Taking just a few moments in the morning to think about the ways that you can bring happiness into your life is vital to creating a consistent life filled with happiness.
Haiku:
take sixty seconds
to build a happiness plan
to pursue today
Create a Morning Moment -- to kick start your Happiness
Hello -- Marc with the Gunnar Project. Again, the mission of the Gunnar Project is to inspire and encourage people how to pursue happiness every day.
I want to talk a little bit about a routine that needs to become part of your happiness practice. If you’re going to actually pursue happiness every day, you really should create a couple of routines, one in the morning, that we’re going to talk about now, and one in the evening, that’s going to encourage you and give you the best opportunity for actually pursuing and finding happiness through the course of the day.
Your morning routine -- one of the key components of this is you’re going to have to create a little period of time in the morning for you to do this routine. I’m not talking about waking up at 4:00 in the morning and doing this for 2 or 3 hours -- this is really a fairly short amount of time, but you’re definitely going to have to get up 15 or 20 minutes earlier in the morning than you typically do, and your routine is going to go something like this, where you want to wake up, and grab a cup of coffee, or a cup of tea, or kind of whatever you do, and probably grab a journal if you have a journal. I know that a lot of people are sort of turned off about journals, but you consistently see successful people -- people who are successful in business, people who are truly happy and passionate in their lives -- a very consistent thing with these people is that they journal and write things down, so I would encourage you to grab a journal to write things down. If you don’t, if it’s just not your deal, that’s okay too, really just taking this morning moment and taking the time is probably enough.
Once you grab your cup of coffee, your journal (or not), I want you to think ahead and just think through your day and think about the moments through your day that you have some control over, and can inject sources of happiness -- your health is a big one, right? I think that every day you can plan to eat healthy, again, you know exactly what it takes to eat healthy, you don’t have to have some crazy prescription, and you need to get a little bit of exercise, and that to a large degree will take care of your health if you have other issues or things with your health, this morning moment, this time, is a great time to plan for those things too.
The next bucket, the next source of happiness is this idea of being engaged in learning and being creative and that’s either going to happen at your work, or potentially after work, if your job right now that you’re in isn’t inspiring you in those ways, you might have to create some time afterward.
Then there’s this idea of connecting with people -- your friends, your co-workers, your family, people you live with, your roommates -- finding those people and connecting with them on a deeper level that’s going to really give you a good feeling for the day, and really just trying to avoid the people in your life that make you crabby! Again that sounds really obvious, but it’s amazing how much time we spend in every day with people who just don’t inspire us, who really sort of take us down.
And then there’s this idea of just doing good -- praying, maybe, communicating and talking with your Higher Power, however you want to define that, and just serving others and doing good for people that just makes us feel good -- but in your morning moment, if you can just take 3 or 4 or 5 minutes and visualize kind of how your day is going to flow and where you can sort of find and engage in these different sources of happiness for your day. That’s about it -- getting those ideas in your head and having some plan for how your day is going to flow is going to give you a much better chance to bounce into these things and actually find happiness every day.
So again, this is Marc Miller with the Gunnar Project -- the morning moment, very critical and important -- I hope you engage in it as you develop your happiness practice!