Hey y’all,
Good Morning! Today is my 3rd day of having a set bedtime and set wake time. Before, I would go to bed whenever I felt like it. That made getting up to my alarm really hard some days. But giving myself a bedtime has been so helpful for me to wake up on time. And I’ve been waking up early – well, early for me – I know some people get up even earlier.
I’ve been waking up at 6am. I’ve been attempting this for a while, but it hasn’t consistently happened until I gave myself a bedtime. Although I’m only on Day 3, this has already helped to make me more productive. My body actually woke up at 5:20 today. In the past, I would have gone back to sleep until my alarm rang at 6. But I recently watched a video in which a man said that he was feeling tired one morning, but his brain told him that he couldn’t be tired because his body woke up without an alarm. That’s the situation I’m in today. Even though it’s early, and even though I’m feeling a bit tired, I still want to be able to live an awesome day, and I don’t want to waste any more time by going back to sleep.
I’ve also been studying The Miracle Morning. It’s all about the morning routine of many successful people. For starters, they get up early! Haha – if only it were so easy. But there are plenty of tricks to be employed.
- have a bedtime – I’ve been talking about this throughout this post, so you can see how important this is.
- make bed and brush teeth immediately – these tasks are just mindless ones that also make you feel like you accomplished something right at the beginning.
- water & exercise – likely, you still feel sleepy. These things purely help you to wake up. Start off by drinking water. After sleeping, you’re body is often dehydrated. Drinking rehydrates you and can help you wake up. Also, splash water on your face. This helps because of the obvious. And get some exercise. This doesn’t have to be much. I literally just walk around my backyard. But being active will make you a lot less likely to fall back asleep.
- get dressed – if you’re ready for the day, you will be motivated to go ahead and begin
Yay! Now we’re awake, but what now. The Miracle Morning has some more tips. They’re called life S.A.V.E.R.S. to make them easy to remember
- Silence: The world is loud. Spend some time in quiet. This can be meditating, breathing exercises, or you can just sit with your thoughts. I just go about my morning routine with my phone turned off – no music at first.
- Affirmations: When you say something about yourself, whether or not it’s true at the time, you tend to subconsciously work to make it true.
- Visualization: This works in the same way that affirmations do. Who do you want to be? Take a moment to say it and envision yourself as that person.
- Exercise: This is a similar idea as before. Getting a few minutes of exercise in right when you wake up can help to make you alert. Getting some more exercise in daily helps to increase the energy you have during the day. (I must admit, I don’t really do this. I need to start, but I haven’t, and that’s ok. Just starting anything is good.)
- Reading: This doesn’t mean pleasure reading. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be the written word, in my opinion. Taking in knowledge, from anywhere, is so helpful. I like to listen to videos that talk about habits and practices of successful people. Regularly taking in useful knowledge means that you’re always growing and adapting.
- Scribing: or writing. Taking time to write down your thoughts helps you think through things more. That’s one reason I like writing this blog. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written something on here and thought, “Well, gee, that’s a really good idea. I don’t do that, but I will now.” Writing things down provides so much clarity.
That’s The Miracle Morning routine. I’ve only been doing this for a few days and am definitely not perfect – I don’t even do all the steps – but my last few days have been pretty great.
I hope this gives you the motivation that you can do this, too. The takeaway isn’t that you need to be perfect. The only goal is to be a better you than yesterday. Why don’t you try just giving yourself a set time to go to bed? If that’s all you do, it will make your days so much better.
Frugal Treehugger 