One very useful technique I’ve been using is the “Morning Ritual”. I’ve always had the tendency to stay up late, and sleep in until the last moment, and I never seemed to have time to do the things I knew I wanted to do each day. By promising myself to do a “Morning Ritual”, I’ve managed to shift my wasted, passive, evening, web surfing, game playing or TV watching time into a different, productive set of activities every morning.

I prepared a self hypnosis tape to help cement the morning ritual into place, and now that it has become second nature, I don’t even need to refresh myself with the tape any more.

My current morning ritual consists of:
1. Get up, do some minor “wake up” chores.
2. Prepare a cup of Chinese medicine.
3. Sit quietly, drink my herbs, and write my morning pages (3 pages every morning).
4. take my morning pills and eat a light breakfast.
5. Do Qi Gong, and review anything I recently learned in Tai Chi class.
6. Listen to an audio hypnosis session.

All in all this takes me a couple of hours each morning, but I feel so much better when I do this every day.

Doing the same thing every day can be boring, so I try to vary my ritual to reflect what my current focus is. But there are always some things I try to do every day. Like exercise.