If your morning routine consists of a mad rush to get out the door on time, it's probably time for an upgrade so you can frame your day better. Weblog Daring to Live Fully details two methods for feeding your mind the best stuff and setting the tone for the rest of the day.
The first is a morning ritual author Tim Sanders uses to get in the right frame of mind.
- Sanders begins each day by recollecting two people that he's grateful for from the day before. He thinks of two people who did something good for him on the previous day.
- Then, he thinks of his upcoming day and of someone who's going to be an asset to him on that day. He feels gratitude for that encounter ahead of time.
- Next, he puts on a cup of coffee and he reads something inspirational for half an hour.
- Finally, he sits down with another cup of coffee and he takes five minutes to rehearse the coming day, including any hurdles he thinks he might come across. He plans ahead of time how he's going to overcome these hurdles. Sanders calls this "rehearsing his dance moves".
If you don't have a half hour available to read something inspirational or positive, even just a few minutes might make a big difference in your daily life. Taking a more leisurely approach in the morning may help boost your creativity.
The second method Daring to Live Fully mentions is a "Daily Success Routine" developed by Derek Franklin. It consists of seven small things you can do, that added together and done consistently can improve your life. The steps are very similar to the routine above, including expressing thanks (gratitude pops up a lot as a method of becoming happier and more compassionate), reading something positive, and watching something inspirational. Franklin adds spending a few minutes writing and reviewing your goals.
I still need to train to become a morning person, but making the best use of those quieter hours in the day does sound smart. Have you upgraded your morning routine yet?
How to Start Your Day the Right Way | Daring to Live Fully
Photo by Jonathan
Japanese TV game shows are always entertaining and this one is no exception. You'll find a few hacks for your morning routine, including brushing your teeth while you shimmy into your pants and using a safety pin to button your collar. 
If you don't live where leaving butter out for a minute or two will quickly soften it, the rush to butter toast or other foods can leave them damaged from awkward knife maneuvers. Work around your thermodynamic issues by peeling off thin strips of butter with a vegetable peeler, as recommended by 
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If you don't mind paying $10, 
Now all you need to do is assign this file to an alarm. In Awaken, when you're creating a new alarm, you can assign a launch file by dragging it onto a designated empty space in the alarm creation form window. In iCal, add a new event that repeats daily at the time you want to wake up and add an alarm that activates at that time. Make that alarm open a file and then choose the online radio file we just created. This should have the same effect as using Awaken, but I've had issues with iCal's scheduler and iTunes enough in the past that I don't trust it to be perfect. Awaken, however, provides you with backup alarms so it'll still wake you up should iTunes cause any problems.
On Windows you can use an application like 
