Have you ever felt like the day got away from you and you didn’t get anything meaningful accomplished? We go to sleep with weak will power and low self-esteem because we made poor choices. If we aren’t strategic, we can lose days, weeks or months of valuable time.
For those of you that feel like the day easily gets away from you, the MMP formula will be very helpful. And for those of you that are already high performers and want the most out of life, then this strategy will also come in handy.
By using the MMP formula, you will rock your morning, rock your day, and ultimately rock your life.
The MMP Formula stands for Move, Meditate, Plan.
Let’s jump into the Move part.
During your sleep, your body has been stagnating. It’s been relatively still and the neurotransmitter melatonin has been very prevalent. When you wake up, the first thing you should do is hydrate. You want to drink about 24 ounces of fresh room temperature water. Maybe squeeze a lemon or lime in there and that’ll help cleanse, alkalize, and detoxify.
After you hydrate and eliminate, it’s time to move the body. The later you wait in the day, the greater the odds that something unexpected is going to pop up and derail you from this critical time, time where you’re investing in your own health and well-being.
You can’t take care of others, if you don’t take care of yourself and you can’t give to others what you don’t have to give. Moving your body in the morning is going to do wonders for your energy and mood and will benefit you all day.
So try to exercise in the morning daily. In particular, power yoga is amazing because it incorporates the four pillars of fitness. Those four pillars are strength, balance, flexibility, and stamina. Also, power yoga involves a variety of poses, positions, routines, and therefore you’re constantly challenging your body in a multi-faceted kind of a way.
The second M of MMP stands for Meditation.
In the same way that you exercise your body, you need to exercise your mind. You can be healthy in your body, but sick in your mind. You see this sometimes with professional athletes. They are incredibly strong, but mentally or emotionally weak.
Meditation helps to sharpen your attention improving your focus and concentration. Studies show meditation can reduce your mind wandering and improve your ability to solve problems.
Life is full of problems. Not in a bad way, but more as just part of the human experience, right? We all have problems. We have problems on a national level, a global level and personal level and we need to be able to solve these problems as efficiently as possible. Meditation is going to help facilitate this.
You’ll notice meditation comes after the moving. When you look at the science of yoga and what’s called the eight limbs of yoga, they always put the physical practice before the meditation. That’s because we have to dissolve tension and the busy energy out of our bodies before we can sit down and drop into a deeper level of calmness, serenity, and stillness.
After you’ve moved your body and feel awake and ready for the day, your meditation can be so much more powerful. That’s why meditation comes after movement.
The last letter, P, stands for PLAN.
With all the distractions in the world today, you need a plan. You have to be strategic each and map out your days. It’s best to plan out your day the night before.
Make sure you prioritize your most important tasks at the beginning of the day. That’ll create a momentum where you’re focusing on things that are meaningful and deeply important to you.
One helpful tip is to not use sounds on your phone. Don’t get distracted when you’re in the flow of working on something. Instead of multitasking, you want a good overall plan and a single task, one thing at a time. Be present to what’s happening right there.
In yoga this is called ekagrata, that means the one-pointed mind. Eka is one, grata is pointed.
One important thing to remember is to build space into your plan. We don’t want to be somebody where every minute of our lives is planned out and there’s no room for spontaneity to arise. You may have a few hours in the afternoon, or on the weekend where nothing is planned. You get to that part of the day you just go with the flow and see where life takes you in a spontaneous way.
At the end of the day, this MMP formula can create a powerful momentum for your life. You’re not wasting your energy on things that are meaningless. You’re investing into your physical and mental health. You’re looking good, you’re thinking good, you’re speaking good, you’re feeling good, and you’re doing good because you followed the formula of moving, mediating and planning.
Below are some recommended practices to help you make this a life-long habit:
