Happy Friday!
Just 3 points this week as I’ve been writing my book all week and have been trying to avoid over-consumption of material!
- I’ve made further refinements to my ‘Miracle Morning’ routine. I’ve been reading Robin Sharma’s The 5 AM Club
this week. I’m afraid it’s one of the most irritating books I’ve ever read; what should have been a non-fiction, personal development book has been written as an incredibly lame story. This makes it very painful to read but the lessons in there are good enough for me to persevere. One is that Sharma advocates splitting his power hour into 3 x 20 minute sessions: (1) MOVE – high-intensity exercise to sweat and improve your brain chemistry before (2) REFLECT – meditation / journaling / gratitude / visualisations, and (3) GROW – consuming written or audio / video content, setting goals, affirmations etc. I tried my morning routine this way today and really liked it. For anyone following The Miracle Morning
S-A-V-E-R-S routine, I aligned the 2 routines in the following way: (1) MOVE: E-xercise, (2) REFLECT: S-ilence, S-cribing, V-isualisations, (3) GROW: R-eading, A-ffirmations. If you’d like a refresher on The Miracle Morning you can read my book review here.
this week. I’m afraid it’s one of the most irritating books I’ve ever read; what should have been a non-fiction, personal development book has been written as an incredibly lame story. This makes it very painful to read but the lessons in there are good enough for me to persevere. One is that Sharma advocates splitting his power hour into 3 x 20 minute sessions: (1) MOVE – high-intensity exercise to sweat and improve your brain chemistry before (2) REFLECT – meditation / journaling / gratitude / visualisations, and (3) GROW – consuming written or audio / video content, setting goals, affirmations etc. I tried my morning routine this way today and really liked it. For anyone following 
S-A-V-E-R-S routine, I aligned the 2 routines in the following way: (1) MOVE: E-xercise, (2) REFLECT: S-ilence, S-cribing, V-isualisations, (3) GROW: R-eading, A-ffirmations. If you’d like a refresher on The Miracle Morning you can read my book review - Why we’re all (men and women) held hostage by our hormones. I saw my functional doctor and we deep-dived into my hormonal picture for the first time. It turns out I have a cortisol deficiency (which she prophesied the 1st time she met me). 10 years on a trading floor immediately followed by 2 kids have almost entirely depleted my cortisol reserves, leaving very little for stress resilience. It makes me sad and angry to think that so many of the narratives we tell ourselves (I’m lazy, I have no willpower, I can’t handle the stress of work / parenthood …) have hard, physiological causes underlying them. If you need a refresher on why a functional approach to medicine is the most empowering one that I know of, you can read my blog post on it here.
- That Gwyneth Paltrow and Kerry Washington first met at high school, where they were members of the same acapella singing group – how I would love to have been a fly on the wall there! Oh – and Jo-Lo taught Washington flamenco dancing. In all seriousness, GP’s interview of Washington on the Goop podcast is a serious dive into how she sees her role in society as a black woman with a voice. The broadway play, American Son, in which she starred, has been recreated for Netflix and I can’t wait to watch it – it takes a look at racial challenges through the lens of a black mother and white father whose son has been taken into custody. Watch the trailer here.
Have a great weekend! Sara
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