Is your morning routine getting you ahead in life?

The alarm goes off, you roll out of bed sluggishly....what is the next few things you do? Do you jump right in and start your day, or do you drag your feet until work time or possible, having to rush to make it to work? If you use the morning to achieve things you probably won't attend to later in the day, it will make your day go more smoothly and you will achieve greater success. Let's see how we can do that:

What would the perfect morning look like?

This question might vary from each individual but it could look something like exercise, healthy breakfast, maybe working on a project you been neglecting. You can enrich your personal life and professional life by incorporating ideas like these below into your morning routines:

• Pray, meditate, read inspiring religious articles or whatever you do to increase your faith and spirit.
• Take your fitness level up....use this time to increase your fitness endurance or train yourself for that long hike or run. This lets you accomplish your exercise plus you won't find a reason not to workout in the afternoon or evenings.
• Enjoy time with your family before a busy day. Take a few minutes for a fun activity with your children or quiet talk time with a spouse.
• Use quiet time in the morning to strategize, plan, organize your thoughts for the day and what you want to accomplish short-term and long-term. This is a perfect time before everyone else is up so you have total peace and privacy.
• Read articles in your field to catch up on current trends.
• If you are thinking of taking a class or online class, this is the perfect time to work on that. Do your online studies in the morning or use this time to study and refresh from your studies from day before.

How are you spending your time?

For better time management, you need to know how you spend your time and how much time you actually waste. Keep a time journal to record what you do as often as you can and this too will tune yourself in to thinking that you can use this time better. So this not only for your mornings but your entire day and week. You can then find out why you aren't accomplishing certain things or why you more tired in mornings, due to late nights. This is a way to find your bad habits and fix them to accommodate an easier lifestyle while accomplishing more.

Work on establishing good habits:

This requires willpower and we all have more willpower in us than we know. Here is how  you can optimize your routines:

• Start slowly. Going into something full speed will soon burn you out and get boring, but if you take the time and gradually incorporate a new schedule you will be more likely to stick with it. Go to bed few minutes earlier and get up 10 minutes earlier. Once you establish this goal if you are working towards getting up hour earlier, then add another 10 minutes until you each your goal.
• Get support. Having a great support team around helps you stick to a new habit. Also be sure to take care of you....eat healthy, get enough sleep.
• Start one new habit at a time. When you have 3 things you want to start and you try all 3 at once you most likely won't succeed. Pick the most important one to you and start first. Example, start walking every morning before breakfast for 20 minutes. Once that habit has taken effect, then start habit 2.
• Keep track of your progress. Forming habits takes weeks, some say 3 weeks, some say a month, but however long it takes keep track of how you are doing.
• Bribe yourself. To keep yourself moving forward, use bribery as a form of motivation. If i walk 5 days this week, I will buy a new pair of walking shoes. If I eat healthy today, I can watch my favorite movie that just came out on DVD.

Tweak it when you need to:

Everyday is a different challenge. You may find that what you thought won't now work for mornings due to a change in schedule. Always do what you love and find time for them. I am aware not everyone is a morning person and some households are crazier than others. If this morning routine is not for you, use this to incorporate into other times of the day. The goal is to bring to life those things you want to do and form a habit of doing them, whether you do them in the morning, evening, or night.

Please feel free to comment on how you form your habits and if you are a morning or night person and how this might work for you.

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