Jason Buffington .com

Transcript

Last week I received some great advice.

A friend and I were talking about this month’s “gratefulness challenge” and she said she actually does three things every morning. The third is to identify things she’s grateful for, but the other two are really cool.

The first thing she does is ask herself how she’s doing.  She checks on herself!  Right now, say to yourself a word that specifically describes how you’re feeling today. Then, the second thing: ask yourself what’s one thing that I could do different today.

The day after we talked, I was waking up, reaching for my phone, and kind of dreading the day. Then, I remembered her advice and discovered that my word of the day was “overwhelmed”. And once I had named it, I could process some of the reasons why.

So when I asked myself what could I do different …

So, I told myself to:

Not start my day with my phone.  Instead, go to my desk and before any distractions just brain dump every single thing that I have to do … every action item … every person I ought to call or e-mail … anything I need to check on … basically get everything that was in my head and making me feel overwhelmed on to a piece of paper.

I already have task lists, but what I realized was there were several things that had not made a list and so I was overwhelmed.

Then I circled the most important thing … made note of few others that were important or urgent (not always the same thing) … and then told myself the rest of the list wasn’t going to go to zero today, but I was going to make progress on what mattered most.

And just like that, I wasn’t feeling as overwhelmed – because I had taken control of my day.

Your word today might be “excited” … so what is one thing you could do different today based on that?

Your word could be “tired” … what could you do differently today?

So that’s another idea of how to start your day by getting your head and your heart right.

Do you have things that you do in the mornings? If so, throw them in the comments below, so we can all learn from them.

Thanks for watching – and I’ll see you next Monday.