LinkedIn presents.

I'm Rufus Griscom, and this is the next big idea.

Today, how to have the perfect morning.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive,

to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Herrelius wrote those words almost 2,000 years ago at the height of the Roman Empire.

These days, few of us are taking his wise counsel.

We arise in the morning to the sound of...

...and reach bleary eye for our phones.

Then we scroll through the day's gloomy headlines.

Tap out frantic replies to the astonishing number of emails and slacks and text messages that accumulated while we slept.

We don't begin our days by thinking what a precious privilege it is to be alive.

We begin all too often with the crescendo of cortisol, which is to say stress.

And here's the thing about that morning routine.

Research shows that people who start the day in a bad mood, anxious, frazzled, exhausted before they've even done anything.

Those people are much more likely to finish the day in a bad mood.

The way you spend your morning, the thoughts and feelings you bring online, sticks with you long after you've gotten out of bed.

So what can we do to start our mornings on the right foot?

The answer can be found in a new book called Rise and Shine, how to transform your life morning by morning by Kate and Toby Oliver.

Brother and sister by birth, therapist by training, Kate and Toby have written an inspiring and actionable guide to creating a morning routine that will boost your mental, emotional, and physical well-being and set you up for a highly productive, memorable day.

The 19th century American clergyman Henry Ward Beecher said,

The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day. I love that.

...