If you are anything like me, you don't always wake up with sunshine and rainbows coming out of your eyes and ears, but no matter how you feel upon waking, no matter how you feel, you have the power to change your thoughts, your focus, and the outcome of your day picking up a routine for the first hour of your day will dramatically improve your mental state and outcome of your day.

Here are five challenges for each morning that will increase your resilience,courage, happiness and ssuccess

SMILE
Even though smiling is the last thing on your mind, cheese it up as wide as you can. Then,when you feel the lead weight pulling at the corners of your mouth, think happy thoughts, maybe a your favourite jokes, your happy thoughts will lift your spirits and your smile, we all know feeling happy makes you smile.
It has been scientifically proven that you can reverse engineer happiness by smiling, it has to do with your neural networks and how they are wired, since smiling is so heavily associated with feeling positive, those neural connections will offer you a boost of happiness is a choice, choosing to to be happy in your first ten minutes will make the choice easier for the rest of your day.

KEEP AWAY FROM ELECTRONICS
Since life is about the choices you make, it's much easier to live the life of your dreams when you take your directives from you, for the first hour of your day, steer clear of all external directives like phones, Tv's, radios, computers etc. Consciously choosing not to engage with email and texts and external data first thing in the morning will help you to hear your own voice throughout the day. The thing about your life is that nobody knows how to live it besides you, if you take your directives from external sources to navigate your day, you will be living the life of someone else while your calling slips away, this may be the hardest part of your day because we have become reliant on a constant stream of data, constantly refusing external directives at the beginning of your day, you are sharpening the ability to hear your intuition and intelligence.

CONTROL YOUR BREATHING
Too often throughout our days we find ourselves breaking away from busyness to gasp for some air when we get weighed down and the anxiety of perhaps not accomplishing it, breathing becomes the last thing on our minds yet breathing is what sustains our focus and attention, so it's imperative to be conscious of it. From the moment you wake and for the first 20 minutes of your day, practice has been proven to enhance focus, immunity, blood oxygen content and numerous markers of health while lowering depression of health and anxiety.

SET GOALS
Once you've established a positive attitude and focus with your breathing, shift your focus to the day ahead, focus on what you need to do, what you'd like to do, how you want to do it, and the resources you'll need to accomplish it. When you set goals and identify needs and wants you can come back to it at any point throughout the day, setting goals starts momentum that will carry you through the day when things gets tough.

LOVE YOURSELF
There is an idiosyncrasy that i'm blown away by, we can go above and beyond to make our friends feel warm and appreciated, but when it comes to our own selves we might as well be chopper liver.
I don't know how many times i've heard frustrated friends or passerbyers mutter under their breaths "I can't believe I was so stupid....i'm such an idiot....what a screw-up!" Since we must spend the rest of our lives with ourselves, it makes sense to cultivate respect, encouragement, admiration, appreciation and friendship with ourselves. How talk to ourselves determines the tone of our day as well as the effect we have on others, so if you want your day to be joyful, give yourself a pep talk, look into the mirror each morning and tell yourself what you like about yourself, how proud you are of your accomplishments, the goodness you see inside, and the unlimited potential you see for achievement. Whatever you are struggling with, make sure to let yourself know that you will get through it and that you are here for yourself, this may seem a little crazy, but if you don't have your back, who will?. Constantly remind your self that you are worthy, valuable and confident and how needed you are. Practice accepting the mistakes you've made while fully believing in your capacity to improve your actions, shame says, "you messed up because you are messed up", courage says, "I messed up, but I know that I can do better and better if I focus hard and give it my all, I am worthy". If you don't have your back, who will?