YouTube video "LIFEWRITING Morning Ritual" (creators: Steven Barnes with Tananarive Due). The clip demonstrates the couple's morning practice: Tananarive walks (noting beauty) while Steven does Tai Chi and a spoken affirmation/chant. They describe a "secret formula"—clear goals × faith × daily actions—ending with gratitude. The transcript shows a partnered ritual where they state a financial goal ($2,000 a day), enumerate specific daily tasks (grading, shooting, marketing research, webinar testing, email imports, writing a sentence), and recite gratitude for family, health, students, and creative work.
Questions this video answers
$2,000 a day.
Tananarive Due and Steven (Steve) Barnes.
"Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better."
Chapters
Hi, this is Tananarive Due, and I wanted to share a little bit about our morning ritual with you. Every morning when I can, I try to get up and walk. We have a really nice walk, a little bit uphill, gets my heart beating and it's pretty. I like looking at beauty first thing in the morning. Even if it's just my cat. This is my favorite house. Look at that. These Bolivia remind me so much of Miami. Plus, if I get out early in the morning, I beat. I love this walk. This is Steve. Stephen Barnes. He does Tai chi in the mornings as a part of his morning ritual. Usually he chants for about 10 to 20 minutes while he's doing Tai chi, but for the sake of this video and brevity, he will do a voiceover to replicate what his chanting would sound like.
Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. God's wealth is circulating in my life. His wealth flows to me in avalanches of abundance. All my needs, desires, dreams and goals are met instantly by infinite intelligence. Because I am one with God and God is everything. I'm so grateful for a strong, healthy body. I'm so grateful for a strong, healthy mind. I'm so grateful for all the people who love me and trust me. For Jason, Nikki, my beautiful, brilliant wife, Tananaria, my sister Joyce. For all of my mentors and teachers and friends and students and readers. I'm so grateful to achieved mastery in martial arts and yoga, to be a householder, yogi, writing business, all of these wonderful things. I'm so grateful that I earn the money I need to support my family doing the things that I love. So grateful that I know what I need to do today to make that happen. That I know exactly what I need to do. All I need is within me now. All I need is within me now. All the strength I need is within me now. All the courage I need is within me now. All the optimism I need is within me now. Everything I need to be, everything I want is within me already right now.
Hi, this is Steve Barnes, and we're going a little deeper into the morning ritual idea. It is a ritual of movement, thought, focus, and emotion that you perform every single day. We showed you an example of how to do it by yourself, Tananari. While she's walking. I do it while I'm doing Tai chi. You can do it while you're doing any physical activity, but make sure you're doing something physical so that you ground it into your body. Then you go through the steps, more or less, of what we call the secret formula. Clear goals times faith that you can and should accomplish it, times your daily actions, the things you actually need to do to make this happen. And ending with gratitude, because gratitude is the antidote for fear. You find the things that you're grateful for in your life, and then you wash yourself in a cascade of those positive emotions. Now, when you've done it by yourself, it's even greater if you can do it with a partner, with your husband, your wife, your significant other, or even just a mastermind partner if somebody is in sync with you about this. So what we're going to do is we're going to show you very, very quickly how we do this. We try to connect every single morning, at least five days a with doing this. And so we come together.
Hi, honey. Hi, sweetheart. Good morning.
Okay. And we hold hands. We look at each other's eyes.
I said.
What'S our goal?
Our goal is $2,000 a day.
$2,000 a day?
Yes.
Right. And do we have faith that we can do this?
Yes, I have absolute faith.
We have absolute faith.
We can do it.
We have accomplished miracles before. We have done all sorts of things people said we couldn't do or we didn't think we can do.
We can do this. We can do it.
Absolutely. Okay, and what do we need to do today to make this happen?
Well, today I have papers to grade. I'll be doing a quick shoot on my short film, and I will be doing my marketing research, Facebook marketing in particular. And I have to write at least a sentence on my novel.
Yes, absolutely.
Good. Okay.
So I have work to do on the Niven and Cornell project. That's my hobby. So in terms of business, what I need to do is to test the webinar software and make sure that I know how it works and see whether or not webinarjam is going to be the platform that we're going to use. And if so, then we'll sign up for it. Hopefully, the new email server will approve the first importations of the email list. And if that works, then I'll start digging into that.
That'll be great.
I'll continue to study. I'll make sure to put in my half hour of studying into the marketing research. And what do we have to feel grateful for today?
There's so much I'm grateful for my wonderful husband. I'm grateful for our son Jason, who is healthy and well, for my stepdaughter Nikki, my family members that everyone I care about is alive and well.
I have.
I cannot believe the blessings that I have. I love you so much, and I'm so happy. I'm so grateful to have a partner like you, too, who actually has creative ideas that I did not think of to make these dreams happen.
And.
And I'm so grateful that we're healthy and alive and well. We have hope and opportunity. I'm grateful for the places we've been able to travel and the people we love. I'm grateful that Jason woke up alive this morning. We all woke up alive this morning. Every day above ground is a good day.
Absolutely.
And just grateful for an opportunity to share and to help people. Trust me. And I'm grateful that I have faith.
That I can live up to that trust.
I'm also grateful for our students, for you. Because I get so much from students encountering students. I love writing, and I feel privileged to be able to pass on lessons.
And I'm grateful that I'm gonna set my little boy free. He gets to spend the rest of his life writing what he loves. And I'm gonna do the work. I'll take care of the business, bring in the money. He gets to play.
Okay?
Absolutely.
Shall we hit the day?
Absolutely. Let's hit the day, sweetheart. Love you.
