Buzz … Buzzz … Buzzzzz … What?? Oh … Snooze. Double snooze. Then awake. Ok, ok, I’m awake. Shhhhh … Sit up, but don’t stand up yet. Be still.

Today’s thought: “Everything is working out for me.”

I roll it over in my mind, then energize it by repeating it in a whisper. “Everything is working out for me.” Then I add my gratitude list as I stand up and move toward the bathroom. Comfortable bed, quiet neighborhood, kitties, coffee, … Oh, yeaaa … there’s coffee waiting.

There’s a school of thought that says the first seventeen seconds of the day is for setting the intention and tone of your day. Being mindful of your thoughts is a way to get the momentum going in the direction you want it to go. The tenor of the thought you have in the first seventeen seconds will attract the same type of thought in the next seventeen seconds, and the next, and the next, and so on. Each thought attracting another.

Does it work? I think so. It certainly can’t hurt, and, at the very least, it makes for a more pleasant start to the day and sets me on a path to living life by design instead of by default. 

“Everything is working out for me,” I say again as I walk into the bathroom. I energize the thought by repeating it out loud. I believe the Universe is conspiring in my favor.

The routine of morning chores gives me the space to maintain this mindset. As I play with Sweetie the Stray on the patio after his breakfast, I think about how he has routines in the morning, too, and he looks for them: breakfast, then brushing, then playing with his toy on a string. He is settling in more and more everyday and this makes me happy.

While I’m playing with him, the old Broadway show tune “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from Gypsy comes to my mind. I can hear Ethel Merman belting out the song. I start to sing and it strikes me that it is an apt theme song for the Seventeen Seconds practice.

Everything’s coming up roses, indeed.

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There is beauty in my life.

I am grateful.

Everything is working out for me.