I first blogged about Morning S.A.V.E.R.S. with the post here. In Part 2 here, I would like to further elaborate on the first 3 parts of this routine, and provide you with my own personal interpretation on how that works and I use it myself.

Let’s recap on what the first 3 abbreviations represent:

• S – Silence
• A – Affirmation
• V – Visualization

Silence – It is yet the hardest one to me. Imagine waking up early in the morning, the first thing I want to do is to be silent?!?! That will put me back to sleep right away if I do not have enough will power! Well, “silence” does not mean you wake up and stay quiet in bed. The way I get myself going, is I actually wake up, refresh myself, brush my brush, drink a glass of water, basically get myself going a bit, before I start my practice on silence. What I do with “silence” is, I just sit up quietly (never laying down), and think about how grateful I am: Grateful for being alive, grateful for my family, and grateful with my life in general. I also try to use a few minutes to “cleanse” my mind, trying to think of “emptiness” or just “white background,” which pretty much means I want to think about nothing just for a few minutes. The whole intention is to inject happy thoughts, and try to get my mind to start the day as a clean slate.

Affirmation – This is where the game begins. I use affirmation to quickly go over my FIRE plan, as the plan needs to be front and center with me, and even though I know the plan by heart, I still look at it during affirmation, to reassure myself that this is what I want to do, and more importantly telling myself that I can do it! I tend to use the affirmation at the “macro” level, affirming the freedom I shall have and the decision to choose this path is absolutely correct.

Visualization – After going through the “macro” level of affirmation, I use visualization at the “micro” level, to help me visualize the day. I will go over my plan of attack for the day, and then close my eyes and visualize in my mind on how the day will go, what issue may come up, who may I see, and how I interact with each incident and tackle each obstacle. I never consider this dreaming as I see this more as anticipating, so in real life if I really run into the same situation, I will not be surprised and will know exactly how to react. It is a confidence booster for me!

Changing behavior starts with changing mindset. There is no better way to see this for yourself by reading The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.