8
Greet the Day

THERE ARE TWO types of people in the world: those who greet the day and those who wake up on the wrong side of the bed. My wife is the consummate example of someone who truly wakes up every morning and says, “Hello world, it’s going to be a great day!” She’s cheery, smiley, and full of energy from the moment she rises, ready to take on whatever life throws her way. What intrigues me most, though, is that she actually expects her day to go well from the beginning. She believes with all her heart that when you greet the day, you have fewer regrets in life because you’ve already started your day off feeling happy and inspired.

Then there are those of us—like me—who are just the opposite. We’d prefer to sleep late and absolutely cringe when the alarm clock goes off (the first time). We dread getting up and when we finally do, we’re grumpy. People who know us steer clear until we’ve had our first cup of coffee. Invariably, the quest to avoid regrets is a daily battle for us since each day we tend to start things off on the wrong foot.

You might conclude at this point that being good at greeting the day is a function of personality and that it all depends on how our personalities are wired. While this may be true to some extent, what I’ve come to realize is that greeting the day is also grounded in tangible behaviors that every one of us can learn to adopt. In other words, hope exists for us all! The key is to figure out what works best for you as an individual and then create a morning routine that eventually becomes a matter of habit.

Following are a few simple tips that you may want to experiment with as you think about how you’d like to greet the day. First, try waking up to your favorite music instead of the annoying beep or buzz of an alarm clock—today’s technology makes this quite easy and you don’t have to spend a fortune. Then make your bed so you feel productive right out of the gate—as trivial as this might seem, it works. Next, do some light exercise to get the blood flowing, even if you just run in place or do jumping jacks for five minutes—you’ll be surprised at what an instant burst of energy this gives you. Finally, eat something healthy—this will help stave off midmorning burnout. Any combination of these strategies for greeting the day, as well as others that you might want to add, will help put your body and brain into gear and get you into a no-regrets frame of mind more quickly.

Life is too short to wake up with a frown. If greeting the day is a formula for happiness—and if happiness is essentially the state of having no regrets—then it makes good sense to make greeting the day a priority. While we can’t do much to change how we’re wired, we can change how we begin each morning. Greet the day and see how it improves your outlook on life.

Greet the day and
see how it improves
your outlook on life.

∼ Do you tend to start the day with a smile or a frown?

∼ What are some specific ways to improve on how you greet the day?