Have you ever noticed that what happens in the first few minutes of your day tends to set the tone for the entire day?

When you hit the snooze button and lounge in bed a little longer, your entire tends to be lazier. When you’re up and Adam and raring to go, you become more empowered and productive, and that energy soars with you throughout the day.

What you do in the first hour or so after waking up is incredibly important for having a good day. In this post, I’ll outline a few simple morning habits you can develop to help you get started on the right foot.

How To Start Your Day Off Right: Begin a Morning Routine

First and foremost, the best way to start your day, every day, is with a strong morning routine. Routines are important, because they help you to standardize your day, and take control of the way you feel.

Even when you’re busy or tired, you should stick to your routine. Keep it short, and customize it to fit your needs and preferences, but the important thing is that you create some sort of positive routine for yourself.

Here are a few ideas of what you might incorporate

Positive Ways To Start The Day

Meditate

Meditation is the perfect way to start the day. When you sleep, your energy resets, and the thoughts that you think first thing in the morning will influence your mood for the rest of the day. So, take a few moments to step back and find stillness, silence, and inner peace.

You may wish to try this 10 minute morning meditation for positive energy to get started.

Again, the exact meditation you use is not nearly as important as the act of taking a few minutes to quiet the mind. I cover how to start a meditation routine in this post.

Keep a Journal

Next up is journaling. Specifically: gratitude journaling.

Taking 5 minutes to write down the things you’re grateful for is a scientifically proven way of hardwiring happiness into your brain. Writing 3-5 things you appreciate, every day, for just 1 month, can physically reshape your brain and make you happier for the next 6 months.

That’s worth 5 minutes of your time, isn’t it? Read more ideas and prompts on how to keep a daily affirmation journal.

Repeat Positive Affirmations

Just like journaling, repeating affirmations is another way to focus your mind on the good things that you already have in your life. You can use these affirmations to appeciate the things you already enjoy about your life, as well as use the opportunity to redefine how you view yourself and your life situation.

By repeating positive affirmations (and building up energy and momentum behind those ideas) you can create a positive spiral that will literally propel you forward into an exciting and passionate day. Do this every day, and you’ll radically level-up your zest for life.

Try these powerful morning affirmations or Learn how to use positive affirmations correctly in this post.

Visualize Your Goals

Another great morning habit to develop is to start visualizing your goals. This will help you to build focus and excitement, which will create positive motivation for your day.

You can use visualization in several different ways. You might focus on long term aims, envisioning your goals as already accomplished, and then walk yourself back to where you are, using the technique as a tool to help clarify the next best steps to take.

You can also use it to hone your focus and set a positive intention for the day ahead. You do this by seeing yourself accomplishing the tasks you want to get done that day.

Try out these visualization techniques for success at any goal, or learn more about how to make a vision board that actually works.

Exercise

No list of healthy morning habits would be complete without exercise.

Exercise – in any form – is a great way to get your blood pumping and your excitement levels up. The key to exercising in the morning is to find a routine that you can do every day. This means that you might not do your full workout. It’s better to take 5-10 minutes that you do every day, than to try to fit in an hour of exercise that (let’s face it) always gets cut from your to-do list because you don’t have time.

A few minutes of HIT exercises can get your metabolism up for the entire day. Yoga can stretch you out while also calming the mind, and even just a few pushups or jumping jacks can be enough to push you into action, and help you start your day off right.

End The Day On a Good Note

Lastly, one of the most often overlooked ways to start your day off right is to begin the night before.

Take some time every evening to begin to wind down before you go to bed. Turn off all of your devices at least an hour before bed (watching tv or staring at the computer before bed will disturb your sleep). Use the time to read, meditate, or just relax.

Then, a few minutes before bedtime, make sure you read or listen to a few positive affirmations. What you do in the last few minutes before you fall asleep has a powerful impact on how well you sleep, what you dream, and what mood you wake up in the next day. So, use this time productively, and end your day on a high note.

Listen to this Wayne Dyer recording for the last 5 minutes before sleep.