The Morning Ritual

One very useful technique I've been using is the "Morning Ritual". I've always had the tendency to stay up late, and sleep in until the last moment, and I never seemed to have time to do the things I knew I wanted to do each day. By promising myself to do a "Morning Ritual", I've managed to shift my wasted, passive, evening, web surfing, game playing or TV watching time into a different, productive set of activities every morning.

I prepared a self hypnosis tape to help cement the morning ritual into place, and now that it has become second nature, I don't even need to refresh myself with the tape any more.

My current morning ritual consists of:
1. Get up, do some minor "wake up" chores.
2. Prepare a cup of Chinese medicine.
3. Sit quietly, drink my herbs, and write my morning pages (3 pages every morning).
4. take my morning pills and eat a light breakfast.
5. Do Qi Gong, and review anything I recently learned in Tai Chi class.
6. Listen to an audio hypnosis session.

All in all this takes me a couple of hours each morning, but I feel so much better when I do this every day.

Doing the same thing every day can be boring, so I try to vary my ritual to reflect what my current focus is. But there are always some things I try to do every day. Like exercise.