“The first fight of the day”, as I call it, happens at the exact moment when you wake up in the morning. Video: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=3Kb8XmZOWCA

How do you wake up? Feeling dread (incessantly hitting the snooze button) or driven (springing out of bed to meditate, produce content, or prepping for business calls to the East Coast)?

When you first open your eyes are you motivated by procrastination (fear) or Purpose (faith)? Lazy-minded or Legacy-Minded? Which do you value more at that moment of awakening: Indulgence or Sacrifice?

The spirit in which you wake up — be it feigning exhaustion or kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm — says a lot about you, your level of motivation, and whether you’re maximizing your shot at success or sabotaging it.

Are you telling yourself, “Man, I have to go to work” … or is it “I want to attack the day and further build my legacy today”?

At the top of your mind, is there a chief concern for your appearance or rather a burning desire to sit down and immediately capture the creative ideas flowing through you?

Sir Isaac Newton, in his laws of motion, taught that ‘an object in motion tends to stay in motion.’ https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/newton.html The quicker you get out of bed, and get in motion, the more you set the right tone for the rest of the day. The more you will get done for the day. It’s a fantastic habit worth developing.

Listen, if you can’t win this first and crucial battle of the day — you versus you in the fight to jump out of bed each morning — then there are a lot of key battles you’re going to lose in life. Then your will is not strong enough to be your best self and do great things. It’s that simple.

Listen, there’s a reason that the vintage “Iron” Mike Tyson and champion boxers would wake at 5 in the morning, dress in winter coats and winter hats and jog 5 miles in the brutal cold (“road work” they call it). There’s a reason that Aleksandr Karelin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Karelin, he of the 887-2 competition record and three Olympic gold medals, regularly ran in the Siberian snow that was waist-deep. There’s a reason Dan Gable was single-mindedly obsessed with wrestling and walked to his classes at Iowa State University wearing ankle weights. There’s a reason Floyd Mayweather Jr. goes running at 2 a.m. in the morning. There’s a reason New England Patriots QB Tom Brady studies game film while opponents are relaxing and watching a movie with family.

Go-getters with extreme work ethic gain a serious mental edge when they can rightly tell themselves, ‘The other guy doesn’t train like I do.’

“The other guy isn’t willing to pay the price I pay.”

The championship mindset is, ‘While he’s sleeping, I’m training. He’s relaxing, I’m hustling.’ There’s a serious mental edge when you out-work the competition and know, “I sacrifice what they won’t to win.”

It reminds of what Michael Jordan once told a journalist — I’m paraphrasing — ‘Nobody trains as hard as I do.’

Let me tell you, if you love sleep too much, no way you’re going to out-work a crazy, driven soul like Michael Jordan.

The more days you spend jumping out of bed like a kid on Christmas day, the more days you have that “running down a dream” urgency and aliveness pumping through your blood … then you’re headed toward your Best Self.

So remember, the first fight of the day … is choosing how your going to wake up. Dreadful or driven. Procrastinating or Purposeful. Leisure-minded or Legacy-minded.

You’re setting the tone for the day. Every day. Choose wisely!

On a related note …

Productivity > Appearance.

It’s a lesson many of history’s great (and unapologetically disheveled) artists and thinkers have demonstrated over the years.

So I’m six hours into my day, my hair and clothes still as disheveled as when I first awoke, and I’m reminded of what Extraordinary Artists have long known: Capturing your best ideas, maximizing productivity, are more important than impressing others by being tidy and well-groomed.

If we’re ever to be our most productive and creative selves, we must learn to care less about what other people think of our appearance. We must heavily value staying in the moment, flowing with creativity, rather than disrupting it with 30-minute grooming sessions in the bathroom.

Every second and every minute that I’m grooming in the bathroom, means precious thoughts and creativity that are lost. On my most creative days, that’s how I feel about it. If you truly want to squeeze the most you can out of most days, there are seasons of your life when you need to be oblivious of what others think, when you must be comfortable running around in public as a disheveled mess and looking like you just crammed all night for an exam or stayed out too late with the boys.

So be it.

Albert Einstein, who was so famously aloof that he needed guides to walk him to the classes he taught, once said, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

Check out this website for famous people such as Steve Jobs and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh with super-messy desks:

http://www.contentverse.com/office-pains/10-messy-desks-successful-people/