We all have morning routines and daily repetition makes us experts at them. What’s your morning routine? Does it help to balance and center you for day – or leave you feeling scattered?

I invite you to try a powerful five minute morning ritual to set your day off with awareness and consciousness, moving daily towards balance and fulfillment you desire. The ritual is very simple, consisting only of three simple questions. The secret is to be honest, give yourself 5 minutes… and to ask questions.

Question 1: What am I grateful for?

This question holds astonishing power. If you only remember one thing from this ritual, please remember this question! Write it down and put it in at least three very visible places. Maybe you will choose your bedroom dresser, your desk or dashboard of your car. This question has capacity to change a mood and soften a heart in seconds.

What are you grateful for? WHO are you grateful for? What are gifts you've been given in your life that you sometimes take for granted? What are some gifts that are so obvious that you may never even notice them? Question 2: What are my intentions for today?

Where are you now and where do you want to be at end of day? Meaning, what do you want to accomplish today? Beyond “doing”, how do you want to feel? How do you want to be or conduct yourself during day?

Close your eyes and imagine your day is set on a theatrical stage. How do you want audience to feel about you as they watch you “play”? What do you want them to notice about how you are being? How do you want to be if things don't go as planned?

Asking yourself this one question may be most powerful way to achieve what you want in life. After all you can't get to where you want to be if you don't know where that is.

Question 3: What's most important today?

Did you know only two of all fears you have are innate: The fear of falling and fear of loud noises. Most of your fears were learned in early childhood and then in later life under stressful conditions.

Traditional therapeutic approaches would probably have you trying to figure out where your fear originally came from. Maybe they'd have you digging around in your childhood memories, recalling times you ate next-door neighbours purple Tulips. This type of approach tends to associate client into reliving unpleasantness and can take a long time to achieve useful results. Personally I think this style is way out of date and bordering on torture.

You'll probably be glad to know we're not going to be doing anything like that. The truth is you can easily and quickly undo learnings that created specific fears and change your responses to something much more useful.

So just how do fearful feelings occur then? Well lets use a common example: Fred wants a raise and he's been wanting to ask his boss for months. Finally he decides to go and ask. BUT when he starts walk down corridor he starts to feel certain sensations in his body. Weird stomach feelings. His breathing is constricted. Slight sweating on parts of his body. His vision is effected. Fred decides to turn back and then sits down feeling slightly annoyed with himself.

His body started producing 'fear chemicals.' What happened?

“Well it was because he defied his Dad one time when he was four. Let's explore those forgotten memories....”

NO! NO! NO! Let's do something much smarter and definitely more fun.

Hey Fred come over here I want to show you something really cool! O' come on, pick your lip up.