Wake Up Early Tips
The 5 Most Powerful Ways To Become An Early Riser
If you are looking for some practical wake up early tips, then you are in the right place. I have tried to gathered the 5 most effective tips and techniques to help you on your way. Try them all and you will be able to wake up early whenever you want.
1. Reward Little Things
To increase your chances for success, one great method is to reward the little things. This means anything that takes you closer to getting straight out of bed. Let's celebrate this!
Let’s say that you have a goal to my wake up on time at 0530. And you first step of the goal is to do this for one week straight. There are some very simple, yet highly effective, things you can do to reward yourself when you succeed. Some examples;
- Buy a clothes piece you have wanted to buy
- Go to the movies to see a great film
- Go out for a nice dinner
- Tell your friends how awesome you are (just don't overdo it...)
- Go have a massage
- Etc. etc.
Anything which inspires you and increases your ability to succeed is worthwhile.
Celebrating your success tells your brain that this is a habit that you want to keep up! But be aware that I do not recommend that you should go along with this forever. This is only an initial way to boost your performance. It's important to turn waking up early into an automated habit to get long-lasting results.
2. Make It Enjoyable
Rewarding yourself is a great way to celebrate that you succeeded. Another thing is to make the actual process enjoyable as well.
Simply put, what it if you could make it really fun to get up?
On a scale from one to ten, how excited are you about getting up early tomorrow morning?
If you have clarified your reason and goal, then you might be fairly motivated, right! But, if you still feel some lack of confidence then let's see if we can improve that score.
And even if you are at level 10 of excitement right now, you might slip down to level 6 by tomorrow morning... just a warning. Especially when you are learning a new skill or starting a new habit, it can be valuable to have some additional support. Most kids learn how to ride a bike with training wheels, and so did you too most likely. But this is just initial support to get them going, not something to use their entire life.
So when you first see daylight, you need a motivational boost immediately.
If one would be at level 5 of motivation, what could be done at that moment to increase the success rate?
Any suggestions?
Yeah, I think you got it. It's pretty straightforward. Bring into the picture things that instantly make you excited. Some ideas:
- Turn on your absolutely most awesome music and crank it through the speakers!
- Turn on a great radio show.
- Have your favorite smoothie or juice just waiting in the fridge.
- Check the latest social network updates.
- Put on a big warm sweater.
- Slip into your best slippers.
- Play with your cat.
- Go get the newspaper if you enjoy that.
- Jump in the pool.
- Go to the toilet...
- Etc. etc.
Making it enjoyable and rewarding the little things are closely interconnected. As an example we can look at long-distance runners or boxers training for a big fight. To most people it seems like a crazy amount of training just to be able to have those few minutes of hard-attained glory.
BUT what we have to be aware of here is that the athletes themselves have managed to make the training process enjoyable, not just the end goal. That way, they can much easier motivate themselves to do their exercise every single day and even when they are feeling down.
So the feelings of accomplishment are great, but try to make the journey worthwhile as well.
It's just becomes so much more fun to wake up early.
3. Spread The Word
If you really want to succeed, then don't hide the fact that you're trying to learn how to wake up early. Instead try to get people to help you, to inspire you to reach your goal.
This is something to be very proud of and the fact that you can stand up for this will help you in your efforts.
One way is to get help from a buddy, or your spouse, and do this side-by-side. However, I must warn you, there is a risk that the laziness of one person spills over to the other one and together you manage to talk your way out of getting up in the morning...
What I and my partner did for a while in the beginning, before the habit had settled in, was to have different responsibilities. This might sound a bit strange, but the process was something along these lines:
- The alarm rings and I get up to turn it off
- I wake her up by crawling back to bed
- Here’s the critical part: She wakes up and pushes me out of bed again
- She gets up and thereafter I do as well
If she had not been clear enough that I am not allowed back in bed, I would have ended up going right back...
...which I of course did a couple of times.
But the point is that we managed to motivate each other and take different roles to make it all work.
Another excellent way is to have a coach. The absolute best thing is of course this is a person that you can talk to daily. She can tell you things such as
- How he or she succeeded
- Which methods worked
- Which methods did not work
- Which difficulties she had to overcome
Having a coach, someone to help you, to motivate you and to push you can be what brings you over the tipping point. Because, for most people, it is much worse to let someone else down than it is to let themselves down. You are not perfect and it's totally fine what to struggle a bit. But with someone else by your side, you will in fact try much harder to succeed.
And together with the knowledge and methods I'm trying to provide here, you’re gonna be able to wake up quick and easy in no time!
4. Track Your Progress
One thing that can really help you in the beginning is to keep track of your own performance. What I mean is that you should write down each day what time you're able to wake up.
Instead of just basing your performance on feelings, take notes. Make it real by putting it up on the wall so you can see it every day. This will most likely inspire you to do better when you're faced with bad performance.
5. Be Productive
When you wake up early it is vital that you use this time to be productive in some way. First of all, that way you tell your brain that the effort was worth it. Thereby it will be easier in the future to do the same. Yeah, it works.
Second of all, it will also give you a great start of the day. If you're being productive you are really setting the scene for your entire day.
Now when I say productive I don't mean to do work such as paying the bills or checking your emails. Do all that stuff later. What I mean is that you should do things that you feel are very good for you. It could be...
- Doing yoga
- Exercising
- Reading a book
- Meditating
- Learning a new skill
- Writing a book
- Making your personal website
- Etc. etc.
Yeah, basically anything that could be categorized under private productivity. But don't wake up to just watch a TV show. What we are striving for here is a feeling afterwards that you have accomplished something real.
That way, you have truly started your day in a successful way! This will set the spirit for your entire day. Whatever happens at work or school, at least you did something valuable today.
You were able to wake up early and live!
If you are able to put all these tips into practice, combined with all the extensive guidelines for becoming an early riser, then your days of sleeping late and being tired in the morning will be over. To wake up early will just be another of those automated things you do. And you get valuable time to do whatever you want.
I have also found a very extensive website full of simple tips for how to wake up early, check it out if you need more tricks =)
Early Riser > Wake Up Early > Wake Up Early Tips
Thanks for reading! By Matthew M. McEwan
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