 One of the classic balances we have to make is between novelty and routine. Now, so much in the world of self-development is about establishing better habits, better routines. You know, these are the things we do over and over again and based on the habits that we repeat every day, it builds who we are in the future. These are everyday actions, so it makes sense to focus on building good routines. But at the same time, it can just be really boring to simply robotically follow routines and it's possible to get very regimented, but even the most extreme regimented person, you can't just have your entire life scheduled out as an automatic routine and just sort of walk through it. There needs to be some kind of novelty, some kind of freshness, some kind of feeling like wow, today is special. Today is not like other days. Today, I am living with a new perspective, a new purpose. And there's one thing that I like to do to let myself feel this way. Simple little trick. In the morning, when I wake up, completely fresh day, sometimes it's great to just imagine I could do anything in this day. And it's true. Not a fake story we have to tell ourselves. It's absolutely true that every day when we wake up, we have a completely fresh day and we could do absolutely anything with it. So anything you might imagine, you could decide to completely forget about all the habits, all the expectations, all the routines that you have for that day and simply do what you want to do. You could decide today, I am going to one of my favorites to imagine is just imagine I just start walking. Just go, start walking and see where I end up. Or I could go grab a train somewhere, grab a bus and just like just grab a plane and just travel somewhere and I have no idea where. Just go. You know. I could and of course we have the power every day to do terrible things too. We could burn things down, hurt people, cause terrible destruction. It's so easy to destroy life, destroy our own lives and just make a mess of things. That's something that is, it's a possible thing to do. We could start to write a new book. We could start to maybe just do absolutely nothing. Maybe just like catatonically lie in a fetal position for the whole day. We could just sit on the beach. Maybe look on the bookshelf or at the library and just select a random book and start reading it. You know, we could, the list goes on and on. Whatever you can imagine of something that you might possibly do. You can do it. Now, most of these things, I don't actually want to do them, but there's something powerful, I think, about reminding myself that I could do absolutely anything with this day that's starting. This day could be absolutely anything today. It doesn't have to be this kind of regimented expectation of this is what my program is and therefore I must do it. And I have, you know, this is my goals that I set. So I must do this and this and this. There's just something a little bit incomplete about waking up and having the one's entire day planned out in every detail. It's too much. Because every day has something unexpected in it. Every day has something fresh and new and real. That's part of really being alive in that day. When there's too much of it, then it becomes this overload of just too much novelty. And then it's good to have simple routine and structure. But if there's too much routine and structure, eventually it's to the point where you can just be sleep walking through your day, zombie through the day, robot going through your day. And sometimes a little bit of freshness and surprise and novelty is what's needed to wake up, wake up and realize you are alive today. Today is a special day, just like any day. Anything can happen on any day. Every day has this power. So I imagine this and think about all the things I could do today. How I might want to reinvent my entire life. At any moment, we have this power to do this. We really have this amazing consciousness, this amazing will to be able to do so much beyond what we even think of doing. And then what happens after all this thought is, well, out of all these options, I'm thinking of all the things that could possibly be my action for the day. All these different extreme things, wild things that I could imagine doing. And yet, then I think about my regularly scheduled program for the day, doing my work, the project that I'd already set aside to myself, advancing the goals I've already decided for myself, taking care of my responsibilities that are programmed for the day, and how about that as an option. And now I'm thinking of it, it's not that this is automatically Oh, I simply must do this because that's my program for the day. So automatically, no choice, no thought. I automatically have to do these responsible, programmed, routine, predictable things. Instead, it is my choice. I can put that boring, mundane, responsible, everyday, normal, expected, habitual, routine list of things I'm going to do today. Put that on the menu along with all the other wild extreme things I could imagine doing. And then I can choose. What do I want to do today? Well, through having that moment of imagining the wild and crazy and extreme things. Oh, it's fun to imagine doing that. You know, that could be, that would have that wild blast of novelty that, wow, what I'm really doing something different today, and wow, I'm really living today. But then I can imagine how it will soon fade into, oh, well, that was not really very helpful. And I would rather go back to my life as it is. And in fact, the routine mundane option can start to look pretty good. And then by the end of that exercise, I can choose to do my routine everyday thing. And that becomes my conscious choice. And I want to do it because looking at all the options of everything that I could do with my life today, that is the best option. It is what I want to do. So I end up doing normal things anyway. But by imagining everything else I could do, now it's become my choice. Now I have chosen to do these normal things. So it's the same actions, but with a different feeling, a different sense of motivation and will because now I'm going about my day and I'm happy that I can do these mundane normal things because they are the most likely to lead to a good life. I don't need to do an extreme wild thing today. I'm going to do things that may be mundane, but they will lead to better things. I'm going to take care of my responsibilities and I'm going to advance my goals. And that's a good program for a day. So the next time you wake up feeling that you don't want to continue in the routine that you have for yourself, consider what else might you want and what could you do if you could do absolutely anything in that day. And then my question for you is let me know if you've done this and what kind of results do you have? Do you find that you also choose to then choose your routine expected day and do it with a greater sense of joy? Or do you regret, do you even more sharply feel that you're missing out on life by shutting down the wild extreme ideas that you brought up, those wild options? By shutting them down do you feel even more constrained? Or do you in fact choose one of the wild options and choose to radically change your life today? Let me know how it goes.