20/20/20

You’re the most important person in your life.

Erikjan Lantink

When you agree with this statement, great! Read on and be inspired.

When you disagree, here’s why I’d like you to reconsider.

You may consider family, partner, friends, cats, or dogs more important in your life, but if you weren’t there, they would still continue living.

Now that you’re in their world anyway, they would benefit because you consider yourself the most important person in your life.

Provided you care for yourself, you can be that caring person in their lives.

That’s why putting yourself first at strategic moments in your life is essential.

Those life-defining moments when you have to make choices that will impact the rest of your life.

Career choices. Partner choices. Children choices. Investment choices.

Big choices.

Choices that lead to better results when you know what you want yourself first.

And then there are those trivial daily choices that seem unimportant but, over time, can have a significant impact.

One of those daily choices is to put yourself first at the start of every day.

Me first. Every morning.

That’s a decision.

And it helps when you’re a morning person like I am.

To me, it’s easy to put myself first in the morning. I’m almost always the first to wake up, or at least I wake up at the same time.

That first hour of the day is mine.

And it sets the tone for the rest of the day.

Here’s how I like to start my day.

I got inspired by Robin Sharma, author of, amongst others, the books “The monk who sold his Ferrari” and “The 5 am club.”

While I don’t wake up at 5 am, I follow his idea to make that first hour of every day yours.

I am putting myself first!

And yes, it’s easier to do when your kids are grown up and take care of themselves; I realize that.

That should not be an excuse to prevent you from at least thinking about how to create that time for yourself.

Robin Sharma advises breaking up that first hour into twenty-minute blocks.

20/20/20.

20 minutes of exercise. Twenty minutes of mindfulness (meditation). Twenty minutes of learning (reading, podcast).

Starting like this in the morning will jump-start your day.

You’ll trigger most of your biochemicals in that first hour, and it just puts you in a better frame of mind.

Each day is better like this, so your life is better.

That’s how I see it.

Here are a few extra tips from my side:

1. If you can’t do this because of domestic (parental) duties, you must create discipline to wake up earlier. I wake up at 6 am, and I manage.
   
   
2. Before you start, drink two glasses of water. It wakes you up, starts your metabolism, and prepares you for exercise. Long term, it becomes a habit you don’t want to be without, and it helps your health.
   
   
3. Only use your phone to listen to music, record your exercise, or use any application that helps you to have a great hour. But switch off notifications and don’t read emails, messages, or social media. Allowing those to distract you means you have not put yourself first.

You need to find a rhythm that works best for you. The description above just describes what works for me.

As long as you put yourself first a little every day!

Your turn: Who is the most important person in your life?

Do more of what makes you happy!

Erikjan