I haven’t been a morning person most of my life. 

But that has changed in the last couple of years. I find myself waking up earlier and earlier in the mornings. Some mornings it’s 6am and other mornings it’s 4am. I’m really loving my mornings.

I like to start off slow by getting a cup of coffee and sitting by the fire catching up on tweets or blog posts. I’m also reading a couple books right now so sometimes I switch to those. 

At some point in my morning I start planning my day and start thinking of all that I have to do and some mornings it seems that I’m getting further and behind. 

Then the stress starts creeping in and before you know it I can’t relax anymore and think I just need to get to the office to start my day so I can catch up.

On days like this I never get any further ahead. My mind is already shot and my attitude has gone south. 

I’m trying to make a change.

Now, when I wake up, before I get out of bed I lie there and start listing all the people, relationships and things that I’m grateful for. This can take anywhere from 10-15 minutes but it makes all the difference in the world in how my day starts.

My list this morning:

  • My relationship with Towona, my lovely wife. Next year we’ll celebrate our 35th year together.
  • My relationship with my daughter Mallory who has become one of my best friends and her husband Drew who I love like a son.
  • My 4 precious Grandkids. Emery, Cohen, Brynley and Declan. Never a dull moment around this crew!
  • My son John who is my best friend and his wife Katie.
  • My Momma who is 83 and still as spunky as ever. It may seem silly but we have pet names for each other. She calls me Sunshine and I call her Moonshine because she makes me laugh. 
  • The guys who work with me, Keith and Anthony. Couldn’t ask for better employees who are also friends.
  • The business I founded 22 years ago, SherWare. It’s hard to believe how successful we’ve been serving the oil & gas industry.
  • The clients we have at SherWare. Some have been with us for 19 years. That’s incredible that someone would stick with their software provider that long. We’ve been really blessed. Many of them I can truly call friends.
  • My health.
  • The health of my Mom and the rest of my family.
  • My two sisters, Susan and Cindy. I don’t talk to them near enough but still have a great relationship with them.

You see how this can keep going?  We all have much more to be grateful for than to be worried about. Once you prime the pump and start your day with gratitude, it’s hard to go through the day without having a grateful attitude. 

So I’ll answer the question I started with. Yes, you can change your whole day by changing just one thing in the morning.

Start your day with gratitude. 

I challenge you to do it for 10 days. Then come back and tell me below how your mornings have changed. I can’t wait to see the results.