7 Things Happy, Healthy People Do Every Morning When you get up in the morning, think of what a priceless privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to learn, to love – and then make the day count! The morning is extremely important. It is the foundation from which the day is built. How you choose to spend your morning can be used to predict what kind of day you are going to have, and thus, what kind of life you are going to live. Each morning truly is a brand new opportunity. Each day is another chance to get it right. The happiest, healthiest people I know embrace this truth and use it to their advantage. 1. In other words, they start the day with love in their hearts and minds, and are truly appreciative of their life and all of its priceless idiosyncrasies. From the research and coaching Angel and I have done over the years, we’ve found that the more a person is inclined to gratitude, the less likely he or she is to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic. 2. Inhabit your morning completely. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing By Maria Popova In the winter of 2010, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing published in The New York Times nearly a decade earlier, The Guardian reached out to some of today’s most celebrated authors and asked them to each offer his or her commandments. After Zadie Smith’s 10 rules of writing, here come 8 from the one and only Neil Gaiman: WritePut one word after another. For more timeless wisdom on writing, see Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for a great story, David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, and Susan Sontag’s synthesized learnings. Image by Kimberly Butler
Creating a Lovely Morning ‘When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.’ ~Marcus Aurelius By Leo Babauta When I wake in the morning, my mind slowly gathers, and I begin to move, the early morning light just starting to seep in. I have a glass of water, start the coffee, then meditate. This is my Lovely Morning, and I get an inordinate amount of pleasure from it. It wasn’t always this way: I used to wake later, rush through a grumpy routine before diving into email and work and errands and meetings. I was wrong. I’ll share them with you here, and if you begin to enjoy the peace of your mornings more, send a smile in my general direction. Wake a little earlier. A Lovely Morning isn’t something that just falls into your lap — it’s created consciously. ‘Waking up this morning, I smile. Creating the Wake Early Habit It’s a slow, gradual habit change, which is what works best.
Inspiring Morning Routines What I’ve Learned as a Writer By Leo Babauta I’ve been a professional writer since I was 17: so nearly 24 years now. I’ve made my living with words, and have written a lot of them — more than 10 million (though many of them were duplicates). That means I’ve made a ton of errors. Being a writer means I’ve failed a lot, and learned a few things in the process. Now, some of you may be aspiring writers (or writers looking for inspiration from a colleague). So for anyone interested in writing, I’d love to share what I’ve learned so far. Write every damn day. And one thing I’ve learned, above all, is this: the life that my writing has changed more than any other is my own.
The 10 Most Important Questions You Can Ask Yourself Today Email At the end of the day, the questions we ask ourselves determine the type of people we become. When you’ve been running a successful personal development blog and life coaching business for the better part of a decade, one thing becomes crystal clear: Everyone has the same basic wants and needs. No kidding, over the years Angel and I have gotten to know thousands of people of different ethnic backgrounds, from different cities and countries, who live at various socioeconomic levels, and trust me, every one of us basically wants the same things. Think about it. So what kind of questions might you ask instead? What is worth suffering for? Your turn… At any given moment, life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to seek these answers that continues to give our lives meaning. So with that said, which of the questions above hit home the most? This article was co-written by Marc and Angel and Mark Manson, and inspired by Mark’s insightful work which can be found here.
9 Things You Should Do Every Day Before 9 A.M. The morning is enormously important. It’s the foundation from which the day is built. How you choose to spend your morning can be used to predict the kind of day you’re going to have. When I awake in the morning, my mind gradually gathers, and I begin to move as the early morning light is just starting to seep through the windows. My family is still sleeping. I stretch, have a glass of water, start the tea kettle, and practice a gratitude meditation for ten minutes. Once my family awakes, I pause to join them for a short time and we follow some simple morning rituals together too. This is just a rough sketch of my mornings, and they make me happy. It wasn’t always this way though. I’ve changed my mornings, so they work for me and not against me, with just a few simple rituals. 1. If your mornings are chaotic, the simple solution is to get up a little earlier than the chaos. 2. Begin each day with love, grace and gratitude. 3. 4. Another obvious practice that goes by the wayside… 5. 6. 7.
Anne Lamott’s Timeless Advice on Writing and Why Perfectionism Kills Creativity by Maria Popova “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.” Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (public library) is among my 10 favorite books on writing — a treasure trove of insight both practical and profound, timelessly revisitable and yielding deeper resonance each time. One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. What makes Lamott so compelling is that all of her advice comes not from the ivory tower of the pantheon but from an honest place of exquisite vulnerability and hard-earned life-wisdom. I started writing when I was seven or eight. So she found refuge in books, searching for “some sort of creative or spiritual or aesthetic way of seeing the world and organizing it in [her] head.” I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. But, one might wonder, why? Donating = Loving
5 Questions to Simplify Your Life During the Holidays By Leo Babauta For many people, the holiday season is the busiest, most complicated, most stressful time of year. Holiday parties, gift shopping and wrapping, decorating, travel plans, end-of-the-year projects, planning for the new year … these are all added on top of your regular business. And life before the holidays was already pretty busy. So what can we do to simplify? Is it even possible to simplify when things are getting crazy? Yes, it’s possible — with some willingness to change. One method to go about this is to ask yourself a series of questions. Here are the ones I’ve found useful: What are you striving for? Letting go isn’t easy, because if it’s in our lives, that means we’ve already said yes, have already decided its important enough to be in our lives. Simplicity requires asking these tough questions, and then learning to let go.
8 Things Every Person Should Do Before 8 A.M. 8 Things Every Person Should Do Before 8 A.M. Life is busy. It can feel impossible to move toward your dreams. If you have a full-time job and kids, it’s even harder. How do you move forward? If you don’t purposefully carve time out every day to progress and improve — without question, your time will get lost in the vacuum of our increasingly crowded lives. As Professor Harold Hill has said — “You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.” Rethinking Your Life and Getting Out of Survival Mode This article is intended to challenge you to rethink your entire approach to life. Sadly, most people’s lives are filled to the brim with the nonessential and trivial. They are in survival mode. Like Bilbo, most of us are like butter scraped over too much bread. It was social and cultural to live our lives on other people’s terms just one generation ago. You are the designer of your destiny. You are responsible. You get to decide. Let’s begin: 1.
Writer as Coder: The Iterative Way to Write a Book By Leo Babauta The traditional way of writing a book is like the old Microsoft model of developing software: you write it in isolation for a year or two, and then put it out as a fully-formed product. The problem with that method is that it’s never been tested in the real world. You don’t know if readers (or users) will want it, you don’t know where you’ve made huge mistakes, you don’t know how it will work in the wild. That “Microsoft” model of making programs has been replaced in the last decade or so by iterative programming, where you make a Minimum Viable Product as soon as possible, and let a small group of people (alpha or beta testers) use it and give you feedback and report bugs. Then a new version is made, more testing and feedback, and so on, making the product better and better each iteration. Unfortunately, we authors are still stuck in the Microsoft model when we’re writing a non-fiction book. The process is one of the best things I’ve ever done as a writer.
12 Little Habits that Stole Your Happiness Last Year This is a new year. A new beginning. And things will change. Are you tired of dealing with the same type of headaches and heartaches over and over and over again? Seriously, it’s time to purge some bad habits as we begin a New Year. Remember, you ultimately become what you repeatedly do. Sticking exclusively with what you already know. – When you stop learning you stop living a meaningful life. Afterthoughts As I’ve mentioned before, if you’re struggling with any of these points, know that you are not alone. The bottom line is that it’s never too late to take a step in the right direction. The floor is yours… What stole a little too much of your happiness last year? Photo by: Marcus Related