I'm not a morning person. In fact, I asked my husband to buy me a new sleep mask last week, and the one he bought home clearly stated that fact in beautiful handwritten script. And the only time I am truly driven to be a morning person is if there's a plane ticket at stake, if I'm honest.

But I am a morning ritual person and today I'm sharing my three non-negotiable morning rituals that help me set my day up for Self-Created success.

So if you find your day escaping you and taking you places you didn't plan to go, or getting to the end of the day without doing the things you said you wanted to do, this episode is for you.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I'm your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you're ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello from my cold and still very wintry pocket of the world, where the snow is falling outside my window yet again. I'm not sure what's up with this weather. It's spring one day, verging on summer the next, and then back to snow and sub-zero temperatures the next. It's almost like a lot of you, and me included, testing out the waters between who you're used to being and who you want to become.

In any case, welcome to this week's episode of The Self-Creation School podcast. If this is your first time listening in, this is the place I share my insights and practical tips for creating a life you love from the inside out, one YES! at a time. Today I want to share with you the three non-negotiable things I do every morning that set my day up for Self-Created success.

These three things have been instrumental in my own transformation from living a life that was far less than it could be, to getting out of my own way to create a life I need to pinch myself to believe is mine. And these same three things continue to support me in reaching for my bigger and bolder dreams every single day.

The way I used to spend my mornings was pretty evident by the way my days would pan out for me one day after another. I would grudgingly drag myself out of bed, look at my reflection and cringe, maybe offer a few harsh words of criticism about the state of me, get dressed in clothes that didn't make me feel good about myself, and drift into my day like a leaf in the wind getting blown from here to there at the demands of the moment. And so my day would go.

By the end of each day, a few more unfinished things would be added to my never-ending pile of to-dos. And a few more harsh words of criticism would be exchanged about how I simply never measured up, before facing another sleepless night trying to figure out how to fix my underwhelming and uninspiring life.

What do your mornings look like? Do you drag yourself out of bed and then rush to get yourself out the door to start your day? Does your morning seem to escape you and you find yourself scrolling social media past the time you promised yourself you'd be tackling your first things for the day?

How does the rest of your day go? Do you find yourself at the mercy of a voice inside your head that offers an opinion about everything you do, all day long? You know the voice I mean, right? That voice that tells you in no uncertain terms, you're not smart enough, good enough, or deserving enough to do the things you want to do to move the needle forward on the life you want for yourself.

And the end result? You recreate the same reality in your day today, as you did yesterday and as you will again tomorrow, unless you change how you approach your day.

My good friend Jim Rohn, who I had the absolute privilege of spending personal time with, used to say, never begin the day until it's finished on paper. Turns out, this is really good advice. And these days, I use my morning ritual to finish my day on paper, before I set one foot forward into creating it.

So, the first thing I do every morning is I read my Unapologetic YES! Story. Essentially, what this is, is a short powerful statement that serves as a compass for the life journey I would like to take. It's a summary of the ultimate destination I would like to head to, the things I would like to do, have and experience along the way, and the kind of woman I aspire to become by taking this journey.

Because here's the thing, if you don't know the direction you need to head, it's unlikely you'll get to where you want to go. And if you don't know who you want to be in your lifetime, the world will most definitely tell you who you can and should be.

The concept of an Unapologetic YES! Story is something I teach the women I work with at The Self-Creation School. But basically, you can think of it as taking all your dreams, your wants, needs and desires for your life, and creating a combined mission, purpose and impact statement that captures the essence of who you want to be in your lifetime, what it is you'll achieve as a result, and why it all matters.

This is the big picture for your life. The ultimate life you would like to live out. A statement of your who, what and why.

So the number one thing I do every morning is I start by reminding myself of where it is I'm headed, who I want to be, what I want to do and why I want to do it.

The next thing I read is my Self-Created Woman's Manifesto. This is my personal rulebook for how I choose to live my life, how I choose to show up in my world, who I show up as, how I treat myself, what I believe about myself, about my world, and so on.

This manifesto takes the essence of my Unapologetic YES! Story and lays out an everyday guide to showing up in my life in a way that supports me in moving towards my ultimate YES! life. And it helps me get back on track whenever I face roadblocks or I detour from the course I've set for myself.

I actually share my manifesto on my website, so if you'd like to download a free copy, to either use as is for yourself every morning or to use as an example for creating your own manifesto, head to https://selfcreationschool.com/manifesto and you can grab a copy for yourself right there. And be sure not to miss rule number nine, it makes all the difference.

If you've already downloaded a copy of my manifesto previously, I recently redesigned it. So I encourage you to go back and download it again and check this out.

So I read my Unapologetic YES! Story to put my bigger picture front and center in my mind. I follow this up with my manifesto to remind myself of how I approach my life and who I show up as in my world.

The third non-negotiable thing I do every morning is journal.

If you've been around me for any length of time, you will know that I am a big fan of journaling. Putting pen to paper and having a daily conversation with myself has been one of the biggest game-changers in my life and it continues to be so.

This is the part of my morning routine where I finish my day on paper. Here's how it looks for me.

I check in first with what's on my calendar for the day. In last week's episode on how to show up for yourself and your dreams, I actually shared how I schedule my dreams and who I want to show up as in my world onto my daily calendar. So if you haven't yet checked that out, you may want to tune in and take a listen.

And I want to add here before I continue on, that my Unapologetic YES! Story is set to an all-day event on my calendar indefinitely. It is always within my reach anytime I need to remind myself of why I'm doing the things I'm doing that sometimes feel a little challenging.

I also use this one statement as the basis for determining my key areas of focus in my life and my personal objectives in each area. So this helps me map out my yearly goals and from there, my monthly goals. It's kind of like a funnel where we start with the big picture and narrow it down to doable bite-sized chunks.

So I check in with my daily schedule and I reflect on how I feel about my day ahead. Do I feel anxious or nervous, perhaps, about what I have planned? Maybe I feel completely overwhelmed by it. I might feel excited by it.

And listen, I love what I have planned in my days because I know everything I have planned takes me one YES! closer to my ultimate YES! Story. And I do wake up feeling excited about the life I get to live out every single day. But the reality is, I'm doing this work to push through my own limitations each and every day, just the same as you are.

To live a life where you leave no stone unturned, where you explore every possibility you can imagine for yourself and live your most fully expressed life, you will always be pushing through your boundaries.

And let me be honest, if you're not, then you will find yourself settling for an everyday existence that is far less than it could be, even if you love your life right now. If you stop evolving, your life will become stagnant. Ask me how I know, and perhaps that is a really great topic for a future podcast episode so I'll keep that in mind. But for now, I digress. Let's get back to my daily journal routine.

So I check my schedule, I check in with how it makes me feel, and I ask myself, “what is the story I'm telling myself right now that is causing me to feel this way?”. Now, I ask myself that question, whether the emotion I'm feeling is positive and supports me and empowers me to tackle my day, or if it is negative and it's likely to make it hard for me to show up for myself in the ways I have planned.

This part is important because the stories should tell yourself about your SELF and what's possible in your world, determine what it is you do and don't do each and every day. And it's what you do or don't do that creates the reality you experience. So your stories are important and whenever you're feeling something, there is always a story behind your emotion.

If it's negative or limiting in some way, then I really want to make sure I take some time to clean that story up and shift it to a more supportive, empowering story. Because in doing so, I will also shift my negative emotion to a more supportive and empowering one.

If my story is positive, I also want to take some time to reflect on this and note it down, because this helps to reaffirm the positive beliefs I hold about myself and what's possible in my world. It helps me collect evidence for what I believe to be true about me and strengthens that belief.

If you would like to know how I shift my stories, you can get hold of my Self-Creation Shift process by taking the free assessment on my website that helps you uncover your most predominant YES! Block and I'll send you a copy. You can take that free assessment at https://selfcreationschool.com/yes-story, and I'll leave that link along with the link for my manifesto in the show notes for you.

Now once I have noted down a positive, supportive and empowering story that will serve me in taking the action I have committed to take in my day, whether through shifting my story or simply taking a note of the positive story I'm already telling myself, I commit to who I am going to be today. And I write this down in my journal as an I AM affirmation statement.

Essentially, this is a short statement that goes like this, I am a woman who, and then you state who you will be. Some examples might be, “I am a woman who knows I have value to offer that will help change people's lives”. Or “I am a woman who gives myself permission to put my needs, wants and desires before those of others”. Or “I am a woman who knows she is capable of doing hard things”. You get the idea.

If you want to learn more about my approach to I AM affirmations, I did a podcast episode on this, I think it's episode number six, titled What Kind of Woman Are You and Why It Matters. So feel free to check that out if you want to dive a little deeper into this.

The final thing I do in my journal session is I reflect on how I showed up in my day the day before and look for evidence of how I embodied my Future SELF and what wins I experienced as a result.

Again, here I'm collecting evidence for how I can be the woman I want to be and how I can do the things that she does. This helps to further strengthen my beliefs about who I am and what's possible for me. And it also helps me to realize that my current SELF and my Future SELF are really not that far apart.

Because let's face it, it's easy to get stuck in thinking that this future version of you is a monumental task. The reality is I've seen time and time again how this is not the case. How you are so much closer to the woman you want to be, the woman who is living the life you want to live, than you might think.

So you can see how each of these three non-negotiables feed into each other and not only nourish my mind first thing before life and my storyteller gets in the way, but also helps me intentionally set up my day in a way that supports me in doing the things I want to do so I can create the life I ultimately want to experience in my lifetime.

They take the bigger picture, my Unapologetic YES! Story, and break it down into focusing on the day ahead and making everyday matter in all the right ways. Because really, all I know about my life is that I have the gift of today. And I know I can make it count towards my tomorrow, and that impacts all of my tomorrows that I hope I'll be gifted.

One day at a time, I know I'm saying YES! to the story I want to write in my lifetime. And that YES! starts on paper first thing every morning before my day begins.

I encourage you to think about how you currently start your day and how that impacts the way your day plays out for you. And how the future you start her day, and how you might be able to close that gap by switching up your morning routine. I promise you, it really does make all the difference.

And in thinking about what it was I wanted to share with you today, and reflecting on the significant impact it has had in my life and the results I've been able to create for myself in a very short period of time, I decided to make a copy of my daily journal pages available for you to download for free. So if you would like a copy, you can grab one at https://selfcreationschool.com/daily-journal.

Lots of resources and suggested listening for you today. I hope you find these things helpful. And once again, I'll leave the link to my daily journal pages in the show notes for you.

And I'd love to know if you implement these three daily non-negotiables in your morning routine, how this goes for you. So reach out to me on my socials or feel free to drop me an email. I'd really love to hear from you.

That's a wrap for this week's episode. Stay tuned for next Wednesday when I'll be back for another conversation about saying YES! to a life you love to live every single day.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, have you joined my FREE mini-workshop the Week of YES!? This powerful five-day workshop will help you take your foot off the brake and start saying YES! to more of the life you crave. Isn't it time you created a life you're beyond excited to wake up to? It all begins with saying YES!. Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/weekofyes and get started on your YES! story today. I'll see you there.

I'm not a morning person. In fact, I asked my husband to buy me a new sleep mask last week, and the one he bought home clearly stated that fact in beautiful handwritten script. And the only time I am truly driven to be a morning person is if there's a plane ticket at stake, if I'm honest.

But I am a morning ritual person and today I'm sharing my three non-negotiable morning rituals that help me set my day up for Self-Created success.

So if you find your day escaping you and taking you places you didn't plan to go, or getting to the end of the day without doing the things you said you wanted to do, this episode is for you.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I'm your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you're ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello from my cold and still very wintry pocket of the world, where the snow is falling outside my window yet again. I'm not sure what's up with this weather. It's spring one day, verging on summer the next, and then back to snow and sub-zero temperatures the next. It's almost like a lot of you, and me included, testing out the waters between who you're used to being and who you want to become.

In any case, welcome to this week's episode of The Self-Creation School podcast. If this is your first time listening in, this is the place I share my insights and practical tips for creating a life you love from the inside out, one YES! at a time. Today I want to share with you the three non-negotiable things I do every morning that set my day up for Self-Created success.

These three things have been instrumental in my own transformation from living a life that was far less than it could be, to getting out of my own way to create a life I need to pinch myself to believe is mine. And these same three things continue to support me in reaching for my bigger and bolder dreams every single day.

The way I used to spend my mornings was pretty evident by the way my days would pan out for me one day after another. I would grudgingly drag myself out of bed, look at my reflection and cringe, maybe offer a few harsh words of criticism about the state of me, get dressed in clothes that didn't make me feel good about myself, and drift into my day like a leaf in the wind getting blown from here to there at the demands of the moment. And so my day would go.

By the end of each day, a few more unfinished things would be added to my never-ending pile of to-dos. And a few more harsh words of criticism would be exchanged about how I simply never measured up, before facing another sleepless night trying to figure out how to fix my underwhelming and uninspiring life.

What do your mornings look like? Do you drag yourself out of bed and then rush to get yourself out the door to start your day? Does your morning seem to escape you and you find yourself scrolling social media past the time you promised yourself you'd be tackling your first things for the day?

How does the rest of your day go? Do you find yourself at the mercy of a voice inside your head that offers an opinion about everything you do, all day long? You know the voice I mean, right? That voice that tells you in no uncertain terms, you're not smart enough, good enough, or deserving enough to do the things you want to do to move the needle forward on the life you want for yourself.

And the end result? You recreate the same reality in your day today, as you did yesterday and as you will again tomorrow, unless you change how you approach your day.

My good friend Jim Rohn, who I had the absolute privilege of spending personal time with, used to say, never begin the day until it's finished on paper. Turns out, this is really good advice. And these days, I use my morning ritual to finish my day on paper, before I set one foot forward into creating it.

So, the first thing I do every morning is I read my Unapologetic YES! Story. Essentially, what this is, is a short powerful statement that serves as a compass for the life journey I would like to take. It's a summary of the ultimate destination I would like to head to, the things I would like to do, have and experience along the way, and the kind of woman I aspire to become by taking this journey.

Because here's the thing, if you don't know the direction you need to head, it's unlikely you'll get to where you want to go. And if you don't know who you want to be in your lifetime, the world will most definitely tell you who you can and should be.

The concept of an Unapologetic YES! Story is something I teach the women I work with at The Self-Creation School. But basically, you can think of it as taking all your dreams, your wants, needs and desires for your life, and creating a combined mission, purpose and impact statement that captures the essence of who you want to be in your lifetime, what it is you'll achieve as a result, and why it all matters.

This is the big picture for your life. The ultimate life you would like to live out. A statement of your who, what and why.

So the number one thing I do every morning is I start by reminding myself of where it is I'm headed, who I want to be, what I want to do and why I want to do it.

The next thing I read is my Self-Created Woman's Manifesto. This is my personal rulebook for how I choose to live my life, how I choose to show up in my world, who I show up as, how I treat myself, what I believe about myself, about my world, and so on.

This manifesto takes the essence of my Unapologetic YES! Story and lays out an everyday guide to showing up in my life in a way that supports me in moving towards my ultimate YES! life. And it helps me get back on track whenever I face roadblocks or I detour from the course I've set for myself.

I actually share my manifesto on my website, so if you'd like to download a free copy, to either use as is for yourself every morning or to use as an example for creating your own manifesto, head to https://selfcreationschool.com/manifesto and you can grab a copy for yourself right there. And be sure not to miss rule number nine, it makes all the difference.

If you've already downloaded a copy of my manifesto previously, I recently redesigned it. So I encourage you to go back and download it again and check this out.

So I read my Unapologetic YES! Story to put my bigger picture front and center in my mind. I follow this up with my manifesto to remind myself of how I approach my life and who I show up as in my world.

The third non-negotiable thing I do every morning is journal.

If you've been around me for any length of time, you will know that I am a big fan of journaling. Putting pen to paper and having a daily conversation with myself has been one of the biggest game-changers in my life and it continues to be so.

This is the part of my morning routine where I finish my day on paper. Here's how it looks for me.

I check in first with what's on my calendar for the day. In last week's episode on how to show up for yourself and your dreams, I actually shared how I schedule my dreams and who I want to show up as in my world onto my daily calendar. So if you haven't yet checked that out, you may want to tune in and take a listen.

And I want to add here before I continue on, that my Unapologetic YES! Story is set to an all-day event on my calendar indefinitely. It is always within my reach anytime I need to remind myself of why I'm doing the things I'm doing that sometimes feel a little challenging.

I also use this one statement as the basis for determining my key areas of focus in my life and my personal objectives in each area. So this helps me map out my yearly goals and from there, my monthly goals. It's kind of like a funnel where we start with the big picture and narrow it down to doable bite-sized chunks.

So I check in with my daily schedule and I reflect on how I feel about my day ahead. Do I feel anxious or nervous, perhaps, about what I have planned? Maybe I feel completely overwhelmed by it. I might feel excited by it.

And listen, I love what I have planned in my days because I know everything I have planned takes me one YES! closer to my ultimate YES! Story. And I do wake up feeling excited about the life I get to live out every single day. But the reality is, I'm doing this work to push through my own limitations each and every day, just the same as you are.

To live a life where you leave no stone unturned, where you explore every possibility you can imagine for yourself and live your most fully expressed life, you will always be pushing through your boundaries.

And let me be honest, if you're not, then you will find yourself settling for an everyday existence that is far less than it could be, even if you love your life right now. If you stop evolving, your life will become stagnant. Ask me how I know, and perhaps that is a really great topic for a future podcast episode so I'll keep that in mind. But for now, I digress. Let's get back to my daily journal routine.

So I check my schedule, I check in with how it makes me feel, and I ask myself, “what is the story I'm telling myself right now that is causing me to feel this way?”. Now, I ask myself that question, whether the emotion I'm feeling is positive and supports me and empowers me to tackle my day, or if it is negative and it's likely to make it hard for me to show up for myself in the ways I have planned.

This part is important because the stories should tell yourself about your SELF and what's possible in your world, determine what it is you do and don't do each and every day. And it's what you do or don't do that creates the reality you experience. So your stories are important and whenever you're feeling something, there is always a story behind your emotion.

If it's negative or limiting in some way, then I really want to make sure I take some time to clean that story up and shift it to a more supportive, empowering story. Because in doing so, I will also shift my negative emotion to a more supportive and empowering one.

If my story is positive, I also want to take some time to reflect on this and note it down, because this helps to reaffirm the positive beliefs I hold about myself and what's possible in my world. It helps me collect evidence for what I believe to be true about me and strengthens that belief.

If you would like to know how I shift my stories, you can get hold of my Self-Creation Shift process by taking the free assessment on my website that helps you uncover your most predominant YES! Block and I'll send you a copy. You can take that free assessment at https://selfcreationschool.com/yes-story, and I'll leave that link along with the link for my manifesto in the show notes for you.

Now once I have noted down a positive, supportive and empowering story that will serve me in taking the action I have committed to take in my day, whether through shifting my story or simply taking a note of the positive story I'm already telling myself, I commit to who I am going to be today. And I write this down in my journal as an I AM affirmation statement.

Essentially, this is a short statement that goes like this, I am a woman who, and then you state who you will be. Some examples might be, “I am a woman who knows I have value to offer that will help change people's lives”. Or “I am a woman who gives myself permission to put my needs, wants and desires before those of others”. Or “I am a woman who knows she is capable of doing hard things”. You get the idea.

If you want to learn more about my approach to I AM affirmations, I did a podcast episode on this, I think it's episode number six, titled What Kind of Woman Are You and Why It Matters. So feel free to check that out if you want to dive a little deeper into this.

The final thing I do in my journal session is I reflect on how I showed up in my day the day before and look for evidence of how I embodied my Future SELF and what wins I experienced as a result.

Again, here I'm collecting evidence for how I can be the woman I want to be and how I can do the things that she does. This helps to further strengthen my beliefs about who I am and what's possible for me. And it also helps me to realize that my current SELF and my Future SELF are really not that far apart.

Because let's face it, it's easy to get stuck in thinking that this future version of you is a monumental task. The reality is I've seen time and time again how this is not the case. How you are so much closer to the woman you want to be, the woman who is living the life you want to live, than you might think.

So you can see how each of these three non-negotiables feed into each other and not only nourish my mind first thing before life and my storyteller gets in the way, but also helps me intentionally set up my day in a way that supports me in doing the things I want to do so I can create the life I ultimately want to experience in my lifetime.

They take the bigger picture, my Unapologetic YES! Story, and break it down into focusing on the day ahead and making everyday matter in all the right ways. Because really, all I know about my life is that I have the gift of today. And I know I can make it count towards my tomorrow, and that impacts all of my tomorrows that I hope I'll be gifted.

One day at a time, I know I'm saying YES! to the story I want to write in my lifetime. And that YES! starts on paper first thing every morning before my day begins.

I encourage you to think about how you currently start your day and how that impacts the way your day plays out for you. And how the future you start her day, and how you might be able to close that gap by switching up your morning routine. I promise you, it really does make all the difference.

And in thinking about what it was I wanted to share with you today, and reflecting on the significant impact it has had in my life and the results I've been able to create for myself in a very short period of time, I decided to make a copy of my daily journal pages available for you to download for free. So if you would like a copy, you can grab one at https://selfcreationschool.com/daily-journal.

Lots of resources and suggested listening for you today. I hope you find these things helpful. And once again, I'll leave the link to my daily journal pages in the show notes for you.

And I'd love to know if you implement these three daily non-negotiables in your morning routine, how this goes for you. So reach out to me on my socials or feel free to drop me an email. I'd really love to hear from you.

That's a wrap for this week's episode. Stay tuned for next Wednesday when I'll be back for another conversation about saying YES! to a life you love to live every single day.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, have you joined my FREE mini-workshop the Week of YES!? This powerful five-day workshop will help you take your foot off the brake and start saying YES! to more of the life you crave. Isn't it time you created a life you're beyond excited to wake up to? It all begins with saying YES!. Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/weekofyes and get started on your YES! story today. I'll see you there.