I always have since I remember myself, though I was a night owl.
I would go to sleep after midnight, wake up as late as possible and then do the same every day while being with no energy during the day.
One day I read a book called “Magical Morning”, and it was the first time that I heard that:
There is no such thing as morning people and night owls. It just doesn’t exist. The only thing that does matter is what you tell yourself.
If you convince your brain that you for the life of you can not wake up early in the morning because you are not the type of person to do that. That means that you actually won’t be able to do it.
If you say to yourself that you can wake up and you make a plan of what to do in the morning the day before, you will wake up and have the best time possible.
Best time of the day
I think that for me, mornings have been a highlight of the day for a while now.
It doesn’t matter how busy or interesting my day is. What I remember the best and when I feel the best, are mornings where I can do what is important to me and what truly matters for myself.
As I have said, there are important life tasks, and there are urgent life tasks. The important life tasks usually get ignored until all of the urgent tasks are done(never). This causes important tasks for important life never to get done.
What early mornings allow you to do is wake up, before the busy world is active so that you can focus on what is important for you personally.
You can finally start writing a book you have been dreaming of writing.
You can finally start that entrepreneurship endeavour you have wanted to start.
You can finally start writing and designing your blog where you can share your thoughts on the topics that matter for you.
You can basically do anything starting from just relaxing to actually doing productive work.
Prolonging life
There have been some exciting findings of linking the morning routines and wake up time to the life expectancy.
- University of Sydney researchers released a list of six lifestyle behaviours linked to an increased risk of death.
- Most of it involved the usual suspects: drinking, smoking, lack of exercise and too much junk food.
- But the one factor that’s enough to make an annoying morning person even more annoying is the evidence that sleepyheads who laze in for hours are literally at risk of sleeping their life away. You snooze, you lose.
Both Benjamin Franklin and Aristotle wrote books about early to bed, early to rise formula that has been implemented and used throughout the world and years.
I hate most of the people who wake up early. They are snobs about it, and I think the only reason they wake up at 4:30 is so that they can talk about it and impress people on how good they are and how bad people who don’t wake up early are.
“You got up at 4 am? Why the sleep in?” A morning person will say with a sneer — and possibly a stifled yawn.
People who wake up early also have the time to take charge and control their life better. Early mornings allow time for meditation, self-reflection and other activities that you can do while the world is still sleeping. All of this leads to a better and more aware life.
People who wake up early also usually do exercises, due to more time available before work or socialising and also drink much less. Drinking is mostly a social game of the evenings and nights, and as we don’t have the luxury of staying up until 20:00, we don’t have a reason to drink.
Getting the habit down
Waking up early is the same as brushing your teeth. You might want to skip it once, or you can’t be bothered, but you still do it because the way it makes you feel after and because it is the first thing you do in the mornings anyway.
Waking up early is just like that. Do it once or twice, and you will be on the way to doing it forever. What matters is not to underestimate the power of mornings and to pack as much to do in the mornings as possible.
If you are starting, you can peg your early morning rise with something nice and what you would be looking forward to the night before.
Give yourself in the mornings a reward. A cake would be a good idea, but probably not the best long term, but not doing anything and drinking coffee can be a great motivation boost as well as something to help you with energy if you just started.
Like every habit, what matters is consistency and not magnitude at first. It would be best if you kept waking up early. You need to create a system and a good environment to keep it hassle less.
Do you want to finish waking up at 4:30 every morning? You are waking up at 9:00 right now? Start at waking up at 8:00 first. Please do it for 1 week, start waking up at 7:00 and so on.
What is important is to understand is that you are not cheating the system by sleeping less and so having long evenings and long mornings. No. What you are doing is sleeping a good amount. 7-9 hours depending on what works best for you personally. This means that you need to understand that if you want to wake up at 4:30, you need to go to sleep 20:00-22:00. You go to sleep later than that, and you will feel terribly and probably hate this system.
The reason for going to sleep so early is because our body is adapted to that. It gets dark around 18:00 in the winter and maybe 20:00 in Summer. That is the NATURAL time of going to bed. Waking up early is the same, you wake up naturally when the sun rises or a little before then to get ready for the day. There is no rocket science, it is just being smart and creating habits of doing it consistently.
If I haven’t convinced, look at this statistic:
- Getting things done isn’t the only perk of setting an early alarm. On average, early risers earn $45,725 a year, nearly $15,000 more per year than the average late-risers salary of $30,835. Those with 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. wake-up calls make the most ($48, 582 and $48,339 respectively), while those used to getting out of bed at noon earn the least (with an average income of $22,689).
There are no coincidences in this world and so don’t try to undermine statistics and try it for yourself. You can always go back.
The most important thing to do to start getting up early is:
Start now. Get perfect later.
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