In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Belah Rose about her morning routine, working during the mornings when you're most creative, being intentional about your energy and much more.
In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Belah Rose about her morning routine, working during the mornings when you're most creative, being intentional about your energy and much more.
Ryan
Hey guys, it's Ryan real quick. So my mission with the Morning Upgrade blog and podcast is to raise the awareness of morning routines and personal development. And I now have two products that have also helped me with this mission. The first product helps you start a 20 minute morning routine. And the second product is a book that outlines how to use personal development, upgrade your life and business. You can get full details on both products over at morning upgrade.com. Thanks for letting me share. And now on to the show.
Announcer
Welcome to the Morning upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.
Ryan
Hey, Belah, welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How are you?
Belah
Hey, thanks, Ryan. Doing great.
Ryan
Awesome. Let's start off by telling everyone who you are and what you do for a living and maybe some of your hobbies.
Belah
Thank you. Okay, so my name is Bella Rose, and I'm an intimacy and marriage coach and expert, and author. And yeah, I get to work with husbands and wives separately, on how to transform their marriage and intimacy making maybe something that's been stale for decades and passionate and playful and fun.
Ryan
Yeah, I love it. How'd you get into that business?
Belah
So it started out with a lot of brokenness. Yeah, I think a lot of times we pursue passions that really kind of go deep in us. And so started out with me getting married when I was young, and not understanding sex, or understanding men or understanding all sorts of things in life that, yeah, caused me to really misunderstand my husband and he misunderstands me. And so we kind of just was at each other's throats and eventually ended in divorce and lots of pain. And then yeah, I spent a couple of years kind of figuring the whole thing out and eventually got remarried and ended up having some similar struggles that I thought I had overcome. Like around controlling my husband, which turns out is not the best thing to do, Ryan. And then yeah, eventually getting to a place where, gosh, other people need to know this. Other people need to know sex is really important in a relationship. And so I wrote my book and started my podcast. And so yeah, then got to start coaching couples. It's really been fantastic.
Ryan
That's great. It must be a very rewarding career, I'm sure.
Belah
Yeah, absolutely.
Ryan
So let's talk about um, I know, before we start recording, you said you have some habits, and I know you have routines, I should say, including a morning routine. So why don't we start off with you telling everyone how you start your day?
Belah
Yeah, absolutely. So I like to start with my phone across the room. And usually, I try to leave it in the kitchen before I go to sleep. So my husband will actually bring it into the room after so I don't have any possible distraction at night. So I can do my night routine. But anyway, I wake up in the morning to my alarm clock across the room and then head into the kitchen, get my coffee, sit, and just we've got this beautiful view. And so I get to sit there and just kind of slowly enter the day. I've got two boys. So they know mom's doing her routine. It's very important that they do not interrupt mom's routine.
Ryan
Same here. Daughters, but they know their routine by now. Yeah.
Belah
Yeah, exactly. The kids kind of have to be on board with it. So anyway, so yeah, so then I journal 10 things I'm grateful for. That's the first thing. And that's really important for me to just reset my mind. Because no matter what, dream life, or some weird thing, whatever wakes me up on the wrong side of the bed, I reset with my gratitudes and then actually journal those out. And a lot of times, if it's a gloomy day out, or I'm in a funk, I need to get to 20 or sometimes 30. So I just keep journaling until my mindset changes. And then I have a prayer that I specifically go through, it's an acronym, and the acronym is fellowship. And I'm a Christian. And so the first one is the fear of the Lord. And I just asked God to help me just understand who he is. And when I really understand that this is all about him and making him proud of me, my whole life turns into the right perspective. And so that kind of prayer kind of goes through all those different letters of the acronym. And then I go through a prayer list. So I have different people in my life that I care deeply about. And I want to pray through those things. And I also pray about my own character that I'm the kind of person I should be. And then I have visualization. So I've got, I don't know, maybe two pages of notes on what I want my life to look like shortly, in the coming weeks and months and years. And so I read through each of those and visualize it. And then I Yeah, grab my Bible and I find a scripture that I like and just kind of spend some time writing out what it speaks to me and then I head to my room and my son Sometimes He will even open the door for me when I've got my coffee and water in hand and he will make my um, have you ever heard of a rebounder? Right Ryan? Know what is it? It's a fancy word for a trampoline indoors.
Ryan
Okay, I've heard of trampolines. That's right. That's right.
Belah
So then I'll listen to some music and jump on my rebounder. Get all fresh that way and yeah, then I dive into my work start routine. So that's yeah, that's the way we go.
Ryan
Is the rebounder a good exercise? Do you get out of breath from using it?
Belah
Yeah, and sweaty. And does all the stuff.
Ryan
I really have to look into that. Yeah. I like to find this probably compact, right? You can put it in a room here. And you're good to go.
Belah
Absolutely. And we live in New York City. So it's yeah, we've got to have it compact. Just need tall ceilings.
Ryan
Oh, yeah, that's important. I like it. The gratitude practice. I mean, I do that too. I do three things. 10 is really good. I'm a big fan of that even if you just have time for one thing that you're grateful for, like when you first get into bed? Huge, huge fan of that. Yeah, I love it. What are the routines you like, so what about any habits that you've got? So you got the morning routine, habit, and anything else that you can share that you swear by?
Belah
Yeah, so I have something I like in VR, which is spreadsheets. I like that we manage what we measure. And so VR is the most valuable resource. And so it's kind of It looks like a spreadsheet that you add in all of your calendered invites to like, so what I'll do is the day before or that morning, actually, it's usually the morning of I add in the first five minutes of the day, I add in all my appointments from the day, and then any to dues that are really a priority, I'll add those into like the blank slots. So basically, I don't start any calls or anything social, I don't get on email, I don't do anything until at least 11, hopefully at 12 pm. So that I had that morning to do the most important work. So whether it's creative work, or whether it's just things that I hate doing that I have to get done, because I'm freshest in the morning. And so this NVR's most valuable resource is me putting everything in my calendar, and then I actually have a zero to 10 scale of how well I did in that hour. Do I think that I did? Did I give it my best? Was it 10 out of 10? Was it five out of 10? And then I have a learning column of what did I learn? Why did I get unfocused? Like what took my energy in the hour before that? Or how would I have set up that call for that meeting to have gone a little differently so that I wouldn't have felt depleted by the next meeting? Etc, etc. So I really love that because you know, why are we counting dollars more important than something that you really can never get more of is our time?
Ryan
That's very true. Where'd you learn that strategy from?
Belah
I called it the MVR. I don't want to take credit unless I can't remember if I learned it from anyone. So I think I think I developed it. I would totally point to somebody else if I could think of it. And maybe it's like consuming lots of different people's resources and combining I'm not quite sure. I wasn't troubled for some reason. So that to me is like a Michael Hyatt thing. I'm not sure why. But you're probably right, you probably just because it's like my morning routine. I've just listened to all the guests and then yeah, Miracle Morning, I've just sort of formulated my own routine, and it evolves over time. So maybe MVR could have been Yeah, yeah, I want to talk about your business. I want to talk about challenges. And maybe you could think of one that is front and center in your mind. But I want to talk about how you get through challenges, and then maybe talk about a specific one. And you can think of anything.
Ryan
Oh, totally. Yeah, I think it doesn't, isn't too dissimilar to the MVR that we were just talking about.
Belah
Because what I noticed is, you know, you could take the same hour, and if you're at a two at a 10 energy, you're going to get half a thing done, you're barely going to do anything or you might just ping around from your inbox and actually do nothing important. But if you're at energy, you know, nine or 10 out of 10 You're going to get 200 Things Done possibly you're going to be zeroed in on what matters most. Or you're going to do something incredibly important in that hour that you wouldn't have been able to do any other time. So the reason I say that is I try to be really intentional about my energy and so as much as I'm like, you know, focused as you know, really, really key and dialed in. I want to have an extreme My goal is my visualization My hope is that I am working in a 10 out of 10 way and resting in a 10 out of 10 way. I mean that's my goal because I rest hard Ryan I am not interested in working till I, you know, go like it's like a sprinter right. You know, you've got to rest if you're going to go full force, you've got to rest. So my family and I take a rest day on Saturdays. Wednesdays I don't. I'm totally offline. I'm just out in the park with my journal and my coffee and I'm just sitting there. Sometimes I just rest.
Ryan
So you work on Wednesdays, or you're working just not with electronics.
Belah
I'm halfway through like I journal, I spent time with Jesus, I'm just sometimes I'll have ideas around the business. So I'll write things down. But it's just resting. It's letting my mind kind of play around, do whatever it wants, enjoy nature, you know. So it's vital. Like, if I didn't live like that on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Friday, I wouldn't be able to do what I do on those days if that makes sense.
Ryan
Got it, so I'm just gonna say Saturdays, you don't work either. Or you don't work till you take a rest day?
Belah
That's right. Yeah, yeah. Which is also super intentional, to just and I try to be off-screen, sometimes it will be a movie or you know, with the family or whatever. But yeah, we try to just do chess or whatever, or we'll be outside or we'll be doing that sort of thing. And the reason to go back to your question about, you know, a challenge, what I noticed is if my energy, like, if I haven't been so careful to cultivate good energy during the days that I am supposed to be working, then I can't, I can't show it for my clients to the level that I expect myself to, like, I can't giving them 100%, if I'm coming, they're depleted. And so, you know, for example, we just had our biggest launch for the men's program ever, which is really exciting. But it meant that we needed two classes rather than one. And so then I'm like, trying to figure out my schedule to have two of these major giant classes where I'm like, having to be on for an hour and a half straight, and coaching all, you know, a full group of 20 different men, understanding all these different dynamics and understanding their stories and giving them personal feedback and like, it is intensive, and doing it two times back to back. So what I'm learning is how do I really make sure that my life is just really energetically correct. And so that I'm either resting or I'm working. And that's the challenge that I guess what I would encourage your listeners to think about, like, where are you wasting energy, and if you can, and it's not like you're your zone of genius, delegate it to someone else, so that they can do their zone of genius, and you can focus on what's really going to energetically fill you up and not waste your energy that should be on something else.
Ryan
Is there anything you do to protect your energy? Besides the stuff that we all know that we should be doing? Like get rest, get rest? Eat? Well, exercise? Is there anything else you do? That's, that's unique?
Belah
Yeah, I mean, I think really trying to be aware of it is the first thing I noticed that you know when I'm vulnerable to someone who doesn't necessarily understand vulnerability or isn't very encouraging, in general, there's super encouraging, then I noticed that I feel lower in my energy, right? Have you ever had those experiences? Ryan, when you're talking to someone, you're kind of opening up and they don't really, they don't really connect in that way. And then you're like, leave? And you're just like, oh, my gosh, I feel awful. Just like next time, I'm just not going to open up to somebody like that.
Ryan
Yeah, there are people that give you energy and people that take away energy. Yeah, absolutely.
Belah
Yeah. So I think that's really key. And then, you know, one thing about our rest days is we just don't plan anything. So that's really helpful. So there's nothing that I'm like, if I don't feel like doing anything, I don't have to push myself. I'm just, we kind of wake up and do what we want to when we. So there's, I think a lot of help and us realizing like, you can just be in the moment and being present and, and really elevating rest in our lives. I don't think that's something that is especially really intentional entrepreneurs ever, like a lot of times we just hustle, hustle, hustle and forget that like rest is vital for you to actually do work that matters.
Ryan
Yeah. 100%. Agree. It's funny you say that because we're in the mastermind that I'm part of, we're actually going through a book right now called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. And it talks about that, how we're all addicted to going and being super busy. And he talks about having a rest day. And so yeah, it's time that you're, you're mentioning this.
Belah
Oh, that's so cool. I actually read that book probably six months ago. And I feel like I could definitely not have written it as eloquently, but I feel like he and I are so aligned. It's amazing. You need to get him on your podcast.
Ryan
That's right. That's right. So Belah, this was great. I've got one more question for you. And we could wrap up with you by sharing how people can connect with you that they want to learn more. I usually ask like, number one personal development tip but because your business is Marriage and helping marriages. I feel like I have to ask for a marriage tip. And so you know, what is your number one marriage tip? I know, I know it depends. But if you just give one that sort of like is overarching, what would you say?
Belah
Absolutely. So I have a framework that I call the intimacy framework. And I think the main thing is that if we love ice cream, and our neighbor comes over and offers these cookies because they love cookies, we're going to be like, um, thanks. But I don't really feel loved because I like ice cream, and you like cookies. But if your neighbor found out you love ice cream, and they decided even though they love cookies, they came and gave you ice cream, you would feel loved. And you might even return that love by giving them cookies. So the point of the matter is, I have a framework called the intimacy framework, and it's finding out, men and women are different. A husband and a wife love each other differently, we receive love differently. And so super quickly is the framework is for men to feel fulfilled in their marriage, they need to feel respected, they need to feel admired, and they need wholehearted sexual intimacy. And so for a wife to feel loved, she needs to feel known. She needs to feel safe, and she needs to feel wholeheartedly cherished. And so that's kind of my very general overarching, but what I find in my work is that it really when we look at kind of a one-argument between a husband and wife, that framework can give us so much insight of like, this happened because one of you doesn't feel one of these things. Yeah. So I'd love to give you more insight into that sort of information. I've got a free document, a download that is all about that framework. You could go to delightyourmarriage.com/framework to get more of that.
Ryan
Perfect. Yeah, we’ll link that up in the show notes. Any other site you want to share, or is that the best length of them to go to?
Belah
Yeah, I think that's it. Perfect.
Ryan
Well, this was great, Belah, I really appreciate your time. Good meeting you and thanks, everyone, for listening.
Belah
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Ryan
Thanks for listening to the Morning Upgrade podcast. Please subscribe and review. And don't forget to visit us at morningupgrade.com for more content.