Not a morning person? Me neither. In fact I never have been. School was always a rumble to get out the door on time, early work mornings kept me exhausted all day. I constantly struggle with being someone who can handle mornings. As much as I hate mornings, I love mornings. Having that extra time is essential to feeling better and more productive throughout the day (and you know I love productivity). It got so bad that even after a whole year of having 9am class mon-thurs and 8am work fri-sun, I still felt like mornings were a horrible thing - something that cannot be trained.
Step 1: Believe you are capable of being awake and happy in the morning hours
BUT being a morning person CAN be trained! The difference is now I believe it can, which is the first mental step to becoming more of a morning person. I am not going to teach you how to start your day at 4am, I am here as a fellow non-morning person to lend tips from my pathway to feel better waking at earlier times; as well as training my internal clock to wake up earlier.
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Step 2: Set down times and up times
The most important thing I would say I have changed is my alarm clock routine. Without an alarm clock I would sleep until 11. I do not know why, no matter what time I fall asleep at my body just wants to sleep in. During the summer I kept my alarm for 9:30 am just because I felt getting up after 10 was too much of a waste. After realizing I do have the ability to bump up this time, in September I changed it to 8:30. This is a big step for me to be waking up at this time everyday, and a few months ago I would literally tell you I could not do it. The best part is: I find myself waking up before my alarm sometimes! To take this one step further, I began to manually track my sleep on paper. Keeping a scheduled downtime and uptime has worked wonders on slowly but surely moving my internal clock to an earlier wake time!
Step 3: Organize downtime
To prepare your body for a refreshing and early wake up time, there needs to be an earlier sleeping time. For myself, the amount of exercise I get a day (and not exercising too late) helps me fall asleep like a baby. Try and get moving as well as some fresh air throughout the day! Another KEY to falling asleep sooner when you get into bed is to PUT AWAY THE PHONE. We are told this all the time however I just started implementing it by setting downtime in my settings so I can’t use any apps after 10pm. I am hoping to get used to this and then start making my downtime start earlier however this has been a great first step! When I get into bed I also read some of my current book until I just feel super sleepy. I used to think I did not have enough time to read, now I feel like I am zooming through my books!
Also don’t forget: do not snooze, have a healthy yummy breakfast and smile!
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