How to get up early?
Getting up earlier than usually can save you a lot of valuable time. When I initially came across an idea of getting up early, I made a decision to start my day an hour and a half earlier. It is more than 10 hours a week !!! Just imagine how much you can do at this time.
One and a half or two hours a day more in the morning is a great opportunity to make up for what we do not have time later in the day. You can read a book, jog, learn a foreign language or go for a walk and enjoy the new day. You can afford to have a quiet morning, without hurry and stress.
When I started introducing the new habit into my life, I noticed that when I get up earlier, I have much more energy throughout the whole day than before. This may seem absurd, but it really was like that. When sleeping up to 9 or 10, I was sleepy all day long. Now, when I sleep less, I feel much better the entire day, I am in a better mood and I have more energy. This is due to the fact that when sleeping less we force our body to get enough sleep in less time and such sleeping has much better quality than when we sleep long.
Initially there were two schools of thought on the subject of getting up. The first one supported the idea of going to bed and getting up always at the same time. The other one suggested relying on the biology of our bodies, lying down in bed when feeling the need to do so. Out of those two approaches, the former suggests a fixed amount of sleep that in modern societies is quite sensible. However, relying on such an idea we would often go to bed not even being sleepy. It would be a complete waste of time on futile attempts to fall asleep. The body from day to day may need a completely different number of hours to rest, so this way does not work.
The latter school of though also has no raison d'etre - we would sleep 10 hours a day. And it has been scientifically proven that our bodies need 7 hours of sleep (of course this may slightly vary depending on different people). Besides, we can rarely afford ourselves to get up whenever we like.
Steve Pavlina, one of the gurus of personal development proposed to combine these two concepts. Go to sleep when your body informs you about the tiredness, and get up always at the same time. When you have a busier day, you can go to bed earlier and sleep longer. When full of energy, you may stay up late. This guarantees that you will always be rested, because it is your body which tells you when to go to sleep. And what is more, you will always get up at a fixed time.
The first step to form a habit of getting up early is to choose the time at which you should get up. At first, you will need an alarm clock, and when when it becomes a habit with you, you will probably wake up at a fixed time. On the first few days getting up so early can be difficult, and you may feel a little tired during the entire day. However, it only happens in the beginning. After four or five days, your body gets used to the new rhythm. Getting up will be much easier and the whole day a lot more energetic.
If you have problems with getting up in the morning, be sure to read How to wake up full of energy. You will find there some useful ways of getting up with a much higher energy level.
Of course, if you have a very tiring day and you feel that you need to have a good night's rest, you can sleep a little longer. However, in the first month, try to avoid such a situation.
Or maybe you have tried several times, but each time you returned to the old rhythm? This may mean that the problem lies elsewhere - in the ability to effectively develop habits. It's worth working on it first. My 5-day course How to change habits will help you with this, thanks to which you will learn to develop any habit of your choice. Every day you will watch one video recording and do a coaching exercise, thanks to which you will soon get up before the alarm clock.
After some time of such a routine of getting up early, I did not need my alarm clock anymore. I would always wake up at a fixed time. Even if it allowed myself to lie in bed a little longer, I did not completely feel like sleeping anymore. There was a new day ahead of me and really wanted to make the most of it having that additional and valuable time for myself. In the beginning, you do not have to introduce big changes. A good idea is to shorten sleep time by 30 minutes a week.
Once you made a decision about getting up earlier, it is high time you answered the question - How to say no to your warm quilt that invites you to continue the restful sleep. How to deal with it and achieve the goal you set for yourself?
- Start even before you go to bed. Consider carefully what you are going to do tomorrow. It is best to plan a day in a way that you have something important to do early in the morning. Knowing that ahead of me there is a task to complete, I feel bad when wasting time with every moment of staying in bed. If the additional time that you gain is not used effectively, you will not feel motivated to get up early again.
Before going to sleep imagine yourself after waking up. Visualize yourself as waking up fully rested. See how you get up full of energy. Feel the energy, identify yourself with the you in the image. Let the whole visualization be vivid, bright and attractive.
Next, imagine a large clock. See on it the time you want to get up. Stare at it and tell yourself that at this very time you will get up fully rested. In this way you will inform you body about the time you get up and it will know till when it should get fully rested.
- Remember about the alarm clock. If you have an opportunity to wake up to music, let this music be lively. Such one that evokes positive emotions in you. A little more drastic method - place the alarm clock at the place from which you can not reach it from the bed. You will have to get up to turn it off.
- Sleep according to your sleep cycles. For more information, see the article Getting up and sleep phases.
- Like everyone else, you probably have a voice in your mind that in the morning says to you "just 5 more minutes, it is so warm and nice here, all you need is to close your eyes and drift away to sleep ...". It is extremely tempting, but your task is not to allow this voice to even appear. Instead, talk to yourself in a lively and loud voice: "Get up, it is time for another wonderful day! There are only pleasures ahead of you, so get up!" Let your inner voice SHOUT, let it be bursting with enthusiasm! You will be affected by those emotions and you will immediately want to jump out of bed.
This technique is only the beginning of what you can do with your mind. Have you ever heard of Neuro Linguistic Programming. If not, be sure to make yourself acquainted with the techniques that NLP offers. This will allow you not only to throw away the unpleasant visions that you sometimes create in your mind but also control the unpleasant internal dialogues. To learn the basics of NLP reach for one of the books on this subject as this knowledge will allow you to create mental visions and dialogues that will give you a powerful motivational kick. I have conducted many training courses on the subject of NLP and I always notice immediate and long-lasting effects on the participants.
- Get up right away, the longer you lie, the less likely that you will scramble out of bed. And remember that every time you manage to get up at a fixed time, you achieve a success. Each morning brings you closer to your goal that is forming a habit of getting up early.
Make the bed very carefully and set the alarm clock earlier than usually. Good luck!