Whenever we get positive results, like I mentioned before about focus blocks of time,

this emotional release of having done it well, that's the encouragement to do it again.

All of these habits are based on this idea that there's some kind of an emotional release.

There is some kind of just raw excitement for what it is you're doing.

And when those things are true, you're going to do them again.

and you're going to get better results down the road, and the compound effect

will kick in, but it's going to have to require that daily commitment.

All of these things require that level of consistency.

And if you look at something like not overeating, yeah, sometimes I will.

Sometimes I got a rough day, had a rough meal.

That's going to happen.

I'm still human here.

But I will always go back to my systems.

James Clear in his book Atomic Habits, there's a concept.

he talks about in there that I just cannot seem to get out of my head, which is that

we succeed when things are tough based upon our systems. It's easy to be

successful when things are going well. The real question, though, is how do you

respond when things are going poorly? And his answer is that you fall to the level

of your systems. You fall to the level of your habits that you've ingrained with you

over time. And this is the case here, right? Once again,

Again, you may have a rough day, you may eat a big meal and feel guilty about it,

whatever the case may be.

That's okay.

Those things may happen.

The question, though, is, what about tomorrow?

When tomorrow shows up, are you going to overeat again?

Are you going to fall to the level of your systems and the systems that you have set up are ones where you don't do that?

You drink your water.

You eat your healthy food.

You go to the gym.

You take care of yourself.

If that's your system, if your baseline is one of self-care,

you're going to make better choices more often.

And that's what a habit can do for you.

It can ingrain that sense of consistency across the board to make you a better you, even when times are tough, even when you have a rough day.

And that's the real value here.

On a similar tone, the seventh habit is to move all day.

So I have loved my standing desk.

I'm at one right now.

I record this podcast each and every week at this standing desk.

desk. I've done so for, oh gosh, eight, nine years now. It is fantastic.

Movement is such a fundamental component to energy, to enthusiasm, to physicality,

to habits that make you more willing to engage with whatever it is you're doing.

So, yes, a standing desk is one great example, 10,000 steps a day as another one,

daily exercise is a great one. This one thing that caught my mind earlier was,

I had this realization on the couch the other night watching a baseball game.

I was tired at the end of the day.

And I caught myself not wanting to get up from the couch.

I caught myself basically saying like, I'm done.

I'm tired.

I'm here.

There's a baseball game on, whatever.

But then I thought like, no, I don't want to define myself based on that guy.

Like, I'm not the couch guy.

I'm the get up and do things guy.

Like, that's my identity.

And that's when it clicked for me.

That's what all of this is about.

All the habits that I have, whether it is how I eat or whether I move or not, or how I get things done.

All of this conversation is about who I am and how I define who I am.

Identity is the thing that will then be expressed in your actions.

What you value is tied directly to the things you choose to do.

Not the things you would like to do, not the kinds of things you are ideal.

really envisioning. But the actual past tense, here's how I tend to behave,

that's you. Your past actions are you. And if your past actions don't define

the you you want to be, then you have the chance to redefine that identity,

to redefine how you move forward. And so when I caught myself on the couch,

kind of being lazy, and I didn't want to be, well, then I didn't. I got up and I moved.

And sometimes that's all this is. Recognize.

when things aren't working and make a pivot. Catch yourself in the moment,

which is the best time for change and change right then. Don't wait, don't write it

down and do it tomorrow. Change in the moment because that's when you really have

the best kind of opportunity to make that shift last long term. That's where all this

is headed. So yes, the seventh habit is to move all day. I know that can be challenging

at certain times. I have really struggled with the 10,000 steps a day concept because

I love it. I love the idea of that. But the only way that works in my life is if I go

out of my way to walk or out of my way to hike. That's why I've been so recently

excited about going back to the trails is because it's very easy to then hit those

step goals per day. But if you live a life, let's say a modern American life,

where you commute to work and you sit at a desk all day and you commute back home,

and you drive in the car to go get your fast food somewhere and you come home and you sit on the couch, you're not going to get 10,000 steps that day.

Not even close.

The average American, I think it's around 3 to 4,000 steps a day.

So to triple that number to go from 3,000 to 10 is going to require a different lifestyle.

It's going to require daily habits you currently don't have if that's your intention.

Now, 10,000 steps is fairly arbitrary, but,

there is a lot of data that I have read recently that is doubling down on that

reality that we need 7,000, 8,000, 10,000 steps a day for our optimal health.

And I can tell you from personal experience, the days that I move more,

I feel better.

The days that I get 10,000, 12,000, 15,000 steps or more, I feel a lot better.

Now, there's a limit there.

I'm not going to be moving constantly.

But there is such an opportunity for growth here to commit this idea.

that when I am up and I am active and I am moving, that I'm engaged in my life.

I am pursuing new activities.

I'm looking forward to new goals and bigger heights and new mountains to climb.

Movement is not just physical.

It's metaphorical, right?

It's everywhere.

Movement is movement.

It's progressive.

And that's the intention behind it.

That's how goals are achieved.

It's how mountains are climbed.

So build that into your life.

Make it how you operate each and every day.

Now, in typical 5A miracle fashion, I have a bonus habit for you.

Number eight, the last one this week is to seek opportunities to grow every single day.

I did not discuss daily reading, so I'm going to do that now.

Daily reading has been a part of my past.

It is not part of my current reality, but I want to bring it back.

There is no doubt that reading has fundamentally changed my life and has been in

so important in so many different seasons. But it's not something that I personally get

done every single day, and I want to change that. However, what I do seek out,

what has been life-altering for me, is that constant drip of seeking opportunities

to grow, whether that's from a great book that I might read, a podcast I'll listen to,

doing research for a new goal or project, trying a new daily habit. Real life and the

experience of that is the best teacher for everything. And so my opportunities to

grow are going to come primarily through the pursuit of new objectives, of new

tasks, new projects, new goals. However, I want to be able to grow it every way possible.

And so for you to be able to adopt any or all of these strategies starts with the

identity conversation. Do you value growth? Do you value the opportunity to learn something

new, to apply it, to achieve that new goal because you said yes to all the new

knowledge and potential.

What I want to see from myself and I'd love to see from you as well, of

course, is that commitment to saying every single day, something pushed me

forward.

Every single day, I learned something new, tried something new, saw myself as breaking

out of my shell a little more often, hopefully every single day as a consistent

style. Growth is not a thing you do on occasion. It's not a thing you do once a year,

right? It is a chipping away, layers of the onion, you peel back. It is a small stepping

stone to the next one, to the next one, and these things then compound over time.

So as your eighth and final big habit to consider, be the kind of person who values

personal growth and look for opportunities for those things be part of your life as

often as you can. Now, there's a counter example here that I can't fail to mention,

which is to seek opportunities to remove distractions or remove bad habits or stimuli

to say there are things that pull me away from being my best self that I want to get

rid of. I discussed earlier this year how I deleted my Twitter account because it was no

longer valuable for me. I also stopped watching all news, including comedy news,

which I used to love a lot that's no longer part of my life.

And yes, of course, I am now sober.

I discussed the fact that I quit alcohol just recently here on the podcast.

About seven months ago, I stopped with booze.

And so when you consider that reality that your habits are not just what you do,

but they're also what you don't do, that there was an old version of you who did certain things or consumed certain things.

And if those things are removed and a void is then present.

right you stop something well what replaces it hopefully a smarter more intelligent

more progressive habits that will allow you to grow into your newer and better self

there is so much power in habits this conversation is it's the most important one

on this podcast because this is the one that will define your future this may be a

conversation that I have on repeat here on this podcast because I can't ignore it I don't

you can either. We live this every day, which is kind of the point.

And for the action step this week. Pick just one daily habit to adopt or restart.

And please don't overdo it. Keep this simple by choosing just one habit to integrate in your life, beginning, possibly right now, maybe tomorrow morning at 5 a.m., your choice.

If I had to pick just one habit for you, I would choose number three, which is defining the day's must-do tasks.

Nothing will boost you forward faster than only doing what is actually due today.

Keep it simple. Make it awesome.

Now subscribe to this podcast and your favorite podcast app or become a VIP member of the 5A Miracle community

by getting the premium ad-free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5amMiraclePremium.com. And 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.

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