According to science, this is the best way to start your day!

Happiness … can depend so much on how you start your day.

A positive morning can kick start a flow of positive emotions, such as happiness, along with motivation and inspiration that can turbo-charge your actions and drive you towards success and accomplishment.

And the good news is that science has discovered much about happiness AND how to start your day…

via Inc.com by Marcel Schwantes

Are you on the path to personal mastery and self-improvement? If so (and I hope you are), I want to offer you a powerful daily morning routine that has four key themes: giving, gratitude, breathing, and growing (in that order).

But fair warning: Sometimes when we think about self-improvement, we emphasize “me” too much at the expense of “we” or others. Most of these exercises will benefit you but also the other person.

As you make these quick morning rituals habitual and rewire your brain to become more positive, you’ll start to see immediate benefits: more inner peace, lasting joy, and, ultimately, greater success, as people will be drawn to you like a magnet.

The activities below can be done in as little as a few minutes per day. You’ll see a time limit for each activity and a running time to keep you at a reasonable 32 minutes.

1. Give the gift of a “five-minute favor.”

Time limit: 5 minutes.

We’ve all heard this cliché growing up: “It’s better to give than to receive.” It’s true and you don’t even have to whip out the wallet.

A Harvard Business School report concluded that the emotional rewards are the greatestwhen our generosity is connected to others. The bottom line? It’s the social connection tied to the giving — whether to a person in need or a grassroots charity close to your heart — that gives the giver the greatest psychological benefit and boost of happiness.

One of the best ways to give without spending a cent is doing a “five-minute favor.” First described in Wharton professor Adam Grant’s bestseller Give and Take, five-minute favors are selfless giving acts that are done without asking for anything in return, no strings attached.

Examples of five-minute favors include: sharing knowledge, making an introduction, serving as a reference, writing a quick book review, or recommending someone on LinkedIn, Yelp, or another social place.

Grant points out that by paying it forward, you are more successful without expecting a quid pro quo. And you aren’t just helping others in five focused minutes of giving. You are also supporting the emotional spread of this practice–it becomes contagious…

…keep reading the full & original article HERE