You’re water skiing in Hawaii with the wind blowing in your face, the warm sun glowing across your skin to give you the perfect tan, and the local dolphins following you as you scoot across the clear blue ocean beach.
After a long day of having (probably too much) fun in the tropical paradise, you dock onto the shore and are greeted by your drop-dead gorgeous date. You both walk to a beautiful outdoor restaurant as the sun is setting, where the highest-quality wine and rare tropical fruits await you. As you sit down and look at your date, you see someone else sitting across from your table. Hulk Hogan! Sitting all by himself.
You lock eyes with him and his face flushes with red as he averts his eyes. You giggle yourself as you look back to your date. Smiling, you remember the good times you had throughout this unforgettable day. Of course! It was Hulk Hogan all along. As the waiter brings out the lobster and pineapple pizza, you take a sip in your wine and gaze deeply into his eyes. He opens his mouth to speak, with his handlebar mustache glistening from the moon’s shining light. You place your glass down, anticipating the delicate words that will grace your ears.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Your eyes crack open just long enough to see the snooze button on your alarm clock. You smash the button and shut your eyes, trying desperately to jump back into that beautiful moment and hear what…Hulk Hogan…wait.
You look at the clock and it’s 8:02 am. Pulling yourself out of bed and crawling into the shower, knowing the wonderful feeling of the hot water on your skin can’t last for another moment, you get out and check your phone. 8:15 am. Cursing, you get dressed and begin doing your hair with a bagel shoved in your mouth, questioning if it may have been worth it to just stay in Hawaii to snuggle with a retired pro-wrestler.
8:32 am. You get in your car, hop on the freeway and begin to move at a snail’s pace, of course! You look at your GPS and see an accident up ahead. Why did they have to go and make YOU late? Absolutely irresponsible I say! As you chug your morning coffee to shake the last of the remaining images of Hulk Hogan from your head, the minutes tick by. 8:47 am, 8:52 am, 8:59 am.
You park your car and realize that you might just make it! Running into the building you see the elevator open. A lone businessman holding a brown briefcase step inside.
“Excuse me! Can you hold it open, please?”
The man stars you dead in the eyes with a motionless expression as the elevator slowly closes. Somehow, you know that man took some sick pleasure in crushing your spirit.
Exasperated, you run to the stairs and begin climbing to the 12th floor. As you reach your office, breathless and broken, you look at your phone. 9:06 am. Oh well, everyone’s always a few minutes late to work, right?
As you walk to your desk you see Craig. “Morning desk neighbor! Beautiful weather today. It’s going to be a great day, don’t you think?”
Ugh. Everyone, except Craig.
At this particularly low moment, you realize you have nothing to lose. “Morning, Craig. Say, how in the world do you always get to work on time?”
Craig stops what he’s doing and looks up to the ceiling, thinking deeply about the question. “Gee, I don’t know. I just get up early and have plenty of time to get to work. I guess you could say I’m a morning person!”
Morning Time
If you’re reading this, it’s likely that your relationship with mornings might be a rocky one. Maybe you’ve been forced to wake up early for work, school, or to get the kids ready for school. You try to get an extra 10 minutes of sleep, only to feel 10 minutes behind for the rest of the day. Sometimes, you just have to get up early.
Despite most people’s reluctance to wake up before the sun comes out, some people thrive off it. Jocko Wilink, retired navy seal, author, and motivational speaker, is known for waking up at 4:30 am every single day to get his workout in before his kids wake up. For those who follow him on Instagram, he posts a call to action every morning to get his followers to join him. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, starts his day even earlier at 4:00 am to begin checking emails and getting exercise in before the rest of the world begins its day. And there are plenty more regular people who make the choice to set their alarm clocks and make the conscious choice to wake up early.
But what does this mean for you? You might be saying, “but I’m not a morning person!” And I get that. For the longest time, I wasn’t either. Too often I was that guy waking up an hour before I had to get to work or school, rushing through my morning in a mind-numbing blur in the hopes that I wouldn’t be late yet another day. Even worse were the days that I slept through alarms or pressed snooze one-too-many times during school orientations, job interviews, and plans with friends.
The funny thing is, the few times I did get up early I noticed a calmness that radiated throughout my environment. After making myself a cup of coffee, I would take it in for just a moment before getting my day started. However, the allure of staying up late playing video games, watching T.V., or reading books kept those early morning rises a rare occurrence.
As I started moving forward in my career and my responsibilities increased, my days seemed to get even crazier. I decided it was time to give mornings a real shot. With the help of The Morning Miracle by Hal Elrod, I slowly began to shift my habits to consistently wake up at 6:00 am. It’s a far cry from our friends who are waking up at 4:00 am, but it’s a time that has allowed me to begin my day positively with much more consistency.
Yes, I became a Craig.
5 Simple Steps to Becoming a Morning Person
After some trial and a lot of errors, here are the simple steps that will help you on your journey to becoming a morning person. Some of them were taken from The Morning Miracle and some just seemed to work for me. We’re going to start off with not the morning, but the night to prepare ourselves. Then, we’ll get you through the morning and off to the rest of the day.
Hopefully, with these skills you can start your days knowing you conquered your morning, so you can continue on to conquer the rest of the day as well!
Step 1: Set Your Intentions Before Bed
I know what you’re thinking.
“Alright, let me get my dream catcher and incense out of the drawer.”
Hold your horses. We’re not going outside of the physical world for this, but we do need to take a step back before we start becoming a morning person. And as much as you might want to overlook this and get to the nitty-gritty stuff, skipping this step is going to make the entire process much more difficult.
Ask yourself the question, “why do I want to wake up early?” If you don’t have a good answer, that’s going to be the best place to start. Is it because you want to be able to have a few hours of quiet before the kids wake up? Is it because you want to be able to work on a project before your busy day at work begins? Is it because you want to challenge yourself and see if this is something you can truly make part of your life? Great! Set that intention every single night before bed. Giving yourself a reason to wake up is going to allow you to push through those tough days where you would rather peel your fingernails off than get out of your warm and comfy bed. Trust me on this one.
It doesn’t have to be a transformative experience. Just take a minute or two before getting into bed, close your eyes, and tell yourself the reasons you’re getting up early.
“I’m going to get up earlier than Craig. Screw that guy.”
There we go! You’re getting it already.
Step 2: Pick a time to Wake Up…Every Single Day
This might be a bit obvious, but pick a time to wake up every day. And by every day, I mean every. single. day.
Yes, even on weekends.
Whether it’s 6:00 a.m., 7:00 a.m., or if you’re an absolute psychopath and set your alarm at 4:30 a.m. Set your alarm for that time and get up.
Had a rough night of sleep and want to get an extra hour of sleep in? Don’t.
Did you turn your alarm off because tomorrow is Saturday and you’re going to sleep in? Not a chance.
The easiest way to get better at consistently waking up is by…well…being consistent! That means no excuses and no days off. Still tired? Try to get a nap in. Rough day? Get to bed earlier. There are other actions we can engage in besides shifting our wake-up time (which I will talk about at the end of this article).
Step 3: Force Yourself to Get out of Bed
Having your alarm next to your bedside is the equivalent to cutting your own foot off and then wondering why you walk with a limp. You’re setting yourself up for failure, ready to hit that snooze button over and over again. Ad nauseam.
The absolute hardest part of getting up early is getting out of bed. So let’s sabotage our morning self by forcing ourselves to get out of bed. And fortunately, we don’t need to pay someone to throw a bucket of water on our face! We can use some simple environmental arrangements like using an alarm clock that has wheels. Yeah, they actually exist. And they’re hilarious!
But if you don’t want to chase your alarm clock like your crazy 3-year old nephew, here are two simple methods that I’ve used before. Best of all, they only require your smartphone.
The first method is to take your smart phone and put it in an area in your room that forces you to get out of bed. For example, placing your phone in your closet. Of course, with this method you’d have to make sure your alarm is loud enough to be heard from your bed, but it’s definitely one of the easiest ways to get out of bed.
The second method, which I still use and found to have the best results, is to use an alarm that requires you to scan a QR code to turn the alarm off. If you’re an Android user, you can use Sleep as Android and register it to scan any specific QR image to turn off your alarm. I place this code in my closet and it forces me to turn the light to be able to scan it, which works great for getting my morning self to curse at my night self. But you can go even further and put the code in your bathroom, kitchen cabinet, or cat’s litter box! The more obnoxious you make it to turn the alarm off, the more likely you’ll feel less likely to jump back into bed.
Step 4: Brush Your Teeth and drink a Full glass of water
And not necessarily in that order.
No, I’m not secretly a dentist who’s trying to get you to have better oral hygiene or a doctor who’s trying to get you closer to the 8 cups of water a day benchmark. This may sound silly, but it works wonders. Taking the two minutes to brush your teeth is going to force you to engage in some sort of action right after getting out of bed. Also, the minty feeling in your mouth works (almost) like a cup of coffee when you’re first getting the sand out of your eyes in the morning.
If you think about it, it’s been 6-8 hours of sleep since you’ve drunk any water. Being dehydrated makes you tired and sluggish, so drinking a full glass of water is a great way to get your fluids back in action. If you really want to set yourself up for success, have the full glass of water right by your bedside so it’s the first thing you do when you wake up (after turning off your annoying alarm, of course). Or, if you prefer, a nice cold glass of water is also (almost) like a cup of coffee in the morning.
If you can’t tell, I really like my morning coffee.
Step 5: exercise
It doesn’t have to be an hour-long workout at the gym or a 6-mile run. It just has to be something!
You can spend as little as 10 minutes doing some sort of physical activity. Whether it’s walking the dog, lifting some dumbbells, doing some yoga, or climbing the stairs outside of your apartment complex, just to get the blood pumping through your veins. Although this may be the second hardest thing to motivate yourself to do in the morning (besides getting out of bed), it is going to be the cherry on top for getting your morning started right.
To make your life easier, you can prepare your workout clothes the night before. Or even better, you can wear them to bed so that you don’t even have to worry about changing. Whatever works best for you!
If you live in a safe neighborhood and the weather isn’t horrible, I also highly recommend getting outside for this exercise. One of the biggest perks of getting up early is seeing the world before it’s begun. It’s a fantastic feeling to know that most of your neighbors are asleep and you’re going to start your day. Who knows? Maybe you’ll actually start enjoying getting up in the morning!
And that’s it!
You got this far and now all that’s left is to put it in action. Do these five steps consistently and I’m sure you’ll be a morning person in no time!
Here are some additional tips that may be helpful to conquer your mornings!
Take a nap if you need to
After this routine you find yourself still tired throughout the day, try to find a moment to take a quick power nap. It’s best to keep it short (20-30 minutes at most) instead of taking long 1-2 hour naps, which will make you feel groggy and may make it harder to get to sleep at night.
Get to bed early enough.
This may seem straight forward, but you’ll be amazed how difficult it is to wake up early when you’re constantly sleep-deprived. Sleep is incredibly important and you’re going to be running an uphill battle if you’re binge-watching Netflix until midnight. Everyone is different in terms of how many hours of sleep they need, so figure out what feels good to you and find a bedtime that lets you get enough sleep while still getting up early.
Create a Night Time Routine
It doesn’t have to be lighting candles and burning sage, but having a nighttime routine is going to make the process of actually falling asleep much easier. Our bodies don’t discriminate between our lamp and the sun very well, so about an hour before your bedtime it’s going to be best to dim or turn off the lights. Stay away from social media or other forms of electronics during this time and try to engage in some other activities that don’t require a back-light.
Some examples include meditation, writing in a journal, reading a book, playing guitar, drawing a picture, or even having a conversation with your significant other. Crazy stuff, right?
Don’t eat too late
Our bodies need time to digest food. And of course, food is energy! Eating a big meal right before bed will either lead to indigestion, a surge in energy right before bedtime, or both. Try to have your last meal no later than 2-3 hours before you go to bed. The same goes for sugary drinks! Try to stick to water or non-caffeinated tea.
Caffeine is one heck of a drug
Speaking of caffeine, if you’re anything like me, you like your morning caffeine in some way, shape, or form. Overall, having a cup of coffee in the morning or a soda in the middle of the day is likely not going to affect your sleep. However, be careful about drinking anything that has caffeine in the evening. As a rule of thumb, I don’t drink anything that has caffeine past 1 p.m.
I had a roommate who would drink a cup of coffee right before bed and knockout within 20 minutes. Like a complete weirdo! But hey, it worked for him, so it may not be a factor. But it’s still something to ponder if you’re having difficulty falling asleep
Use Approximations
If you usually wake up at 8 a.m. and you’re now trying to wake up two hours earlier at 6 a.m., the first few mornings might be absolute torture as your body adjusts to your new schedule. To make this process a bit easier, you can use approximations until you reach your goal wake-up time. For example, you can wake up at 7:45 a.m. the first week. Then, 7:30 a.m. the next. After 2 months, you’ll be waking up at 6 a.m. and you’ll barely even feel a difference in your sleep schedule since you were only waking up 15 minutes earlier than you normally would. Pick a starting point that you feel comfortable with and make the shift every couple of days or every week.
Give it some time
Despite all of these tips, it’s probably going to suck for a while. Sorry.
I implore you to ride out of the suck until truly deciding that you’re not a morning person. 30 days is a great benchmark to give yourself, but at the very least give it two consecutive weeks where you’re waking up early every single day. If at that point, you still don’t like getting up early and spend most of your time daydreaming of being in your bed, then maybe waking up early is just not for you. And that’s okay! There are plenty of amazing people that refuse to wake up early and choose to hit the snooze button.
But, I truly believe there is something magical about the mornings and you’ll never have the chance to see it if you don’t try.
Do you have any other tips for getting up in the morning and becoming a morning person? Let me know in the comments below! I’d also love to hear if these tips helped you on your own journey to becoming a morning person.
