Over the years I have developed what I like to consider to be the perfect morning routine. It’s incredibly easy to get started on. In fact, if you wanted to, you could wake up tomorrow morning and follow these four simple steps.

Don’t be fooled though. Even though they are all easy to do, it’s hard to consistently do them on a daily basis. I constantly find myself getting in and out of the habit.

Let’s take a look at these four steps in detail. Because making them a habit can have a huge impact on your day and your life…

Step 1: Start With A Morning Jog

Starting your morning with a 10-20 minute jog is the best possible way to start your morning. The benefits of daily exercise are simply out of this world!

Here is just some of the long term benefits of exercise:

1. live longer
2. protect from certain cancers
3. prevents diabetes
4. prevents arthritis and osteoporosis

However, what I love most about exercising is the short term benefits. These benefits I noticed rather quickly after only a couple of weeks of starting the jogging habit:

1. less stress and anxiety
2. better mood throughout the day
3. ability to get twice as much work done
4. weight control and weight loss
5. more energy and much more positive attitude

These are just a few of the things that quickly made me realize how great jogging can be. And it doesn’t have to take up a lot of your time. You can easily jog a mile in under ten minutes if you keep working at it.

You don’t have to get in incredible shape so you can run a marathon. The important thing about jogging is this…

Consistency is the key!

All you have to do is a little bit each and every day. It’s much easier to jog one mile every day than it is to jog seven miles once a week! By making it a morning habit, you truly don’t understand how much better your life will be. I’m begging you to at least give it a try! What have you got to lose? Wake up, and start jogging a mile or so everyday for two weeks. If you want it to be a permanent habit, then jog every day for a month.

Nothing gives you a better chance at having a great day than starting with a morning jog.

Step 2: Eat The Perfect Breakfast

After your morning jog, you have probably worked up quite the appetite. I can’t blame you! What you need now is the absolute perfect breakfast possible!

I’m sure you have heard a million times by now that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Your mom has probably drilled it in your head since birth. And there is a reason for this…

It’s true!

Just by what you eat in the morning can have a significant impact on what your entire day will be like. If you start the morning with a couple of donuts and a Pepsi, your will be much less likely to have a good day if instead you had something that was a little more healthy. And it’s going to greatly affect you in the long term as well. Going the donut and Pepsi route can take years off of your life in one way or another. Just something for you to think about.

OK. So what is the perfect breakfast? It’s something that comes loaded with all of the types of foods that you need to be eating daily. Things such as whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

Something that it certainly shouldn’t have is trans fat and very little saturated fat. And it also shouldn’t have something that is high in sugar and empty calories (donuts and Pepsi). If I have convinced you yet then consider this, a Pepsi every day with no other change in your diet can lead to a 15 pound increase in your weight in a year. Ouch!

I realize that you are probably in a hurry in the mornings, so one of the best things you can have quickly is cereal that is enriched in whole grains. Here is a short list of some of the best possible cereals you can eat:

1. General Mills Total
2. Wheaties
3. Cheerios
4. Honey Nut Cheerios

You simply cannot go wrong with one of these cereals. They are loaded with whole grains and minerals and they taste great too (some of them anyways).

You can get the store brand of these cereals if you’re living on a tight budget. Look for Malt-O-Meal at your nearest grocery store. It tastes just like the original and at almost half the price!

When you are eating cereal, you have to consider what type of milk to drink. In a perfect world, we would all drink skim milk. I would suggest that you at least give skim milk a chance. If you can’t stand it though, at least try switching to 1% instead of 2%. After a week, you won’t be able to tell the difference.

You can further increase your perfect breakfast with either a couple slices of whole wheat bread or some kind of fruit or vegetable. Don’t use butter on your whole wheat bread. That completely takes away the whole point of having a perfect breakfast! Instead, try eating it with grilled peanut butter. It’s much healthier than butter, and it tastes better too!

If you want the best choice, just eat it plain. My family thinks I’m crazy that I eat plain whole wheat bread with nothing on it. It’s not the greatest, but it’s worth the health benefits of avoiding to put butter or margarine on it.

Step 3: Add The Cherry On Top Of Breakfast

If you have followed steps 1 and 2, you are already doing better than about 99.9% of the planet. But if we are going to have the perfect morning, there is something we need to take care of right after breakfast. And that is to take a multivitamin.

Yes, we have just had the perfect breakfast. Shouldn’t that have been all that we need? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

No matter how perfect our diet is, it is almost impossible to fill our bodies with all of the vitamins we need. And that is where a multivitamin can help us out tremendously. Here is a list of vitamins that almost everyone doesn’t get enough of, no matter how perfect there diet is…

1. Vitamin B₆
2. Vitamin B₁₂
3. Folic Acid
4. Vitamin D,E

Almost any multivitamin you get should have a pretty healthy dose of these. If you aren’t sure what to get, just stick with the popular brands like Centrum or One-A-Day. Anything from them will more than likely give you what you need.

A multivitamin is more important because of the long term effects than it is the short term. You’re not going to take a multivitamin and feel like you can conquer the world! It doesn’t work that way. But to have a perfect morning, you need to do something that will provide a good life-insurance policy for yourself. And taking a multivitamin with your breakfast is the best way you can do that.

Besides, a multivitamin can be dirt cheap. At Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club, you can get a year’s supply for about $40. I think that’s a pretty good investment to make on yourself!

If your plan is to live a long and happy life, a multivitamin is a good step you can take to help you achieve that. To help you remember to take it, put the vitamin bottle right next to your cereal. You can’t forget to take it in the morning if it is right in front of you when you grab the cereal box!

I highly encourage you to pick up a bottle of multivitamins the next time you are at the grocery store. Some day, you will be glad you did.

Step 4: The Grand Finale To Your Perfect Morning

In the first three steps, you have done a great job of taking care of your body. Now it is time to take care of your mind and soul.

To end your perfect morning, I suggest you read something inspiring that will carry you through the day. As human beings, we need to have words that will carry us through the day. We can get words in two ways:

1. speaking with someone
2. reading something

Keep in mind that there is plenty of flexibility to the grand finale of your perfect morning. It can be nothing more than having a nice conversation with your loved one. Or, you can spend it reading an inspiring book. Whatever you choose, get some words in your morning that will touch your soul and get you through the day.

Rumor has it, the Bible is filled with plenty of inspirational words. So if you don’t know where to look for inspiration, you can start there.

There are so many incredible books out there it would take several lifetimes to get through them all. I could name several without breaking a sweat. If you want your life to change, try picking up a few of these:

1. Think And Grow Rich
2. How To Win Friends And Influence People
3. The Angel Inside
4. Richest Man In Babylon
5. Goals
6. Science Of Success
7. The Magic Of Thinking Big
8. Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude

Try spending a few minutes each morning reading some of these books and see how much of a difference it will make in your day! If your not into the whole book thing, you can find plenty of inspirational material on the Internet. You just have to weed your way through all of the junk that is out there.

Whatever it is you decide to do, make a habit of getting some quality words in your life each morning. It will be the icing on the cake after some exercise and the perfect breakfast.

The thing to realize is this, you can start every morning perfect. You can wake up and do this routine and have nothing there to stop you. Having the perfect day can be a little tougher since there are so many things that are outside of your control. However, there is nothing there to stop you from at least having a perfect morning.

To have any chance of a perfect day, you must have a perfect morning. And to have a perfect morning, following the advice on this page is a pretty good start.

A Challenge To You

I highly suggest that you wake up tomorrow and give all four of these steps a try. Try it for two weeks and see if you’re not…

• more energized all day
• in a better mood
• harder working and more optimistic

And so many other things! Once you start having the perfect morning, you will wonder how you made it through a day without it!

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