My typical morning usually involves my alarm going off at 6:30am and I hitting the snooze button 37,256 times, finally falling face-first out of bed 45 minutes later and wandering around like a zombie for the another 30 minutes, finally scrambling to take a quick bath, skipping breakfast and rushing out of the house frazzled, so that I make it to work on time.
Not a pretty picture.
I’ve always felt that some people are just lucky to be morning people and that me, being a night owl had unfortunately missed out that all important gene. But at the beginning of 2018, I decided that this year I was going to develop the habit of waking up early without wanting to cry, and I’ll tell you why?
Studies show that people who wake up earlier than others tend to be more successful in life.
"Why?" You may ask? Well, a recent study conducted showed that people are at their “personal best” between the hours of 5am and noon.
As a result, people who wake up early tend to be more positive, more productive, better problem solvers, better planners and therefore do better in school and at work. Because these people wake up early, and during the time most people are at their personal best, they have more time to get more done during the day which means they are more productive which as you know contributes to success, and they are generally happier than the average person as they have more time for exercise, meditation, eat healthy and family.
Take PepsiCola CEO Indra Nooy, wakes up at 4am and is in the office no later than 7am. Meanwhile Disney CEO Bob Iger gets up at 4.30 to read and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is up at 5.30 to jog.
In fact I would put forward that the common thread among all most the most successful, wealthy , healthy and happy people in the world is that they are all early risers.
That was a good enough reason for me to convince myself to change my ways, so allow me to share with you how I did it.
Step number 1. You Snooze, you Lose. Now, I know many of us think that the snooze button is your BFF or best friend forever but I’m here to tell you that the snooze button is your enemy. What snoozing does is it causes you to fall back to sleep and make yourself come back out of sleep again and again and doing it over and over again is just going to trick your body into thinking you’re going back to sleep when you’re not so you’re just going to end up feeling more tired than you were before.
Instead, just get up when your alarm goes off and don’t hit the snooze button at all.
How, you may ask? A great way to do this is to keep your alarm clock away from your bed.This forces you to get out of the bed so that have to turn your alarm off and then once you’re already up and out of bed, it’s so much easier to just stay up versus rollover and go back to sleep.
Once you’re out bed, make sure that you immediately make your bed because making it right away keeps you from crawling back inside and going back to sleep. Making your bed first thing in the morning also gives you a sense of accomplishment and makes you feel productive which kick-starts you to having a productive day.
Step number 2. Get excited. In order to hop out of bed in the morning with gusto, you may need something to get out of bed for, so find something to get excited about. It could be something big like a big sales deal you want to close that day or something small like drinking your favorite cup of hot steaming coffee with your breakfast, like freshly toasted crunchy toast with creamy green avocado and fried red tomatoes on top with a sprinkling of black pepper. Sounds delicious right? Certainly something to get out of bed for. I particularly love opening the windows in the morning and feeling the cool breeze against my skin. The added advantage of this is that this fresh air instantly wakes me up.
Step number 3. Have a morning routine. The truth is, human beings are creatures of habit so try and come up with a routine that works for you and stick to it. For example, once your alarm clock rings, get out of bed to switch it off, have a glass of water, open the windows to let some fresh air in and enjoy a glass of water on the balcony or outside to rehydrate your body and kickstart your metabolism, spread your bed, then do 10 minute aerobics workout, take a shower, then enjoy some breakfast which will give you the energy boost that you need for the day, and head out!
