5 Minute Morning Balance Ritual

"3 Questions, 5 Minutes a Day: Make leaps towards greater balance in one single week with the Shicka Boom 5 Minute Morning Balance Ritual"By Laura Lallone, Certified Life Coach

This article is dedicated to a woman that I've never met and probably never will. Tall with dark, dark hair, she was perfectly manicured in a tailored suit with high-heeled pumps. We shared a subway car in Manhattan two years ago. She was standing, holding onto the subway car strap and meticulously applying three coats of mascara as the train bumped and shifted. With my jaw dropped in reverence of her talent, I imagined this to be her morning routine because she was REALLY good at it. (I can barely put on clear lip gloss in a moving vehicle.)

We all have morning routines and daily repetition makes us experts at them. What's your morning routine? Does it help to balance and center you for the day - or leave you feeling scattered?

I invite you to try a powerful five minute morning ritual to set your day off with awareness and consciousness, moving daily towards the balance and fulfillment you desire. The ritual is very simple, consisting only of three simple questions. The secret is to be honest, give yourself the 5 minutes? and to ask the questions.

Question 1: What am I grateful for?

This question holds astonishing power. If you only remember one thing from this ritual, please remember this question! Write it down and put it in at least three very visible places. Maybe you will choose your bedroom dresser, your desk or the dashboard of your car. This question has the capacity to change a mood and soften a heart in seconds. What are you grateful for? WHO are you grateful for? What are the gifts you've been given in your life that you sometimes take for granted? What are some gifts that are so obvious that you may never even notice them?

Question 2: What are my intentions for today?

Where are you now and where do you want to be at the end of the day? Meaning, what do you want to accomplish today? Beyond the "doing", how do you want to feel? How do you want to be or conduct yourself during the day? Close your eyes and imagine your day is set on a theatrical stage. How do you want the audience to feel about you as they watch you "play"? What do you want them to notice about how you are being? How do you want to be if things don't go as planned? Asking yourself this one question may be the most powerful way to achieve what you want in life. After all you can't get to where you want to be if you don't know where that is.

Question 3: What's most important today?

Keeping in mind your gratitude and intentions for the day, consider again all the aspects of your life: personal development, your intimate relationships, your family, friends, finances, career, health, recreation and spirituality. Now, close your eyes and imagine yourself 10 years from now. What does the future you say is most important for you today? It's really easy to come up with what SHOULD BE most important (as defined by society) but resist the urge to give into that voice. Take a deep breath and listen deeper. Trust that you have all the answers inside.

Some find that it helps to ask this follow-up question: What ONE THING can I do today to significantly improve the quality of my life? Don't concern yourself with the size or magnitude of your answer. It changes. Some days it might be "apply to graduate school" and other days it might be "organize my office".

________________________________________

Helpful Tips to Make It Stick

To make this ritual "stick", create a fertile "habit-forming" environment:

1. Fly solo. Use the five minutes as valuable alone time to ground yourself. Once this ritual is second nature, then I invite you to use these three questions in conversation with your family, significant other, and even work teams.

2. Be consistent. Select a specific time and location to perform your morning ritual. For example, lying in bed from 7:30-7:35am or on your morning commute from 8:30-8:35am.

3. Take it lightly. Have fun. Unpleasant tasks don't become habits. The morning ritual isn't a task. It's a way of consciously looking out at your day. Set the intention to create a daily ritual; to create a habit. But don't sweat it if you miss a day.

4. Start small. Stick to five minutes in the beginning. Perhaps you'll expand to 10, 15 or 30 minutes. Maybe not. A new program quickly gets abandoned when if feels like a burden, especially in the morning!

5. Keep no secrets. Tell someone about your morning ritual and ask the friend, coach, significant other or whomever to support you in keeping on track. This might sound like, "Terry, I've started a morning practice to keep myself balanced and focused on what's important during the day. It would be really helpful if you asked me how it's going every now and then. It just really helps to have you know what I'm up to."

________________________________________

Experiment and have fun. I'd love to hear how you've experienced the ritual and any other morning ritual ideas that work for you!

Cheers!
Laura

© Copyright Shicka Boom Inc. 2004 unless otherwise indicated

Laura Lallone is the creator of the 5-point Shicka Boom coaching system proven effective for those who deal with high personal risk, daily pressure and uphill battles. For more information on coaching and workshops, email contact@shickaboom.com or go to http://www.shickaboom.com. Don't forget to sign up for Sheer Balance, the ezine dedicated to greater balance for women!

More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Coaching Information:

Related Articles

Who Do You Talk To?
Many of you reading this will be running businesses, or parts of, whether they are your own or not. This means that you have many things to deal with on a day to day basis plus trying to do the long-term thinking needed to lead and run the business.
Mindfulness and Multiple Intelligences: 8 Ways to Pay Attention
How are you smart?Let me count the ways.Harvard professor Howard Gardner was the first to describe the concept of Multiple Intelligences.
Attitude is Contagious - Would Anybody Want Yours?
Are you using the Life Potential you have been given? Or are you just existing?We have all inherited standards, traits, habits, perceptions, and expectations based on what our parents, teachers, and peers taught us. We have allowed these to grow as a result of whatever we then learned as adults, and they continue to grow with whatever we feed our minds.
The Difference Between Approval and Appreciation
Having worked with individuals, couples, families and business partners for 35 years, helping them learn to resolve conflict, I have often been faced with the difficulties that occur when people are confused about the difference between approval with appreciation. Have you ever wondered about the difference between approval and appreciation? Most of us have never actually thought about it, yet if we do think about it, we realize that we feel very differently when we receive approval as opposed to receiving appreciation.
Executive Coaching
The higher you climb the ladder in this organization, the less chance you have of getting feedback about your performance. The working rule of thumb is "the farther up you go, the stranger things get," especially in the way you are reviewed and rewarded.
Profitable Idea Generation in 4 Steps Using Improv
A large percentage of business are stuck, tied to narrow ways of thinking about themselves and their products. In the business environment you can't be stuck and survive.
Controlling Behavior, Loving Behavior
When Zack and Tiffany started counseling with me, they were on the verge of divorce after 16 years of marriage. Neither really wanted to end the marriage, yet both were miserable.
A Visualization Exercise on Managing Expectations for Adults with ADD
As adults with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), we often find ourselves excited by new ideas and plans, but overwhelmed by what it will take to reach the goals.Many of my coaching clients find themselves in this situation.
Working With Choices
Despite our skills, experience or expertise we can still make a meal out of making a choice!Here are some common reasons why people struggle to make choices, and some tips for making them easier.1.
Listening Skills In Relationships
Recently, when out to dinner with another couple, my husband is surprised at what someone says about one of our neighbors. He even comments this to the person about his amazement.
Receiving Thanks and Praise - The View from the Other Side
We demand more from those who provide to us and because we are frequently in roles which deliver goods and services ourselves, we are on the receiving end too - of complaints, frustrations and generally poor behaviour.Why is it that when we are on the receiving end, we miss the fact that we ourselves, when we hang up our service-provider-hat at the end of our shift, often end up as 'customers behaving badly' too?Why do we take our own frustrations out on others, the way it has been taken out on us? Why do we sometimes become the Hyde from our normal Jekyll?So, when someone goes the 'extra mile' to say 'Thank you', or appreciate the actions you have taken? What do you take from that and how do you react? You feel good, I guess.
Feeling Self-Conscious? 6 Tips to Turn it Around Fast!
When you feel self-conscious it means you are putting too much attention on your self, too much focus on what you are doing and how you are doing it. And this is a formula for poor performance.
Do you know WHAT MAKES ME MAD?? It makes me SO MAD I just want to...
Sound familiar? If you want to manage anger, the only way of doing so is to listen to your self-talk. This doesn't mean listening to yourself talk.
Body Language Speaks Louder Than Words
Has it ever occurred to you how much you are saying to people even when you are not speaking? Unless you are a master of disguise, you are constantly sending messages about your true thoughts and feelings whether you are using words or not.Studies show that your words account for only 7% of the message you convey.
Mentors and Coaches: How to Be a Great Mentee or Learner
When you invest your time in being a mentee you will be rewarded with accelerated learning and experiences from your mentor. You will learn from and avoid the mistakes that they may have made, learn about your industry, meet great people, form valuable relationships and be able to mentor someone in your future.
Key Questions for a Coaching Conversation
There are 2 key skills that coaches need to be truly effective, the ability to listen (often for what is missing rather than what is said) and the ability to ask the right question at the right time.Now in reality there are no 'right' questions, there are however some very good, and fairly generic questions that when asked which can make a significant difference to the way in which a coaching interaction progresses.
HR Professional in New Avtaar: HR as a Coach and Mentor
IntroductionThese days in corporate sector, everybody is talking about the role of HR professional as a coach and mentor. People are exited as well as confused.
Saying NO to Good Opportunities!
Tracey started her video production company 2½ years ago, and after struggling through the start-up phase, she was finally reaping the fruits of her labor. When we talked, it was clear that she was ready to move onward and upward but didn't know how to go about doing it.
Floating In Mindfulness: Dealing With Disappointment
Feeling disappointed? It's time to float.The time-honored approach to disappointment generally involves a fair amount of wallowing followed by a concerted effort to move on.
Personal Power
All of us would love to have personal power - the power to manifest our dreams, the power to remain calm and loving in the face of fear, the power to stay centered in ourselves in the face of attack.Our society often confuses personal power - "power within" - with "power over," which is about controlling others.