The Miracle Of Becoming A Morning Person
If I had to name one transformative habit that I will 100% continue and bet my life on, it’s waking up early. It may come easy now but it didn’t before. I was an avid snoozer and could sleep in well into the afternoon. In fact, I lived nearly 24 years of my life as a night owl. The hours of 10:00pm to 2:00am were the most productive for me in college and all-nighters were a regular occurrence. So what changed?!
When I lived in SF, morning workouts through ClassPass (s/o to the $20 no show fee that held me accountable) + morning shifts at Uforia Studios were my favorite. They gave me the motivation to wake up early and my days that were always 5x better than the days I didn’t wake up early. It was still terribly hard, I would snooze until the last possible minute and begin my day in a stressful rush.
I knew the snoozing had to stop so in February 2020 I decided to hunker down and put this habit behind me (it was one of my 2020 goals). I tried a multitude of tricks: drinking coffee while reading the news in the living room, wearing pants right away, putting my phone away, and even coining this endeavor DNS: Do Not Snooze. I thought that a week was a reasonable time frame to attempt this new challenge. Yet, I was unsuccessful. I had three back to back trips planned and felt so incredibly overwhelmed and unhappy in my life that no wonder I didn’t want to wake up. If I could become a morning person then so can you. Here are the three things that changed the waking up early game for me:
1. Slow down: I’m not alone in receiving a “gift of time” from the Pandemic that allowed everyone to escape the hustle culture that was glamorized. We were perpetually always behind, too busy, and unable to find time to do the most basic things (Daring Greatly). But slowing down gave me clarity. It allowed me to put habits in place because after so long, I was given the time and all obligations towards things (i.e. primarily social at the time) were taken away. After I had a few months to decompress, I began understanding different directions I wanted to head in life – financially, emotionally, relationally, and professionally. And in all of these I recognized how toxic it was to continue living in hustle culture because it forces you to escape being present and not really live your life. This is one of my biggest priorities now: to actually live.
2. Life SAVERS: Insert: Miracle Morning. I can’t say enough good words about this book because it has truly paved the way towards my FAVORITE part of the day and favorite personal ritual that has become one of my Non-Negotiables. The lessons I learned from this book gave me the excitement that felt like Christmas morning every single day I woke up. My morning routine is:
Silence: I love using the Daily Shine podcasts on Spotify for morning meditation and setting my intention for the day
Read: 1 question/passage from The Power of Now and 10-30 pages of whichever book I’m reading. Currently, this is rereading Daring Greatly because it truly is that good.
Gratitude: Write 5 things I’m grateful for
Journal: Whatever is on my mind - I’m never at a loss of words so this might come easy for me but I know for others it’s helpful to have prompts which can come from one of the earlier steps. I just finished my second journal this year…possibly may be writing like I’m running out of time (Hamilton ref not morbid I promise lol)
Affirmations: I write an affirmation that will serve as my intention for the day. The Daily Shine usually ends with one that I frequently use but many days I use my word. I am living wholeheartedly.
Even months after reading it, I still feel genuinely excited to wake up and start my day. Even the days when I’m tired or have to do mundane tasks because I’m actually excited to live my life and know that these tasks - the hours of GRE studying, the extra hours on my current work project - all contribute to long-term goals that excite and energize me. Life is too short to not take it into your hands and wake up excited every single day. Once you’re actually excited about waking up, the snoozing goes away. Of course, there’s a day when you’re exhausted and really want to snooze but as long as the one snooze doesn’t become two, it’s just an isolated incident vs the beginning of a new habit.
3. Accountability: I started noticing that while I had achieved 80% DNS, there was still 20% of time where I would snooze and these usually coincided with my luteal phase. Naturally a time when you’re more tired and it’s probably my body telling me to sleep and rest more but I didn’t want to start my day off snoozing. I decided to add a penalty Venmo of $5 for every time I would snooze. Luckily, my Personal Development PIC and dear friend Mia was also working towards a DNS goal and we use each other to stay accountable in preventing hitting that button.
Currently, I’m working east coast hours and since it’s super hard for me to study after work, I’ve actually been waking up at 4:00am and it HASN’T BEEN BAD. After working so hard to build this habit, it’s been saving me at a time when it would have been impossible to study and work in the past. I know that going forward, it will also be this habit that continues to allow me to live a balanced life where I can wake up early to work-out and be productive before hanging out with friends or reset my intention to savor and be present during trips.
Sources:
Brown Brené. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. Avery, 2015.
Elrod, Hal. The Miracle Morning: the Not-so-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life before 8AM. Hal Elrod International, Inc., 2018.
Tolle, Eckhart. The Power of Now: a Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. Hachette Australia, 2018.
