The way you awaken each day matters. It can set the mood, and that mood can affect or infect the rest of your day. You know what it feels like to awaken in a panic because you're running late. You don't eat. You're still getting ready during your commute. You pick up breakfast on the way--a sweet roll or breakfast burrito with coffee from the drive through. (And why is it you think the drive through saves you time?). You get to work or class barely on time, adrenalin pumping through your body. And let's be honest, by now, you're as addicted to the always-running-late adrenalin rush as you are to the coffee you need to get you going.

Maybe it's hard to imagine living differently, setting a different mood as you awaken. But there's a part of you that would like to. There's a part of you that needs to, whether you know it or not. You can't live this way all the time. You need good sleep and good food. You need exercise. You need prayer. I know, getting these sounds impossible. But get even one or two of them and you'll change the way you live your day, the way you experience living.

There's probably a lot that you can change about the way you awaken each day. Getting to bed earlier. Falling asleep without the TV on. Rising early enough that you can actually enjoy some kind of morning routine. Boiling a few eggs the night before, so you can spend six and a half minutes eating a hard boiled egg and a little yogurt instead of sitting in line at the drive through.

Just try one thing to shift the way you awaken, and that one thing, no matter how small, will change the way you enter the day.

Intention: Tonight, I'll do one thing to prepare myself to enter the day with more purpose than I did this morning. That'll give me a little traction so I'll be less a victim and more a victor.