If you’re a night owl and you’ve tried waking up early, you know it’s a difficult task. But there are a lot of benefits to getting up early. here comes a list of why it’s good to get up early:
- there is less stress on your body and it becomes easier to fall asleep if you get a routine of going to bed and getting up at the same time every day(also weekends).
- if you wake up earlier you will have some free time before you go to work (or what you do), you don’t have to stress and your day starts out better.
- If you wake up early you will have a headstart on the day. Say that something has happened during the night, you will be the first to notice.
- To get up early also requires some discipline. When you have some discipline it’s easier to conquer other obstacles.
Here’s a list of tips to sleep better.
- darkness 1 hour from sleeping, don’t use electronics late at night.
- keep it cool in your bedroom about 18c.
- no alcohol and caffeine. Alcohol will put stress on your body while you sleep. And caffeine can stay in your body for hours and make it harder to fall asleep.
- Don’t stay in bed awake. if you wake up or can’t sleep, leave the bed. The bed should be a place for sleeping not for thinking.
- meditate during the day, it will train you to clear your mind and fall asleep easier.
- eliminate blue light.
- don’t eat a late dinner. Then your body will be busy taking care of the food and not on rechange your body for tomorrow.
- have a morning/bedtime routine. To have the same routine each night and morning will prepare your body to go to sleep or embrace a new day.
I’m sure there are a lot of other things that will benefit if you wake up earlier, but I think that is enough.
How to wake up better
Here comes a few tips on how to get your butt out of bed.
We all like to snooze, but you should not snooze all day. Set one alarm to wake up and another to get out of bed. If you tend to snooze all morning, use another unit for the second alarm and put it away from the bed so you have to get up to turn it off.
Start your day with joy. Find something that puts a smile on your lips. That makes it easier to get up. Watch a funny clip on Youtube, go for a walk or whatever makes you happier.
This will make it easier to stay happy during the day.
Find reasons to get up earlier otherwise don’t do it.
If you end up watching paint to dry… then don’t do it. Above there are a couple of reasons to get up earlier and it’s not a coincidence that a lot of big leaders get up early.
Apple CEO Tim Cook starts his mornings at 3:45 a.m., Ellevest CEO and co-founder Sallie Krawcheck wakes up at 4 a.m. and Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama and Indra Nooyi have been known to rise at the crack of dawn.
Find a reason/reasons to wake up early that works for you.
Find a coach, people using a coach had a 300% better chance to master a new habit than the ones trying on their own. Just ask someone close to you to keep you on your track. If your friend will not help you, you can get professional help. It might not be so expensive as you think. You can try coach.me
As it was pointed out above, get a routine. It will make your mornings easier.
For one, you might not have got your brain working at 100% yet, it’s still sleeping.
Then it very good to have a routine until your brain has wakened up.
Also, you may find ways to optimize your routine and make it better. All optimization doesn’t have to do with the morning. For example, you might pick clothes for your day the evening before.
Usually, it’s the TV, tablet, computer or smartphone that keeps us awake.
Find a way around that, loan your best friend your tablet or computer or set a password on them at specific hours.
Some times you might be a zombie for the first hours, a great idea is to get outside, if you can also do some exercise.
We all have different sleep cycles ( there is 4 ). and it’s easier to wake up when you are in the first cycle. So you might experiment with how long you should sleep. Set your alarm at different times( move it maybe 15min more or less) to see when it’s easiest to wake up.
If you are trying to change 5 things at the same time it might be too much and you might fail at all 5. Better to get one thing done then failing at 5.
If you get a cat and show her that it’s food time at 6:00 am, that cat will help you getting up.
Sometime you may have to stay up late, then comes the question: will I still have the morning alarm or should I sleep in?
It’s up to you, but I would still keep it if you get at least 5 hours of sleep and if it’s lower then that I would try to sleep in.