2 simple steps to get up early

 

Sunrise in a barley field. Image courtesy: pixabay

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” We have learned this saying and practiced this custom regularly in our childhood. But we left it behind while growing up to an adult.

And most of us deprive ourselves of this healthy habit by putting up a wall of excuses - be it “I am not a morning person” or be it “I am too overloaded to go to bed early.” 

Let's find out the reason why we are super busy all day. We get up late and start our day late. So, we have adapted to being great multi-tasker to save our precious time. This leads us to be less productive and less focused. Thus we take more time to finish our work and feel exhausted. Then eventually we end our day late and sleep late. This is how the cycle goes on. I agree that there are exceptions who had no choice in their sleep time like people who work at night shift or mom of an infant etc. But most of us have chosen this on our own.

Yes, staying awake till late at night, watching series, movies, playing games on computers may be a trending habit. But does that give us a feel-good factor? Does that really work as a stress buster?

Now let's see how do we feel getting up early when we have to catch an early morning train or flight for a vacation?

Refreshed, excited, energetic … 

But you may say that could be because of the vacation vibe.  

Mmm.. Let’s try to recollect how energetic we felt when we started our trip in the middle of the day or late night.

It is not only travel, for whatever rare reason you got up early you have surely felt the difference. Because our sleep helps us to boost our energy level. And we are usually charged up during morning time.

But how can we break our old habits? Believe me, it's really pretty simple. There are only 2 things which you have to take care of and the rest will follow automatically.

1. Find your own reason - You have to find out your own real cravings for getting up early. Whatever motivational videos, podcasts, blogs you go through, its impression will not last for long. You have to seek your own reason, it has to be something which you dream to achieve but you don’t get time in the whole day. 

Let’s check out some instances. 

Suppose you decided that you will get up and do exercise to be fit and healthy. Frankly speaking, it will hardly work. Because there is no concrete definition of being healthy, and you aren't able to measure easily whether you are becoming healthy day by day. 

Then? 

Then, you have to set some measurable goals, like you were suffering from chronic disease and after doing morning exercise you are feeling better, feeling that it is healing. That's how you are evaluating your improvement. 

In some cases, it can be your wish to fit into your dream outfit or maybe for any occasion. This can also work as motivation for some.

If you aspire to be a writer, but you hardly get time to pen down your creative thoughts to paper, dawn is the perfect time to manifest.

Say, you are totally irritated with your current job and you want to switch to something else, but you don’t invest your time there. It is high time to wake up, come out from the pitfall and fulfill your wish.

You have to listen to your heart and find out your real longing wish. There is nothing else than your own wish, your real dream which can motivate you. 

2. Good night rituals - This is very obvious that if we want to get up earlier than usual we have to go to bed earlier, as our body usually needs 7-8 hrs rest in a day. Again we started putting excuses - “I have to complete this work by today.”, “I had a tiring day, I want some relaxation (and started watching videos on mobile or busy on social media scrolling. The funniest part is these relaxation activities actually make us more drained out and also disturb our sleep.)”

Let’s find out if good night rituals can be our savior.

I. Prepare a To-do list: First thing is first. If we don't know what tasks we have today when we are starting our day, we actually lose our focus, distracted by many other things which pop up(mainly notifications in mobile), and surprisingly we lose some time and energy without doing our actual work. So it's really important to have at least a rough idea about our tomorrow’s activity.

II. Disconnect digital time an hour before bed: We all already know how electronic devices affect our sleep. Not only the blue ray from devices suppresses releasing sleep-inducing hormones, but it also triggers emotions (by someone’s post or any movie, etc) which keeps us awake for long. Hence this is a genuine barrier to sleep early. The obvious alternative is reading. It will help us to be calm and relax. You can even put on some relaxing music which is a great comfort to the mind.

Bonus Tips:

Once you get up in the morning, whatever activity you do (exercise, meditation, reading, writing, etc), I would request you to stay in the sun(within two hour of sunrise) for at least 15 mins. This is known as Sunbath. It gives you positive energy to both body and mind. When your body absorbs sun rays, it makes you feel charged up.