How To Wake Up Early
Waking up early is something I've always struggled with. I'm a stereotypical snoozer who always craves that extra ten minutes of shut-eye. However, I have always seen the value of being an early riser. The chance to wake up properly and be completely ready to start the day way before others crack open their curtains.
If this sounds like you, my tips for waking up early might help you make a change in your morning routine.
Still not convinced it's for you?
Since waking up early I've discovered three things:
The moments nestled between 5am and 8am are truly magical - you're awake before most other people, it's quiet, it's inspiring and it's fabulous.
There's no such thing as a 'morning person' or a 'night owl'. Whilst you may feel stuck in your routine now, habits can be changed with a little perseverance and persistence.
Waking up at 5am is never easy. Your heart has to be in it if you really want to commit.
Go to bed early.
The first rule of getting up early is making sure you’re going to bed early. I really wouldn’t advise trying to get up at 5am each day if you’re not going to hit your pillow until 1AM. You will burn out.
The recommended number of hours of sleep for the average adult is 8-hours, but you can find out your optimum amount of sleep by seeing what works for you. For me, I like to get at least 7-hours of sleep, but if I sleep more than 8-9, I feel sluggish.
Know what works for you.
When I say 5am every day, it sounds quite militant. In reality, I start softly, setting myself a target of waking up between 5AM and 5:30AM. Recently, I’ve been getting up between 5:45AM and 6AM, as I’ve had an intense few weeks of work so need those extra 40-winks.
It’s all about knowing what works well for you.
8am could be early for you if you don’t need to start work until 11am.
Have a good reason to get up.
If you have no reason to get up, you won’t do it. If you have a rubbish reason to get up, you won’t do it.
Plan your mornings so that you - almost - want to jump out of bed.
It could be working on a project you’re passionate about, or just treating yourself to a bit of self-care.
For me, this includes getting some exercise in, having a nice coffee and getting ready for the day whilst watching something inspiring on YouTube. In the future, I intend to ramp it up and do some brainstorming around my business and other projects I want to do.
Make your reason something you love and not just to catch up on emails. You just won’t get out of bed for something naff like that.
Put your alarm downstairs.
Now, you’ll probably hate yourself - or me - for a couple of minutes if you do this.
But, by leaving your phone or alarm clock downstairs, you force yourself to get up out of bed and switch it off.
By the time you crawl downstairs and hit “snooze” or “stop”, you should have properly woken up and be thinking fairly straight to remember all the reasons you wanted to get up early.
Well, at least more clearly than what you would be if you blindly hit the snooze button from the comfort of your warm duvet.
Make it a habit and something you ‘do’.
There’s no point in trying to wake up early once, hating life and giving up the next day. It’s going to take work and it’s going to take time. You’re probably going to fail a few times, let’s be honest!
They say it takes around 28 days to form a habit. Whilst I don’t know if this is quite true because it’s so easy to fall back into bad habits in my experience, by being fairly consistent, you’ll find it a little easier to wake up early every day.
A bonus to waking up early in the week is you’ll naturally wake up earlier at the weekend - maybe give yourself a break and wake up a bit later than 5am though!
This means you have more free time at the weekends, rather than wasting the day in bed!
Do you have any tips for forming new habits or waking up early? Perhaps you disagree and love staying up late? Let me know in the comments!
