6 TIPS ON HOW TO GET OUT OF BED IN THE MORNING
If you don’t train it and learn to command it, your own mind can quickly turn into your worst enemy, seducing you into impetuous decisions at any chance. One of the most frequent things that the voice in your head will tell you, is to just stay under those warm, comforting covers just a while longer. Before you know it, you’ll be reaching for the snooze button, and reaching for it over and over again until you’ve slept an extra hour. Having snoozed more times than can be counted, you’ll suddenly have to run a stress-filled sprint around your apartment, trying to get ready for work before that terrifying “you’re late” deadline. Now, if you want to be able to conquer your mind and win the morning, you’ll need to develop a set of sharp habits, which will set you up for success.
1) Prepare for tomorrow, today
Conquering your mind can be quite a challenge at 6 o’clock in the am. Because of this, it is extremely important you step in charge and take the lead the night before, by developing a convincing mindset that your brain will be unable to fight the morning of. Tell, convince and promise yourself that you are going to get up when your alarm goes off no matter what, and make sure you give yourself reasons that will emphasize the importance of waking up immediately. Waking up earlier can lessen the stress you face in the morning, enable you to prepare some last minute work, give you extra time to go over that important sales pitch and give you extra time to make a nutritious, sustainable breakfast to last you throughout the day, just to list a few reasons. Listing these reasons before you head to bed will help cement the belief that waking up when your alarm goes off will put you a step ahead of your competition. Challenge yourself. Tell yourself that snoozing would be a fail, because there is no worse feeling than kicking off the day with the feeling of having lost.
2) Place your alarm out of reach
Can you think of anything worse than the time you used to hear that nagging voice of your mother (sorry mom), telling you every day to get up and get ready for school? That’s right; the only thing worse is that nagging sound of your alarm telling you the exact same thing. Your mother didn’t have a snooze button though, so unless you had the manipulative abilities of a top salesman, you were pretty much forced to get up. Your alarm clock, however, has that all-ending snooze button that requires nothing less than a gentle tap to shut off and let you get back to sleep. A great tip on how to avoid this oh so seductive snooze button is to place it out of reach of your lazy arms, forcing you to instead stand up and wake up. Place it far enough away that you will have to walk at least five steps to get it, but close enough that you can still hear it. Placing it on the floor somewhere in the distance is even better, as it will force you to make a movement such as a squat or a back flexion to get to your snooze button, waking your body up even more.
3) Let there be light
Let the very first movement you make once you awake, be the one that hits a switch, opens the blinds or draw the curtain. Let there be light. Light activates photosensitive pigments in your eyes called melanopsin, which will instantly send a message to your suprachiasmatic nucleus, also known as your internal body clock, telling your brain that it’s time to activate your systems and get ready to go. If it’s dark outside once you wake up, opening the blinds or drawing the curtains won’t help much, so make sure you turn on as much light as possible on the way, while wandering towards your alarm clock. The more you start doing once you first wake up, the harder it will be to return to the bed.
4) Develop a fine-tuned body clock
One of the best ways to make it a lot easier to wake up in the morning for work or school, is to make sure you have a timer set for the exact same time, every single day of your 5 or 6 day workweek. Waking up at the same time, every time you have to get up for work, will tune your internal body clock to eventually recognize that time as the time you need to be active. This will make you more accustomed to being functional in the earlier hours of the day, avoiding that zombie brain sleepwalk you would normally tend to do, while going through the motions of your morning routine.
5) Indulge in water
Splash, hydrate, repeat. The next destination of your travels away from the bed and closer to the door should be the bathroom, followed by the kitchen. Make your way to the bathroom sink and splash some ice-cold water on your face. Doing this would emulate the effects of a small dose of self-induced cold shock. Cold shock, obtained from for example cold water immersion, can increase norepinephrine in the brain, a hormone associated with several health benefits as well as increased awareness and alertness, which are much needed during those all-important first minutes of your attempt to wake up, get up and get out. Once you’ve splashed, it’s time to head over to your kitchen and hydrate by of course drinking a large glass of cold water. Once we wake up in the morning we are dehydrated, and studies show that even mild dehydration, as low as a 1–2% loss of the body’s normal water volume, can decrease cognitive function, increase fatigue and affect our mood. Splash, hydrate, repeat.
6) Get under the shower and into your clothes
Showering is the point of no return, and the final destination on your journey beyond your bedside. Once we’ve showered and gotten dressed, most of us don’t even want to get back in bed. It will get you ready both physically and mentally. Make an attempt to shower as quickly as possible after getting up and make it a priority to put it near the beginning of your morning routine as opposed to towards the end.
If you want to get more tips on how to resist your bed’s tempting pillow talk, check out entrepreneur and bestselling author Kevin Kruse’s fail-safe 5-minute guide to getting up in the morning.
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