It's early in the morning...
I’m lying in bed.
I’ve been awake for awhile, but I’m not feeling ready yet to get up and get going. I ask myself the same question I’ve been asking myself for years…What number are you on the mood scale this morning?
Hmmmm, I think to myself, today I feel like a solid 7.
What about you? How was your mood this morning? On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest and your best mood…where did you fall on the scale this morning?
If you don’t always have mornings where you’re a “10” or some other high number on the scale, you’re definitely not alone. For many of us, there are going to be those days where we’re tired, upset, feeling “blah” or less than thrilled to jump up and go get the day.
So, what do we do?
Well, I used to just tell myself, “it is what it is” and do my best to get going and push through the day. But, that never worked well and there’s a much, much better way to do it.
No matter what is going on in your life today, one of the most important things to do is “uplevel” your mood every morning.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, it’s 10 times easier to work through challenges when you’re in a better mood. It’s easier to stay grounded, see good solutions, and find the way through. On the flip side, when all is going smoothly, a good mood helps things flow even better.
That’s why every day it’s important to take 5 minutes to uplevel our mood and set ourselves up for whatever the day may bring. That’s where your Victory List comes in.
What's a Victory List?
Your Victory List is a list of 8-10 things you’ve accomplished over the course of your entire life that you’re really proud of. Anything that you’ve done well and feel really good about can and should be on this list (i.e. past accomplishments, great things about your life, your family, your work, or literally anything else that you’ve done over the course of your life that you feel good about).
It’s easy to fall into the trap of not giving yourself enough credit for all that you’ve done. It’s also easy to spend more time thinking about what’s not working and not enough time reflecting on everything that is working.
Okay, go on...
Creating a routine where we read our Victory list every morning is essential. And, the key is you don’t just read it, instead you take time to remember back to the exact time when it happened. What thoughts were going through your mind? Were you grateful? How did it feel?
You want to recreate the scenes and feelings and get a quick reminder. This automatically and naturally improves your mood. You’ll also notice feelings of gratitude rise to the surface.
Now, when it comes to the scale, we don’t have to aim to always be a 10 on the scale. That’s usually not realistic and there may be those days where no matter what we do, we’re just not a 10. What’s important though is that we reach for our highest and best mood. How high can you get on the scale every morning?
If you don’t already have a Victory List, take some time today to create one. It will be one of the best things you’ve ever done for yourself.