One of the fastest routes to raising your energy and feeling good is also one of the easiest! Simply go to your iTunes collection, CD collection, cassette collection, 8-track collection, or album collection and play a song that makes you feel great. Turn it on, turn it up, and tune in! We all have favorite tumes that immediately lift our spirits. What’s one of yours? Help out the future you by keeping a playlist called “Feel Good Music” so whenever your energy wans, you know exactly how to turn up the dial! Extra credit: Make up your own music and/or get up and dance!

I keep a “Joy Book” — an album of things that make me happy. There aren’t any rules about what kinds of things can go in my album; I just started out with a fun drawing my son created and photographs that made me smile. Then I begn including “happy notes” from friends or images I clip out of magazines. Could be a Bizaro cartoon. Could be some lyrics from a song. Could be just the words, “clouds, floating, flying” or “razzle dazzle.” Might be a list of friends or foods I love. When I’m feeling low, I pull the book off the shelf and flip through the pages. It’s an instant pick-meup.

Use this Joy Book PDF to get you started.  Open and print PDF template.

Thanks to Rich German for introducing us to this simple-but-amazing practice of writing down 10 things you’re grateful for and 10 things you’d like to invite into your life. Ideally, you might decide to do this every day, first thing when you wake up. However, it is a wonderful pick-me-up every once in awhile and any time of day.

Items on your list can be as generic or as specific as you want. For example, “I’m grateful for my health.” Or, “I’m grateful that my healthy legs that enable me to walk up stairs or go for hikes.” Or, “I’m grateful that my healthy legs took me on a walk today and I got to see that egret in the marsh.”

Things you’d like to invite in or attract into your life could be “A loving relationship.” Or, “More compassion when I’m with my boyfriend.” Or, “I’d like to be open and loving when Tom and I have our talk tonight.” There’s no right way to do it. And we can almost assure you, that anytime you take the time for this simple practice, the results will be instantaneous and great. What we focus on expands.

So, the practice of focusing on what we’re grateful for and what our intentions are seems to bring even more of what we love into our lives. To get you started, we even have a blank 10/10 list ready for you can use. Open and print PDF template.

Try this very simple technique we learned from Zen teacher Cheri Huber. She calls it, “Relaxing the Brain” and it takes literally just seconds to do. (Though you can do it over and over again to repeat the wonderful effects!)
Open and print PDF template.