Checking the web first thing in the morning hijacks your great morning routine.

A study by Ohio State University found that employees who started the day with a good mood rated customers more positively and felt happier and more productive as the day progressed. The study also found that when employees start the day on a high, they were 83 percent less likely to lose that mood no matter what happens later during the day.

So yes, it’s very important that you have a happy start to your day and these tips will show you how:

7 Steps to Have a Great Morning

1. Force a smile for 30 seconds

“When you’re in a bad mood, the physical act of forcing a smile may trigger the feel-good chemistry in your brain that is associated with happiness.” ~ Scott Adams

Make it a morning ritual to play one of your favorite tracks and draw a smile on your face for 30 seconds. William James was one of the first psychologists to discover the “Act As If” Principle stating that your behaviors affect your psychology and not the other way around. Acting confident makes you feel confident, and smiling makes you feel happy.

2. Get enough sleep

“Only the Hitlers of the world work at night; no honest artist does.” ~ W. H. Auden

What happens when you don’t get enough sleep? You get mood swings, you lose balance, you overeat and you increase your risks for strokes.

Make sure you get at least seven hours of sleep each night and make it a habit. Sleep is so important to your productivity, and mood, that Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post, called it the first key to success. A recent study found that your productivity peaks as your brain reaches its largest form in the morning which means if you don`t get enough night sleep, you won`t reach peak performance.

3. No B.S. for an hour

Personally, I don`t check emails or use the web for at least an hour after waking up. Google’s former Design Ethicist, Tristan Harris, agrees with me on this as he believes checking the web first thing in the morning hijacks your great morning routine.

Morning internet will either:

• Put you down: As you consume tons of negative stories and compare yourself to fake Instagram lives
• Give you satiety: As you endlessly scroll down Facebook or Twitter.

One study by the University of British Columbia found that participants felt less stressed and more positive when they stopped checking their email notifications first thing in the morning.

4. Affection

Hug someone in the morning and you will have a great morning. Cuddling a partner or hugging a family member will make you feel better in the morning since they both increases levels of Oxytocin —aka. The Love Hormone— which helps reduce stress, elevate your mood and give you a healthy heart. A 2009 study found that touching among NBA players improved both performance and team spirit.

Another study found that morning lovemaking can make you feel happier and thus, more productive.

5. Just one push up

No matter how bad you feel, it gets better when you move or exercise. A study that was recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that an hour of exercise each week reduces the chances of developing depression by 44 percent, and the easiest way to do this is through push-ups.

They`re very effective, they don`t require space or make noise. Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress is a big fan of push-ups. He only commits to one push-up every day which eventually leads to at least a dozen more.

“No matter how late you’re running, no matter what’s going on in the world, you can’t argue against doing one push-up. Come on. There’s no excuse. I often find I just need to get over that initial hump with something that’s almost embarrassingly small as a goal, and then that can become a habit.”

The key is to stick to a single push up and don`t raise the bar. Raising the bar too high will initiate fear of failure and you won`t make it a habit. You know you won`t settle for a single push-up but your subconscious mind doesn`t so keep things simple.

6. Can VS. Should

One good way to ruin a good mood is a long list of Shoulds on your to-do list. You will feel less motivated and less compelled to do business. So what to do? Make a mind shift, and make it a habit to do just start, regardless of how hard it looks. Anytime you feel like you`re not in the mood to work, make a list of all the things you can do, and start with the easiest of all.

7. List experiences, not goals

Entrepreneur Vishen Lakhiani founder of Mindvalley believes that identifying the experiences you want to have in life is more inspiring and motivating than just writing your goals.

Who do you want to wake up with, what type of house do you want to live in, what type of countries do you want to live in?

Everything from the adventures you want to experience the type of dog you want to have should be listed every morning. These will inspire you and give you joy and motivation than just writing goals like I want to make $100K this year or buy a Ferrari. Write down whatever makes you tingle regardless of what others think.

What about you?

What is the one thing that always helps you have a great morning? You can share your comment in the comment section below 🙂

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