The S.A.V.E.R.S.

Being unsure of which one he should incorporate into his life, he had the bright idea “Hey, if these six different things work for different people, what if I do all of these things? What could that do for me?” So, he implemented those into a morning routine called SAVERS. SAVERS is an acronym. S for silence, A for affirmations, V for visualization, E for exercise, R for read and S for scribe. That makes a nice acronym there, SAVERS. It’s easy to remember and it’s easy to do.

Silence

The first is Silence. It seems like in today’s world we don’t get a lot of silence, right? We get in the car and we turn the radio on, or we’re doing stuff around the house and we’ve got music playing, and we always have people around us. It’s hard to just take some time to ourselves, to sit and just focus on our thoughts. But it has so much value. Silence may just be some quiet meditation time, where you close your eyes and focus on your breathing, as you inhale and then exhale. Or maybe this is prayer time, where you are praying and listening quietly.

Affirmations

The next part is Affirmations. Affirmations are just positive statements that we repeat to ourselves to help increase our energy level. They’re positive and they’re helpful to us and they give us guidance and direction. They could be as simple as what we might call “I am” statements. “I am happy. I am free. I am helpful.” Things like that. Things that we want to improve in our lives that serve to remind us, “Hey, this is where I’m going.”

Another way you could do it is you could write out, or say something like “As I do blank, I become blank”. For example, “As I read my scriptures, I learn more about the Gospel or I learn more about Jesus Christ.” Or “As I am kind to others, they are more kind to me.” So, that might be something you could do for an affirmation.

Visualization

Visualization is the third part. It’s just like it sounds. You visualize things. This is about you telling your mind what you want, and where you want it to focus. If you know where you’re going then you’ll have a much easier time getting yourself there. This might be done by standing in front of your vision board. Maybe you’ve got some picture of things that represent things that you want to achieve in your life, or things you want to bring into your life, or successes that you want to have. You can stand there and study those and try to get those into your mind. Try to see them in your mind.

You could also just sit silently with your eyes closed and picture what you want your life to be like. See if you can get yourself to feel what it’s going to be like when you are there and that will really help you to internalize that, and to accept that as the reality that you want to achieve.

Exercise

The fourth part is Exercise. This can take on different forms. Maybe you go out for a run. Maybe you go out for a bike ride. Maybe you rearrange the cans in your food storage room, those big heavy cans, moving them, lifting them around. Or big buckets of cement. You can be creative. Maybe go outside and do some pull ups on the swing set, or just jump up and down. A lot of times we get up, go into the office and sit in a chair all day, and we don’t move a lot. We’re just sitting there–all day. If we can get ourselves moving, that’s going to help our bodies to function a lot better. And our minds as well.

Reading

The fifth part is Read. Pick up a book. Learn something. This could be your scriptures. Or a novel, where you could really get into the story and. Or, it could be something that you want to learn, through some educational book. The idea is that we want to always be exercising that part of our brain. We’re reading words, and we’re learning new things.

Scribe

The final piece of SAVERS is Scribe. This is writing. He calls it Scribe because that makes the acronym flow. What would it be if he used the word Writing instead? SAVERW??? Scribe sounds better. It makes the acronym work better–so we have SAVERS. Scribe then. We all have negative feelings and emotions inside of us, and if we let them sit there, eventually they’re going to bottle up and they’re going to come out and be spewed out all over other people. We don’t want that. We want to be proactive and get ahead of that.

So what we do is, maybe every other day, during your scribe time, your writing time, is you sit down and write all the things that are troubling you or bothering you. Write about your frustrations. Write about the sadness you’ve experienced in your life. Write about any disappointment and anger you’ve felt. Write that on paper, and then tear it up and throw it in the garbage.

If you do that every other day then maybe on the even days what you do is you write about gratitude, or things that you are grateful for. Maybe you have a gratitude journal where you write and record these things. You can write in there “I’m grateful for this, I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for my family,” and on and on. This will help you to appreciate those things more.

The Quick Version

Those are the six pieces of the SAVERS morning routine. What’s really great about this is that you can do a super simple, abbreviated version. What I like to do is to set a timer for one minute and spend just a single minute on each part. This then becomes the six minute version.

I’ll set a timer for one minute on my phone and I’ll sit there and I’ll just be silent for one minute. When the alarm goes off I reset it and I switch over to my affirmations. I have a list of affirmations on my phone that I like to read and I’ll read through those until the timer goes off again. Then I’ll switch over to some visualization. When the timer goes off again I switch over to exercise. Maybe I’ll do some push ups or planks, or some stretching, or whatever, for one minute. Then next is reading. So I will pull out a book and I’ll read for one minute. And then the last thing is scribe. I’ll write down quickly, “These things are bothering me.” Or “I’m grateful for this.” And after six minutes, BOOM!, I’m done.

Now it’s Your Turn!

It’s amazing! Even just doing it for six minutes makes you feel so empowered, and so ready to go. It gives you that boost you need in the morning. Of course if you do it for longer and spend more time on these different things, you’ll get more benefit from it. But before investing more time into it, just try it out at an easy level. You’ll see that even just doing the quick version is going to make a big impact on your life.