How to Get More Self-discipline to Wake Up at 6 Every Morning?

To wake up at 6 am, you don’t need self-discipline. Well, not much of it.

Think about it: every day, millions of people wake up at 6 am or even earlier to be on time in their jobs.

Do you think they muster self-discipline for 5 days a week, 20–21 days a month, and about 220 days a year to wake up?

It’s not that they are positively anticipating a day at work. 70% of employees are not engaged in their work. That is in the USA, where this rate is the best in the world. They reluctantly drag their butts off their beds and grudgingly go to work they don’t like or even loathe.

Why? Because they have appropriate habits, not because they exercise their self-discipline every day.

You Need Better Habits

Habits are not optional. The trigger appears, and the activity follows. When an alarm clock rings, employees wake up and go to work. They don’t ponder if this is a good day for work. 70% of them don’t consider any day fitting to work. They just do it.

To achieve a specific outcome, you need a specific habit.

To wake up at six am, you need a habit of being obedient to the signal of your alarm clock. If you have some troubles with that, you amend the habit, not exercise more self-discipline. If you sleep deeply, make the sound of the alarm louder. If you tend to hit a snooze button, move the alarm clock farther away from your bed. That way, you will need to come out of your warm bad to silence the monster.

Yes, there is some amount of self-discipline involved in creating good habits. You actually need to design your habit, take time and effort to tweak it when you fail, and track the habit in the forming phase. But once the habit becomes automatic, as proper habits are, you need little to no self-discipline to follow through.

Self-discipline Is like a Muscle

If you want more discipline, you need to train it. It won’t grow on its own; it’s not a grass.

How to train it? Obviously by doing things that need self-discipline. Cold shower is one example. You need to overcome internal resistance to go under cold water.

Anything that feels unpleasant, but provides benefits down the road, will do. You may exercise self-discipline by eating raw broccoli instead of pizza, doing your homework before turning Netflix on, delaying checking of your email or Facebook before you tackle a work project, and so on. Be creative and you will find your own unique self-discipline exercises.

Reframe

A very useful technique in getting things done is reframing your experience. Replace your current thoughts with affirmations or arguments that will enforce your self-discipline.

When going into a cold shower, don’t think “F**k, I hate this,” but rather “Great, I’m building my self-discipline, and it’s a fundament of success.”

When waking up at 6 in the morning don’t think “Mmmmm, I would love to sleep two hours more,” but rather “Great, the day has already started, and I’m going to do my best.”

Each experience can be reframed. It just takes a conscious effort to overcome the automatic thoughts your subconscious suggests. By the way, thinking the right thoughts was considered by Wallace D. Wattles, the author of The Science of Getting Rich, the hardest work a human being is capable of. I agree with him 100%. Hence, reframing itself will grow your self-discipline.

“If you want to be healthy study health… if you want to be wealthy, study wealth… if you want to be happy, study happiness.” — Jim Rohn

If you want self-discipline, study self-discipline. Pay attention to it. Make it an important part of your life. Watch for signs of discipline and signs of laziness and love of comfort. Focus on it.

In the end, this is how any improvement has been ever achieved.