My generation grew up with Olympians gracing the cover of Wheaties cereal boxes. Before there were Super bowl MVPs going to Disneyworld, there were champions hoping to make the Wheaties box cover. And of course their slogan was “Wheaties… Breakfast of Champions.” Without even saying it, we all knew breakfast was the key to starting out the day on the way to becoming a champion.
Times have changed. Breakfast is rarely a family event and eating something to settle the caffeine beverage is more the norm. We seem to worry more about our emails and Facebook and morning news than what energy we put in our tank. And most of us don’t head out the door feeling we are on the road to becoming a champion.
While Wheaties is still around, the breakfast of champions has always been there. It takes about an hour to digest and it’s guaranteed to set your rudder on a course for a championship day. What is this great meal? The Golden Hour.
The Golden Hour is the first hour of the day and what you feed yourself is even more important than Wheaties. The Golden Hour is where you feed your mind with the mental food to become a champion. Daily insights from Jesus Calling, The Bible, John Maxwell, Brian Tracy and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale fuel my mental tank with all the right attitudes and viewpoints to go make today the masterpiece John Wooden wrote about.
Contrast the Golden Hour meal with a steady diet of emails, Facebook, cable news, and talk radio in the morning. Is there any wonder so many of us turn negative at the first problem of the day or have no focus on the important but not urgent opportunities we have each day? If you wouldn’t feed your body junk food every morning, why would you feed something more precious, your mind, so much negative garbage? So set your alarm 15 minutes earlier for the next month, gather some inspiration books, and spend 15 minutes setting your course for a championship day. Don’t be surprised when you keep moving the alarm up so you can spend more time at the “Breakfast of Champions” training table.