SHOW NOTES
In this episode of Habits for Humans with Kim Flynn, we discuss how to get some morning routine ideas with the lovely Violet Rain Freedom. In this podcast V walks us through how to add inspiration, physical movement, and somtheing recreational into our daily morning routine using habit stacking. Learn the art of making it yours, and giving yourself the gift of doing it your way instead of following a prescribed recipe.
Welcome to Habits for Humans, the show that explores how to build a life beyond fine–something spectacular, joyful, and deeply satisfying.
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OUR GUEST
Author, International Speaker, Business Coach, Retreat Center Founder, and mom of 5. VioletRain is a fierce, committed and service oriented leader that knows how to steal your heart and melt your mental blocks. She turns failures into gold and believes that with the right mindset you can accomplish anything.
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OUR HOST
Kim Flynn is a best-selling author, podcaster and serial entrepreneur and has built multiple seven and eight-figure businesses. Her company made the Inc 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in the country. She splits her time living in Costa Rica and Salt lake City, teaching business owners how to run profitable retreats through her company Retreat Works. Kim has one husband, four kids, and a dog and loves spreadsheets.
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TRANSCRIPTION
Kim:Hi, and welcome to Habits for Humans, the podcast that explores what makes people tick and how to program this brain of ours and honestly this life of ours to do what we want it to do. I’m your host Kim Flynn, and today we’re gonna talk to a very good friend of mine.I’ve known this woman for years and years. She’s one of my favorite people on the planet. Her name is Violet Rain Freedom. You can also call her V and we’re gonna talk about building a morning routine, specifically to grow a business. There’s so many areas that she’s an expert in, but as soon as I saw that on the list, I was like, Ooh, process.I’m excited already. So we’re gonna talk about building that morning routine. She’s gonna give us like step by step of how to build that, why you wanna build. And all that good stuff. So we do have several giveaways for our listeners at the end. So if you like free stuff, stay tuned all the way to the end.And first of all, habits for Humans is brought to you by Retreat Works. We train life coaches, business coaches and wellness business owners, how to build a retreat in five days. And double your sales while having more client impact. So I’m super introdu excited to introduce v to you. She is an author, an international speaker, a business coach.So what is a practice you do to manage the daytoday mental stress of lifey? Honestly, it’s a morning routine, so I love that we’re talking about that. I know for a fact that the way we start our day sets up everything for our day. Okay, let’s just jump right in then. Morning routine. Where did you come up with this ideaHow did you come up with this idea and do you actually do it? Here’s my question. Do you actually do it because as speakers and trainers, whatever, Half the people that are talking on stage, you’re like, you don’t actually do that. I know that. So let’s hear it. Okay. So full transparency. I did not do my morning routine today.Honestly, I hit my morning routine probably eight out of 10 days. Eight outta 10 days. So yeah. Love the honesty. Honesty, that’s what it’s all about. Because there’s no a hundred percent, it’s impossible because we are that, human thing. Yeah, exactly. So in everything that I do inside my life and business, I set a goal that I’m just gonna do it most of the time.If I can hit eight outta 10, it’s good. If I set a goal, like I’m gonna do it, 10 out of 10, if I mess up one day, my brain will say forget it, screw it, I’m done. Just throw it out. I love it. That’s our first principle we’re learning already. Most of the time the goal is most of the time.All right. So talk to us about how you stumbled upon this morning routine. Yeah I started doing the morning, like really committing to the morning routine back in 2017. So where I was at that point was I had just had a baby. So I had two kids. I had a brand new baby, and I set this goal that I was gonna do a fitness competition and write a book in the six month window while breastfeeding.This is a chance for me to have me time and to get in the zone before I’ve got kids, demanding and needing things on my time. And if you’re a business owner, you’ve often got employees or you’ve got clients. The minute you wake up, you have emails in your inbox or Facebook messages or LinkedIn messages, and there are so many people wanting and needing things from you all day long that giving myself this two hour window that was just for me was so emotionally hy.So that’s when it really started for me. Okay. So you’d have this two hours, you’ve been doing this for a long time. My goodness, that’s five years you’ve been doing this. Two hours. I read The Miracle Morning, probably around that same time, 2017. I probably did it for six months and then I was like, bag it.I’m sleeping. Talk to me about how you stuck with it. How did you create it? Make it p. Yeah it’s really about creating kind of an addiction to the process. When you can get yourself set up to have those rewards to where you are hungry for it, you start craving it. So one of my hacks with The Miracle Morning is doing something that you really love.They’re like some people with a D H D or other like neuro divergent things, which is a much higher percentage of us than we realize, especially in the entrepreneurial world. We thrive off different things. So sometimes for people with a D H D waking up in the morning and giving yourself like a hit of working out or something really intense isn’t the best thing.It can fry your nerves for the day. So really to have a routine that you can stick. Be willing to try it out, play with it, experiment with it. Don’t feel like you need to copy and paste and be like everybody else. What works for me might not work for you. Like for my wife, she wakes up first thing in the morning and does one of the biggest nonos.She gets up at 5:00 AM and she gets on. Social media. And so many people recommend that you don’t do that first thing in the morning. That you don’t go to TikTok or Facebook reels. You don’t get stuck in scrolling. But she has found for her that it inspires her. That it motivates her. That it reminds her like, I need to be out here in a part of this conversation because other people are scrolling mindlessly and I could be in.And it’s pretty structured. It’s like you have to have exercise and then you like read and then you do something spiritual and then you like and I was like, okay, follow the system. That kind of thing. And it was, I, it put me in a manic space of okay, I’ve exercised, okay, now I need to do the reading.Okay, now I need to do spiritual. And it get maybe just freaked out. What actually does work for me, and I’m realizing now just talking to you, I do actually have a morning routine. I have one I I went to Costa Rica a few months ago. As you probably know, I was there for a few months and my morning routine in Costa Rica was like, oh.Positive audio, which are affirmations or something like that. Audio suggestions. Sometimes my own recorded voice. Sometimes you can just jump on YouTube and search, abundance affirmations or peace affirmations, right? And I would sit at my table and I would look out the window and I’d watch the seasons change and I had a little pawn and birds and it was this very centering time for me.And so mind routine adjusts and shifts based on what’s actively happening in my life at that time for a long time. When I got married to my partner and we all of a sudden went from, I had two kids to now we have five laundry, didn’t just double it like five times or something, and I couldn’t believe the laundry situation.If you pair it like this is habit hack, anyways, pair what you’re doing with something else. So while you’re doing your makeup, pairing it with an audio and that will really, build the habit to be consistent. Okay. I wanna get back to habit stacking in just a second. Cause that’s a, another meaty topic in and of itself, but I still have some more to explore here.So you’re talking about soothes your soul, this state of excitement. I’m thinking it’s really about getting intentional about where you want your brain to be. So if someone’s brain is naturally and maybe. Very wired like overclocked and duh, that kinda thing, if that’s who you naturally are.I’m hearing that what I need to do is, Breathe and make a morning routine. That doesn’t excite me or else I will just run around, like this. So what I would need, maybe I have a D H D V. Do you think I’ve never had a problem with focus. I can focus really well. The problem is I’m just like, oh man.If you’re wired, regimented, calm the fuck down and watch the birds. And if you’re, and if you’re wired to just wanna lay on the couch and eat Cheetos, put some regimentation, that’s a word into your morning routine. Is that what I’m hearing? Exactly. That’s exactly it. That’s what we get to do.We get to see where. We’re out of balance. So right now my wife and I are doing a lot of work for entrepreneurs with A D H D. Funny enough that you bring that up because there is a lot of misconceptions around it and there’s a lot of excuses, especially, it’s become a, I don’t know if the word’s like popular thing to be like, oh, that’s just my A D H D.I’m chronically late, it’s my A D H D. And it’s okay, cool. And. What do we get to do? Who do you get to be to set yourself up to win? Because you don’t get to just have this cop out that’s, I’m never on time and I’m never honoring my word. It’s just my A D H D. Let’s blame it on my A D H D.That’s a box. We’re boxing ourselves in and we’re making excuses and justifications for how we’re showing up in leadership in our businesses and in our lives. So yes, if you see like I’m chronically late or I’m chronically lazy, or I’m chronically like O c D and over hyper thinking, yes. There are some like tried and proven and tested things that support the mass majority of people in the morning.Usually sometimes people who are really lazy they’re in the future. They’re daydreaming or they’re in the past, they’re not in the present moment. When we call ourselves back to the present moment, we often can get into action and forward momentum, so meditation, journaling, and some form of movement connecting back into the body.This does not mean. We don’t need to be going crazy and doing I’m trying to think of the name of that. What is it in Insanity? That insanity program. We don’t need to be doing that. For you, maybe, it’s yoga or Tai chi where you’re just like being in your body and creating movements and creating presence that.Pads across the board seemed to benefit everybody. Are there outliers? Probably somewhere out there, but creating a routine where you are connecting in with self, bringing yourself into presence, and then for you, whoever you are, if you’re like, yeah, I need to bring more intensity. Cool. Throw on insanity and some Tony Robbins and let’s get you into high gear.And if you’re chronically more like Kim or I and you seem to run on, hyper speed all the time, cool. Maybe you need to just slow down, smell the roses, watch the birds, and journal a little bit for sure. Oh man. Okay, so we’re getting so many good ideas here. Hopefully viewers and listeners are like, okay, journaling.N that’s a no for me. Meditation. I wanna try, and compiling your list of things that happen in a, in your morning routine. Can you give us some more ideas of what that list could be? Yeah, mirror work. So one of the things when I was getting up in my very early days of trying to create this habit at 5:00 AM I would wake up and I’d flip on my little lamp and I’d take a huge glass of water that’s a waking up hack for everybody. Take a huge glass of water and then I had a little tiny compact mirror. I’d open up and I would just look in my eyes and I would say, good morning. Be. And I wanna be the first person to greet me every day I’m so happy to see you. I love you. And I would get really emotional sometimes doing this.And it’s crazy how awkward this could be for some people learning how to actually talk to themselves. And I would say I’m so excited to live this day with you. You’re amazing. We can do anything together, and I want you to know that no matter what happens today, I’ll always love. And I love you. Let’s go.And it’s 30 seconds a minute. It’s a hack for really connecting in with that self. And then, I’d shut the compact mirror and I’d get up and I’d go downstairs and I’d start stretching. So this was like my early on, early day routine. And so if you’re just getting started, Start. Start where you’re at, start small.If you say, I’m gonna go hardcore, I’m gonna do two hours right off the bat, you can do that. I recommend having some sort of support system to help that happen. And really that’s a big challenge. But honestly, starting small and simply picking three, five things max that you’re gonna start doing.That’s what I. And over time it felt so good to me. It felt so juicy to me. I wanted to add more. So I decided I’m gonna go down and stretch. And after two or three days doing that, I thought while I’m stretching, why don’t I listen to something like Two Birds, one stone? Not that we wanna hurt the birdies, we like watching, being really efficient with my time.I’m a hyper super producer, so I’m all about that life. So I started putting in auto suggestions and I’ve just listened to affirmations. And then once I was done with the stretching, I thought, I wanna do a little bit of breath work, just so like deep breathing, to get myself back by back in the day.And so I had a five minute like breathing exercise that I did. So there, my routine started at 15 minutes and it stretched now it was like 30 minutes. And then I started thinking, I really to have some me time to read something that isn’t business. I have struggled with giving my yourself permission to do anything recreational or spiritual because I’m like, everything has to equal profits or money.And so I’d read, and then after the first day, my timer was when my kids would wake up, my kids wake up, and now my time’s done no more me time. So it just started becoming so yummy and so juicy for me that it became something I wasn’t willing to give up. It became something necessary for me as a mom and a business owner to be able to do whatever I wanted for a little bit.I’m loving this. This is reminding me of are you familiar with Thomas Moore? I can’t remember the name of the book, dang it. But he’s written three or four, and he talks about a principle of soul and spirit. And we do things that take care of our soul. Think about the mug of hot coffee.And, watching the snow fall like that all fills your soul. And then spirit is what inspires you. It makes you want to do more things. And so I’m hearing just a really good balance of soul, self-care, nurture and spirit. Really cool. So you’re recommending to people start really slow. Why don’t I just sit down next to the window and do birding with my coffee like I did in Costa Rica. Aw, thank you for influencing my life on that one. So that’s really, sounds really beautiful. I wanna go back to mirror work really. Yeah. The thought of doing that is horrifying to me. Tell me why we’re so afraid, or your interpretation of why we’re so afraid to love ourselves.Essentially. Why, what ma, why are we so intimidated to look at ourselves and talk to ourselves? I don’t know what, I don’t know what that’s about for me. Talk to me about. Yeah I think it’s different for everyone. And honestly, it’s like breaking the ice with yourself. If you’ve never done it when I’ve done this in a retreat setting, which is really beautiful because you can be witnessed by other people and there’s something about being witnessed in it that allows you to unfill even more layers.It’s one thing for me to stare by myself alone in my bathroom or in my bedroom in a mirror. It’s another thing for me to really look at myself publicly and claim love for myself publicly. So you can do. Either way. But when I’ve seen this inside my clients, if they’ve never done this work before, the first time you do it, it’s very emotional.You will see yourself like smiling and laughing, deflecting with humor, feeling really awkward and inside of yourself. It’s like meeting the most important person in your life for the first time. And it’s really crazy when you think about the only person that we have from the moment we’re born till the moment we die is us.And we are uncomfortable looking in our own eyes and saying I appreciate you. I’m proud of you. You do so much for yourself all day. I got myself dressed today. I got myself coffee today. I’m doing all of these things for myself. I’m building a life for myself. I’m, building a relationship.I had kids for me so I could enjoy them and raise them. Like everything in my life really is for this person. And yet I can’t look her in the mirror and say, thank you so much. She’s a bad. You’re always there for me no matter where I go. There you are with me having my back and fighting for us to be happy and seeking for us to win in life and to be, more productive and more successful in all of these things.I almost go into this hypnotic trance. I’m like, and I just wanna follow everything you say. You have a gift. You have a gift. That’s really powerful. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna do it as soon as I got, this is recording. I was gonna say I do this tomorrow morning, but I’m gonna do it as soon as I got This’s recording and have a conversation with.That’s really cool, really powerful principle. Okay, so let’s go back now that we’ve delved into mirror work and why that’s awkward. And given everyone a bunch of different ideas of what they can do to build their morning routine. Talk to us about habit stacking. Ooh, yeah. Habit stacking is an amazing hack, so there’s already things you’re automatically doing brushing your.Getting dressed for the day, doing your hair. So if you can link and connect something to something you’re already doing, the likelihood of it happening just shoots through the roof. It’s going to happen because you’re already doing the other thing. So that current established habit becomes basically the trigger.If you guys have read oh, what’s the book? Shoot, I’m seeing the cover already. It’s like a big wheel and it says habit big on the top. But basically you set up like a series of triggers and rewards to establish habits in your life. So if the trigger is something you’re already doing, like that’s half the battle just establishing the trigger and remembering to do it.A habit stack would be when I go to get up in the morning, like if you go, when you flip on a lamp or something on your bedside table, having a compact mirror right there, boom. That’s a habit. You’re flipping the light on already, so you just open the mirror and you just 30 seconds talk to yourself.You shut it off, right? If you’re going to do your makeup oh, Okay. When I do my makeup, I’m gonna read my affirmations on my mirror, or while I blow dry my hair, I’m gonna read affirmations. While I do makeup, I’m gonna listen to an audio book just 15 minutes a day. I’m a fast makeup doer cause I’m all about efficiency.I can do it in five minutes, but even five minutes of new and powerful insights and concepts can really shift the entire trajectory of your life. It takes one idea to shift everything in your world. So creating room and space for new ideas to come in is money. And I know that wasn’t the question, but I just had to throw that in there and we’re back to profits.Yeah. Nothing wrong. Nothing wrong with that’s for sure. So we’re all talking about habit stacking and we’re talking about I’m gonna ve us off course here for a second. We’re talking about all these other speakers and other authors and other writers. What’s your message v like. You don’t live and breathe habits.This is not what you do. What’s your live and breathe? What do you do? Ooh,when I was in high school I, we had just gone through a really hard window of time. My parents got divorced when I was 12 and we were displaced. We left our family farm and my mom decided to build this house with her divorce settlement money. She was like, yeah, I put him through school.He’s a doctor, he is making all this money, but this just divorce settlement is I’m gonna rebuild my life and I’m gonna build my dream home. And she built this home and. When she built this home, it was like symbolic of her freedom and her power. And so when I got access to my bedroom there, she said, make this yours.And she let me put rainbows in a sun and stars and I just went crazy. And I decided at that age of 16 to put a quote above my door and the quote, Put above my door that I saw every day before I went to school, and that I still like, I have it burned on my soul. And as I’m saying this, I’m like, I know my next tattoo is my life is my message by Maha Mahi.And if I were to say I had a core message or a core cry to the warrior in everybody is to stand up and realize that we only know for sure we have this one precious. And all we have is time and where we put our time says something about us. If I only have a year left to live, what I do with that year means something about my priorities and what I value.And if you aren’t making time for yourself, if you are not putting your energy into the legacy you’re leaving, what is your life really about? We can say we’re about freedom or peace or love or family, but when I look at your schedule, is that what I’m gonna see? Or am I gonna see that you’re about Netflix binging and TikTok scrollingAm I gonna see that you’re putting all of your time and your energy into people who don’t really value you or support you or love you? So at the end of the day, in everything that I’m doing, And in everything I’m inviting my clients and my circle and my friends and my family to, it’s be the change. Be the change your life, the way you’re living it in the moment to moment being this not just what you’re doing.How are you being when you’re doing that thing? Are you being present? Are you being kind? Are you being love? Are you just talking about it? Are you just thinking about it? Or worse? Are you just dreaming about. We need more people taking up the call to be the change and really live their message in every moment with where they’re putting their time.Thank you. That was powerful. The piece that really stood out to me when you were talking was make this yours. And of course your name Freedom, right? And I look at your life and I see you leaving a religion that didn’t work for you, leaving a relationship that didn’t work for you and really just living this make this work for you.I, if I can think of one story that stands out in my head with you. It doesn’t seem like a big deal at all, but I, we were at an event, I can’t remember what an event I was speaking, or were you speaking? I think we both spoke at the event or something but I made like some kind of derogatory remark in passing about my body or the way I looked and it’s so common that we do that and I think I was speaking, you called me on the carpet on it while I was speaking and I was.Wow, this is a powerful woman. This is a powerful woman. She’s able to I don’t know, call me out on, I think of that phrase, make this yours, right? Of accepting my body as it is, of accepting myself as it is of and even very first thing you let out with when we were talking about the morning routine is make this yours essentially, do what you want to do. So I don’t know if I’m saying that very clearly, but I think that’s what you’reteaching through your life, through your words. I think that’s what you’re teaching. So anyway. You’re a powerful lady. You’re a powerful lady. We’ve got some free stuff to give away to everyone.But first I feel like I should just turn the time back over to you for a second. Yeah. Thank you. I just wanted to jump in on that. Thank you for being that mirror to me and shining that back to me because it’s true. It’s really true. Like at the core of the way that I want people to feel when they come around me is I want them to feel the permission to just be their unique expression of divinity. I believe that what makes this world so beautiful and so magical is that we’re all so unique and different, and yet also the. We have all of these things in common. We all want life. We want love. We want connection. We want abundance around us. We want peace, but our ways to getting there are different.Our gifts that we bring to the table, our ideas, our unique contribution, and it’s one of the most selfish things in the world to try to be a copycat of somebody else. You rob us, of you, and to show up in this world and to be present is to. And to hide out and to play small is to take, and so as you’re reflecting back to me so beautifully, like you’ve watched and witnessed my journey, like you’re basically telling me like, this is what you bring and this is what you inspire.Absolutely. Make this life your own. Make your routine your own. Bring your way, your unique gifts, your unique talents, your unique flavor. Create a morning routine. That’s you. That’s for you. That’s by you. Sure. Be inspired by other people. We need each other. We need each other. I have needed Kim as so many critical junctures in my life and just now even like her reflecting back to me like, Hey, yeah, your life’s your message, and you’re like the.You’re like, make this your own, and what a gift that is. So we all have the opportunity to step up and be the gifts for the people in our lives that we’ve been called and placed to serve. And that being said, I can transition into my gift for everybody. Let’s hear it. What’s your gift? I love it. Okay. So what I’m gifting to you guys is my archetypes masterclass.Now, this masterclass used to only be for like my v i p oneone clients, and this fall actually, I decided to just turn this in to a gift that I can give in moments like this when. Feeling so called. So the way that this masterclass is written, it’s a one hour training going deep into the archetypes of the mind.And then on the flip side of that, you’ve got the saboteur that takes you outta the game, the child, the victim, and the prostitute. Now, some people get a little antsy about me saying the word prostitute. I didn’t invent the idea of archetypes. These have been around for a long time, but this is my interpretation and spin on them and bringing you guys some powerful.Identifiers for recognizing when you’re in those voices. So for example, with morning routines, you’re wanting to create a morning routine. You’re not gonna be able to do that if you’re being a victim of your schedule or a victim of your children or your partner or your spouse. We’re gonna need to take you out of that victim and get you up into your lover where you’re like, this is worth it.So we get to bring ourselves out of the sabotaging, the whining about the time of day. Okay, 5:00 AM doesn’t work for you. Can you do 6:00 AM Like, what can you do? Let’s get creative in our lives so we can actually execute on the things we really want. So that’s my. That’s beautiful. I can tell you’re super well versed in that content and it just flows out so beautifully.And I’m like, oh that, I need a whole event on that topic right there, that there’s some meat there, there’s some really big meat. So we’re gonna have links in every, any platform that you go to, to watch or listen to this, you’ll see the link. And then your website is the new earth center.com. You can find that, those links again on every platform.So thank you for that. That’s. Those four archetypes. Let’s see as we wrap things up, reminder that the goal of this podcast is to instill wellness habits into your daily life. To build a life beyond its fine. Let’s achieve spectacular, joyful, deeply satisfying, and with Violet Rain’s help. Make this yours.Make this yours. I love that. Giveaway from our sponsor retreat works. I am doing a free live training in a couple of weeks. If you’re a life coach, a business coach, or have a wellness business, you can add a highend retreat to your business and bring in an extra 50 K in sales even if you don’t have a following.So go to retreat.works and register for the free masterclass. It’s five days to build a. Thank you v for joining us. Thanks for our listeners. Have a wonderful day and thanks everyone in in advance for giving us a positive review. Thanks everyone.