The morning routine seems to always be up for debate. Who has time to half the stuff we are supposed to do, or should do, before we even get the rest of the family up to start the day. No family, just you? Well you want to sleep just one more hour and hitting the snooze button has become extremely habitual for you now. It’s gotten to the point now where you aren’t just hitting it anymore, you are now slamming it.

The bed is a great place. Comfortable, cozy and warm. I think some days we could stay in there forever. I wonder, though, if you have a different routine in the morning, would it interest you in getting up earlier and looking forward to the day instead of dreading it? Let’s see if any of these simple things might get you moving a little earlier.

1. Say thank you.

Even before you open your eyes. You’re stirring, slowly but surely, immediately say thank you for another day. you are alive and made it through to the next day. Express gratitude for that.

2. Fling open the curtains and a window.

Get some fresh air in your house. If it’s too cold to open the window definitely get those curtains open and bring in some of the powerful energy of the sun and a new day.

3. Meditate.

Even if only for 5 minutes. You can do this while your coffee is brewing. Go sit by the window, close your eyes (careful not to fall back asleep) and take some nice breaths in and out. Welcome in the new day and breathe out the fog.

4. Splash cold water on your face or better yet, jump in a cold shower.

This will surely invigorate you and get your blood circulating much faster than you can even imagine. Think of it as booster cables on your car battery on a cold wintery day. You’ll be more apt to get stuff done, and more of it, more effectively.

5. Exercise.

Get out of bed, get a drink of water and get your heart pumping. You can do simple full body exercises or you can jog on the spot. Whatever your exercise of choice is, try to get in at least 15 minutes of it.

6. Stretch or do yoga.

Stretching is great for loosening up those limbs that have been sleeping for 7 hours.  Get out of bed, and start limbering up those muscles and get those joints moving again. This doesn’t have to be long or arduous. 10-15 should do it.

7. Journal.

Get your thoughts out on paper or maybe even do a gratitude journal. Write out all the things you are grateful for before the day even begins and you will surely attract more things to be grateful for throughout the day.

8. Pray.

Clearly not for everybody though praying could be just as simple as a small gratitude blessing or affirmation to the universe or your higher power, whatever that is for you. It could be a small wish to make today a good day.

9. Drink water.

Before your coffee or tea and before you do anything, get rehydrated. Your body has been without any fluids for probably up to 10 hours. It is dehydrated and needs some lubricating. Get two glasses of water into you immediately upon rising. You will instantly feel this hydration.

10. Put some music on.

Whatever your music of choice is, put it on an d crank it up if you can. Or perhaps you like to listen to soft Zen like music. Wake up your brain, get some music into your soul and get your groove on. Music is definitely a source of all happiness.

These are just a few simple ways to kick your body into high gear in the morning. If you are one of those hit snooze all the time people you may want to put your alarm in another room or very far away from you so you literally have to get out of bed to turn it off. This in itself may deter you from going back to bed after the alarm goes off. Whatever the case and whatever you might choose to try, you should always try to be embrace each new day with vigor and a smile. Expect good things to happen to you each and every day.

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There was a day when you used to walk past a playground or park and it would be fill ed with giggling children and parents. You could hear the excited shrieks two blocks away. It was constant activity. Moms and dads playing with their kids. The streets would be lined with joggers and power walkers. People everywhere. Getting fresh air, bonding with the family and simply enjoying life. It really was such a delightful sight.

Sad enough, that visual doesn’t exist anymore. The parks still have kids, a few of them, but the guardian is busy on their cell phone, paying little attention to Sarah or Johnny. Not all, but many, too many. What happened to those good old days of interacting with each other, with nature, with life? Wireless devices took over our lives and we are now slaves to this. It’s about time we unplug and get outside more and here are a few reasons why.

1. Vitamin D is really good for you.

This vitamin is vital in our keeping our bones and teeth healthy. The only two ways to get proper levels are either through the sun, in moderation, or in supplements. For many, depending on where you live, supplements might be the predominant way to get D but others should gladly step outside and let their skin absorb some Vitamin D.

2. Fresh air is good for you.

Provided you aren’t living in an industrial smog town, where the air actually might be really bad for you, the best way to clear your lungs and get some great oxygen flowing through you is none other than the great outdoors.  Many of us are stuck indoors working too many hours surrounded by electronic pollution. Get out and take a walk on a nice hiking trail, or head on down to a lake or river.

3. Clear your mind.

We’ve been plugged in for 8 hours, maybe even up to 12 hours, and our minds desperately need some decompression. The only way to clear your mind and dump all that information is to unplug, leave your device at home and get outside. Watch some butterflies, listen to the birds, get in tune with nature.

4. Nature’s exercise.

No phones, no iPod, just you, your running shoes, a bottle of water and the sound of nature. Get out and embrace it, listen to it, take it all in while you are walking, running or simply sitting down by the river. Go mountain climbing and see how far you can challenge yourself. The exercise possibilities outdoors are endless. Try one.

5. Make new friends.

Yes, even something as simple as getting outside and walking can lead to great new relationships and friendships. The man sitting on the bench you see daily probably has some great stories. The lady you see walking alone every day maybe would like some company. Real time people, real time relationships. There is nothing better than that, really.

6. Find your passion.

You already sort of know what it is but you don’t have time to explore or develop it because you’re too busy being plugged in all the time. Get outside, get fresh air, clear your mind and let new and refreshing ideas flow through you. There might even be something outside that fires up your passion. Go find it, allow it to come to you. Be open to it.

7. Spend real time with family.

Get everyone in the house to get their runners on and go for a walk. Make it a weekly date if you want. Go to the park, go hiking, a picnic at the lake, whatever tickles your fancy but get the whole family to unplug and enjoy the great outdoors. Make memories, bring a camera (not a cell phone camera but a real one).

8. Take in your surrounding area with a new eye.

Go see what’s around. Find a trail. Get down to that river you’ve been admiring on your drive home from work. Embrace nature and the world around you. Go to that new ice cream parlor. So much to do and see. Start doing and seeing it.

We get so wrapped up in our online worlds we forget the world around us, outside. The great outdoors. Unplug and go see it, embrace it, enjoy it. You’ll have a whole new love for life.

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Bill Gates is quiet and bookish, but apparently unfazed by others’ opinions of him: he’s an introvert, but not shy.

Barbra Streisand has an outgoing, larger than life personality, who also battles with a paralyzing case of stage fright: she’s a shy extrovert.

Shyness and introversion are not the same thing. Shyness is the fear of negative judgment, and introversion is a preference for quiet, minimally stimulating environments. Some psychologists map the two tendencies on vertical and horizontal axes, with the introvert-extrovert spectrum on the horizontal axis and the anxious-stable spectrum on the vertical. With this model, you end up with four quadrants of personality types: calm extroverts, anxious (or impulsive) extroverts, calm introverts, and anxious introverts. (Excerpt from Susan Cain’s blog post Read it here)

Being an introvert is much more understood, but did you know there are different types of introvert.

As an introvert I found this test a great one and really accurate.

The Introvert Test – Which Type of Introvert Are You?

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Leave a comment below to let me know how accurate this was for you

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“Have a mind that is open to everything, and attached to nothing.” ~ Tilopa

Great quote? You bet!  Easy to pull off?  Not always!

We live in a time and in a society that promotes the collection of things.  We can wrap our minds around this when we talk about physically collecting things such as baseball cards, coins, shoes – you know…stuff!  We can even think about our collection in terms of ideals, opinions, beliefs and preferences. Every new day gives us another opportunity to collect.

Much of our lives are spent grabbing on to things as they come, but how much of our time is spent letting go of things that we no longer need or no longer serving all parties equally? How much time do we spend cleaning out our closet or letting go of old and outdated ideas? How many hours a month do we spend shedding energy no longer serving us? How easy is it for us to release things like sending our kids out into the world or letting go of a job that doesn’t work for us anymore? We tend to get very attached to things, and many times, without even knowing it, we find ourselves holding on to things too tightly or for too long.

I did a meditation earlier this Spring and asked to be shown something in a way I’d never experienced it before. Being a meditation coach with a consistent meditation practice, it didn’t take too long for a beautiful image of a stream to appear in my mind’s eye. It was a beautiful stream that meandered, wound around and twisted just as it wanted to. It had all the freedom in the world to move without someone blocking it off or shoring it up.  It was a beautiful, free-flowing stream with wonderful and effortless momentum. A few moments later, a phrase kept running over and over in my head; “Everything has the freedom to come and go – Everything has the freedom to come and go – Everything has the freedom to come and go.”  It was such a peaceful and centering meditation.

It got me thinking about why we tend to hang on to certain things so tightly. It made me wonder why we try to control the flow of our lives, many times by blocking it or shoring it up. Just then, an old saying from Aristotle came to mind – nature abhors a vacuum. Is that why we don’t release things even though we know they are no longer serving us? Because we’re afraid of the void? It made perfect sense to me.

We see examples of life filling in voids everywhere. When we loose a tooth, a blood clot rushes in to fill the space. A retired man will fill his time by taking up a new hobby.

So, what’s the lesson here?  Instinctively, even if we don’t like it, we know that everything, just like the stream, has the freedom to come and go. We’ve all heard the saying, “if you love something, set it free.” We also know that we have a tendency to hold on to things, sometimes well past its time. If we can use the lesson of filling up the empty void with something else that will excite or nourish us, doesn’t it make sense to use this to our advantage?

Our Higher Power is often talking to us – our stream always seems to be nudging us to find momentum in a particular flow at any particular time. We, on the other hand, love to tell a river where to go by piling up rocks and redirecting traffic.

But, today is a new day. And let’s face it – even for the controliest of control freaks out there (we know who we are), even being a control freak is a belief that we collected about ourselves in the past.  For those of us who identify with that label, I say it’s time to release the term “control freak” and say to ourselves, “I used to try to control every little thing, but that label doesn’t serve me anymore.”  Even the term “control freak,” just as it had the freedom to come into our lives has the freedom to leave just as easily.  While we’re at it, we can release a few other labels that no longer serve us. We can tell ourselves that letting go of those old jeans that we’ll never wear again will make room in our dresser for new jeans that are more comfortable and therefore more likely to be worn rather than collecting dust.  We can release guilt by replacing it with a lesson. We can release anger by replacing it with forgiveness. We can throw out the sour milk that is stinking up our refrigerator and replace it with fresh milk that will be delicious. We can give up an old job that is making us sick to do something we are passionate about.

All in all, we can take this knowing that everything has the freedom to come and go and embrace it. We can begin to view ourselves as fluid and agile and excited to see what will come into our lives once something is released.

Everything has the freedom to come and go – Everything has the freedom to come and go. Isn’t that amazing…..

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The past. For some, it was such a horrible time. For others, it was pretty decent. For those of us, however, who didn’t have a fabulous past, this article is for you because we know, you are still hanging on. Why we hang on is anybody’s guess really. Is it a comfortable place? Are we still trying to analyze what happened and play the what if game? Possibly. For whatever reason, we are still clinging to it.

For many of us, however, letting go is a very complicated thing to do. We simply can’t. We hang on to this part of our life and we don’t want to let it go. It doesn’t make us feel any better. It does nothing for our self worth or love. So how do we get rid of all these dreadful memories of the past? Here are a few questions to ask yourself that just might help you get over this and past this.

1. What purpose is it serving today?

All those horrible memories. How are they serving you today? Are they making your life any easier, better, simpler, happier? In what way are they contributing to a healthy and happy life right now? Past memories that are painful serve no purpose. They do no good whatsoever. We are here to live a life of joy, peace and happiness. A life for today because of today, not from yesterday. Leave it be.

2. Can I solve today’s problems because of it?

Probably not. Unless you have a recurring negative event in your life, you will not be able to handle today’s situations with yesterday’s toxic memories. In fact, they will probably only do more harm than good. Keep in mind, you cannot fix today’s problems with yesterday’s troubles. It just won’t work. Get rid of them.

3. Are they thinking of me?

Most likely not. Whoever it is that is causing your pain has long since moved on and are probably not thinking about you or the pain they caused you. As a matter of fact, they probably couldn’t care any less about you or your feelings. They are probably really happy in their new life without you. Move on. Why should you let them stay in your head and pollute it, rent free, when they don’t give you even one split second of a thought? Think about that for one second.

4. Do you have weighted shoulders?

Do you have a heaviness in your heart and feel like you are carrying extra weight on your shoulders? If you are hanging on to the past, then the answer to those two questions is probably yes. You don’t need or deserve to carry any extra weight or baggage. It is keeping you from a life of peace and happiness. If you sometimes feel a stab of pain in your chest or your upper back, it’s probably your past. Let go, feel free.

5. Is it keeping you from happiness today?

Do you feel constant sadness and misery because of whatever happened in the past? Go back to question 1. How is this sadness serving you today? It is only getting in the way of you living a life of joy. You will not find joy or happiness if you are hanging on to something that no longer serves you. You are blocking happiness from entering your life. It really wants to come to you but you aren’t making any room for it. There is no room for it.

Always remember that whatever you are desperately hanging on to, for whatever reason, if it’s negative, you are blocking any and all good from coming to your life. There is no satisfaction or joy in hanging on to the past, anger, hurt or grudges towards people who hurt us. Having this mentality is only going to continually hurt you and keep you from love. Forgiveness is a powerful act. Use it. Forgive everybody who hurt you. Do it for you, not for them, and move on.

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