How To Wake Up Early In The Morning And Not Feel Tired
Do you wonder how to wake up early and not feel tired?
Waking up early has many benefits. But for many people, waking up before 6am is difficult.
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If you want to learn how to wake up early, but hitting your snooze button is a deep-rooted habit, this post is for you.
In this article, we will show you how to crack the code on how to become a productive, intentional morning person, and actually enjoy waking up early!
Even if you currently struggle to get up early, or don’t consider yourself a morning person at all.
You will love rising early once you know my tricks to get up before 6am and not feel tired.
How To Wake Up Early In The Morning And Not Feel Tired
Last year, I taught myself to wake up at 5am, and gave myself a morning routine to make early mornings enjoyable.
But before you assume that I must be some sort of psychopath who hates sleep and coziness, know that I am not a morning person by nature, at all.
In fact, for most of my life, I was a total night owl. I did not practice any sort of morning routine. Unless you can call skipping the mornings altogether and sleeping until noon.
Not surprisingly, my life was a mess back then, too.
@herpaperroute Day one of my 7-week glow up challenge series. Starting with training myself to get up at 5am. This is your new 5am morning routine motivation. Eating healthy, healthy habits for a glow up. Positive that girl lifestyle productivity tips, day in the life morning vlog early am routine. Self-improvement ideas inspiration. #morningroutine #morningvlog #morningroutineaesthetic #dayinthelife #dayinthelifevlog #healthyhabits #glowup #glowupchallange #5am #5ammorningroutine #5ammorningvlog #morningvlogs #habits #productivity ♬ original sound – Chelsea | HerPaperRoute ✨
Tell me if you have ever been in this situation below:
- Monday Morning: 7:15: …annoying alarm sound… Snooze.
- 7:30: …annoying alarm sound… Just 5 minutes more, please let me sleep Snooze.
- 7:45: …annoying alarm sound… When 15 minutes passed so fast?! Snooze.
- 8:00: …annoying alarm sound… Alright, I’ll get up. Proceeds to binge-watch Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, and so on…
- 8:30: …Finally gets up from bed. “Crap, I have to be at work in 30 minutes” Takes a 3-minute shower (if lucky), rushes to put clothes on, grabs whatever is on the kitchen table, and drives like a madman to work.
- 9:00: …Arrives at work “Man, I’m so exhausted, I can’t wait for the day to end, where’s my coffee???” Tuesday- Thursday morning Repeat Friday morning: “Can’t wait for tomorrow to just sleep and do nothing all day long”
- Monday morning: 7:15: …annoying alarm sound… Snooze.
Do you notice the problem?
Okay, so the above example may be a little extreme for some people, but for most people who work a 9-to-5 job five days a week and don’t have a set morning routine, their weeks are often like that.
Just take a brief second and think about the last time you were setting the alarm the night before, and it said: “Alarm has been set to >6 hours”?
Or when was the last time that you were excited to wake up? Or the last time that you had plenty of time to actually eat a breakfast that would make you energized throughout the day?
How often do you wake up looking forward to the day?
Go on, answer these questions honestly; I’ll wait for you…
Okay? If the answer to the questions above is something like: “I don’t remember” or “way long ago,” then I have something for you:
Here’s the simple but harsh truth: all the tips and tricks in the world won’t make a difference in the long run if you don’t change the way you feel about mornings, Period.
With that being said, let’s dive into the 4 steps (plus a bonus one) to wake up early in the morning and not feel tired:
STEP ONE: A MENTAL SHIFT
“Be pleasant until 10 a.m. and the rest of the day will take care of itself.”
Elbert Hubbard.
We’ve touched on this step already briefly above, and it’s the most important and the most difficult one; that’s why it’s in the number one spot.
The first step to becoming a morning person is to completely rewrite our perspective about mornings.
It’s being promoted by society that waking up early in the morning is a difficult task to do, especially if it’s a Monday.
The biggest problem occurs when we go to sleep and when we wake up.
Before going to sleep: “I should have gone to bed earlier; now I know that I won’t sleep much and I will feel lethargic tomorrow”
When waking up: “Man, I was right; I already don’t have energy; this day will suck”
Read: 7 Powerful Ways To Boost Your Energy
Sorry to break it to you, but you don’t have to believe everything the little voice inside your head wants you to believe.
To have a mental shift about your mornings, you have to be aware of these self-sabotaging thoughts and instead try and focus that energy on positive affirmations.
“But I’m not a morning person”
There aren’t morning or night owls, these are marketing terms the industry has created to make sales of eBooks or plans or products in general.
The morning persons are just regular people just like you and me, the only difference is that they “hacked” their brains to cancel any sabotaging thought and focus on their purpose.
STEP TWO: THE “3, 2, 1…GO” TRICK
The “3, 2, 1…GO” or the “1, 2, 3…GO” trick, whatever you like calling it, is a powerful trick to make you feel in charge of your body and mind in the early stages of the morning when you feel unmotivated.
So I’ll break it down for you with a simple example:
7:30:*Alarm goes off*
In that exact moment when you first open up your eyes, you tell yourself, “I got this,” and countdown from 3 to 1.
You can do this by saying it out loud (the best way, in my opinion) or else saying it silently inside your head if you have the special one that you don’t want to wake up.
Whatever you choose, by the time you say the number 1, you have to immediately jump out of the sheets and the bed.
The trick to making this work is to place your phone a few feet away from your bed, so that you have to physically get out of bed to turn it off.
And then, avoid the urge to crawl back into bed. Walk right out of your bedroom!
By setting a timer when you open up your eyes, you tell your brain that you got adequate sleep and that you are ready to rock this day, and do not even start with the “5 more minutes” excuses.
That’s it; try this trick the next morning and come back to this article and tell me your impressions.
Remember, the Snooze button is the enemy of a morning routine.
STEP THREE: ELIMINATE ANY DISTRACTIONS
How many times do you check your phone when you wake up? You think:
“I was asleep for x amount of hours; let’s get all that lost time on social media in 10 MINUTES”…
“Oh, my friend Mike is getting engaged?!”
Yeah, way too many…
Just like with the Snooze button, the phone is an enemy of mornings too.
You get caught up and lost in endless feed scrolling, and you get bombarded with so much content when you’ve barely opened up your eyes yet.
If you want to stop feeling tired and unmotivated, in the first 15-30 minutes of your mornings, you shouldn’t interact with your phone, at least with social media.
Instead, open up the curtains of your room, letting the sunlight touch you, and if the weather is allowing you, open up a window and let the morning breeze wake you up.
This way, you will wake up organically by getting the necessary Vitamin D from the sun, and that morning breeze will open up your eyes instantly.
“But every morning, I check the news to keep myself informed about what’s going on; you tell me to stop doing that?”
I’m not saying you can’t check the news or check emails, messages, etc. I suggest that you shouldn’t be on your phone for the first minutes of the morning because that sets you back.
You can easily interact with it when you eat breakfast, or you can schedule 5-10 minutes of your morning solely to the phone, but not first thing in the morning.
Related Post: 5 Morning Habits That Are Simple And Effective
STEP FOUR: IMPLEMENTING THE TIPS AND TRICKS INTO YOUR NEW MORNING ROUTINE
“The world is run by Doers”
Uknown.
I don’t remember when I heard that saying, maybe in some cliché YouTube video saying that you can “be a Millionaire in one night!” *Just buy this 1000$ priced course*.
Although it sounds cliché enough, it’s the hard plain truth: The world IS run by Doers.
There’s a difference between the people that stay in their comfort zone and the people that try to escape it, with many of them succeeding.
The difference that separates them is that the latter take ACTION.
So if you wanna be a Doer, you have to implement the things written in this article to change your mornings.
The best morning routine is the morning routine that makes YOU feel energized and less tired.
There’s not a universal morning routine that magically will transform your mornings because not all people are the same, and that is the thing that makes us special.
Some tips and tricks may not work for you or your friend. You have to find through trial and error what works for you.
My morning routine may look a little different than most people’s.
As I run my business from home, and don’t have to be anywhere unless I decide I want to.
So I will share my morning routine, as well as give an example routine that someone who has a 9-5 might want to try.
1. My Morning Routine
- The alarm goes off at 5am. I immediately put on a cozy sweater (to replicate the feeling of the bed I’m leaving) and walk out of the room
- Brush teeth, do skin care, and say something nice to myself in the mirror
- I take 5 minutes to write in my gratitude journal, and set my intentions for the day.
- I make myself a latte and then spend an hour writing something creative (a blog post, my book, or my newsletter, but never any emails or work tasks.)
- At 7:30am I get my son ready for school.
- At 8:00am I habit stack by jogging on the treadmill and listening to an audiobook. This will be the first time I look at my phone.
- At 8:30am I’ll make breakfast, change into some luxurious loungewear, and start working.
- I’ll usually meditate sometime before noon, and wrap up the workday by 2pm.
Because of these habits, I practice in the morning, I never feel tired. And I actually love waking up early every day, because I get to do these things.
Learn more about my morning routine here. <- That post includes some excellent productivity and time-blocking tips.
2. Now Let’s create A typical morning routine if You have to be at work (or school or anything else):
- Setting the alarm one hour before the event. (sometimes maybe 1h30m, if you know you’ll have to face traffic)
- When the alarm goes off, countdown from 3 and immediately jump off the sheets and bed
- Open up the curtains and windows to get sunlight and the morning breeze *No phone*
- Wash your face with cold water to wake up, apply any face cream
- Spend a few minutes writing in your gratitude journal
- Cook breakfast and make some coffee
- Then dedicate some time to catch up with friends or the news
- Head of work/school/meeting etc
BONUS STEP: CONSISTENCY
The biggest drawback of becoming a so-called morning person is that you’ve trained your entire life to hate mornings without even realizing it.
Every single day, you’ve practiced sleeping more than you should.
And your body will first feel confused that you are trying to change this bad habit of hitting the Snooze button and staying extra time in bed.
Your body will resist. It’s like telling a right-handed adult that uses his right-hand decades and decades to suddenly write with their left hand.
But if you stay consistent, you will notice that it isn’t so difficult after all, and after just one month of consistently waking up early, you will forget having ever hated the mornings.
If you want to know about the aspects of self-improvement, check out these articles.
I think that covers up my best strategies to re-wire your brain to wake up early and not feel tired all the time, but if you think I’ve missed something or you have a tip to add, please feel free to leave a comment below this article!
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I’m retired at 50, and I honestly struggle with waking up early in the morning, I have tried numerous things and still struggle alot to wake up early. Any suggestions for me.
Thanks
Mollie
Hey Mollie, I think you need to find your “why”. Why do you want to get up early in the morning? If your why is strong enough, there is nothing stopping you from waking up early in the morning!