“I get up every morning and it’s going to be a great day. You never know when it’s going to be over, so I refuse to have a bad day.” – Paul Henderson
Rising early in the morning is one easy fundamental rule of building a successful and productive life that we all struggle to adopt and adhere to as most people tend to stay up late into the night and have a hard time rising early, and good irrespective of the benefits and returns. One attribute that has been closely linked with rising early many a time, is success.
Some of the most successful people in the world today tend to be early risers as this plays a role (no matter how little) in determining the outcome of their day. It puts into a broader perspective the saying “if you win the morning, you win the day.”
By starting your day right, you can increase the individual level of productivity and creativity. And the first step to doing so is to get up early.
Once you keep doing this, it would become a part of you. I have realized over some years that people who rise early have made it part of them and it is something they look forward to daily. While others who don’t, find it tasking and challenging.
The mere thought of being associated with the latter would make you cringe after reading through this article. First of all, we’ll be discussing the tips that will help you wake up on time without feeling groggy and various benefits of rising early.
This article will teach you how to become a morning person and love it. Fantasizing about becoming a morning person is never enough, the real question is: can you become a morning person? I love early mornings. I love the freshness of a new day.
Times without number, I have taken time to study how to stop being a night owl and how to become a morning person from a night owl. This article will explain the tips I learned.
11 Guidelines To Wake Up Feeling Energized
1. Eating Light Dinners And Doing So Early Enough
In knowing how to become a morning person, you must know how to eat light dinners and do so early enough. Avoiding late and heavy dinner is something that cannot be overemphasized.
Eating late at night and going to bed almost immediately can lead to indigestion thereby causing constipation when you wake up in the morning. In most cases, the discomfort associated with it can make it difficult to even fall asleep and ruin your day before it even begins.
2. Have A Regimen You Follow Up On Every Night Before Going To Bed
Another thing you have to learn in your journey of knowing how to become a morning person is to have a regiment you follow up on every night before going to bed.
It is always advisable to have a routine you carry out every night before going to bed as this helps facilitate better rest and leave you bubbling with energy in the morning. This could include making your bed, taking a warm bath, tidying up your clothes or even reading a book.
3. Always Flood Your Mind With Positive Bedtime Thoughts And Affirmations
This is something I would personally encourage everyone to try as it has helped in more ways than one for as long as I can remember.
For starters, simply choose something that relates to your current reality. It could be something related to what transpired during the day or for what you want to happen the next day. Affirmations along the lines of “I am grateful for life, for family and the people I surround myself with daily. I am grateful for the love I give, receive and share.” I always wake up feeling ‘more rested’ each time I do this.
4. Have A Stipulated Time When You Keep All Gadgets Away
Yes, you guessed that right. Keep away electronic gadgets when it is bedtime.
It is usually very tempting to access social media to view one last tweet or check one last Instagram story but one could turn into two and even more when you are caught on social media’s web. This could leave you with less sleep time making rising early a chore. This is crucial if you are serious about knowing how to become a morning person.
5. Have Something Really Exciting You Look Forward To Daily
It may be hard to believe but it is much easier to get out of bed when you have something exciting you look forward to daily. This could be meeting a coworker when commuting, giving alms to the homeless around you, grabbing that morning coffee at your favorite restaurant.
The advantage of this is it could be anything at all just find something that best works for you.
6. Keep Your Alarm Clock At A Distance
Seeing this, you might be thinking “oh you do not have to go this far.” I hate to break it to you but you actually do. Keeping your alarm clock close to you makes it easier to hit the snooze button when it goes off.
So, keeping it at a distance helps you avoid the temptation of snooze at all costs. This is really helpful such that to turn it off, you’d have to get out of bed. And what great way to starting your day on a high than taking the first step – getting out of bed!
7. Build The Habit Of Meditation/Prayer
Knowing how to become a morning person entails building a habit of meditation/prayer. What better way to relieve stress and induce sleep is there, than meditation?
Meditation is a healthy practice that is needed for healthy sleep and it also helps to put the day into perspective when you wake up. Also, the first minutes spent after waking up are usually aimed at putting the mind and body into focus for the day’s activities.
It is essential to use those minutes to properly psych yourself up for the day. And quite frankly, some minutes of meditation will do just that. You could also put in a word of prayer to give thanks and bless your day before it even begins –especially if you are on the religious side.
8. Get Your Body To Function Maximally With A Couple Of Stretches
Stretching is a simple exercise that can help ease muscle tension almost immediately. Incorporating morning stretches into your daily routine is a great way to begin each day.
Simple but yet efficient stretches include standing quad, lower back, neck mobility and shoulder stretches.
9. Avoid Taking Alcohol Before Going To Bed
It is not news that some people use alcohol to help them fall asleep. Studies have shown that as many as 20% of people in most parts of the world do this.
While it induces sleep, it also contributes to poor quality sleep as it disrupts the production of chemicals in the body. The effect of this can be seen in the frequency at which you wake at night either to make use of the bathroom or for no reason at all. This leaves you feeling extra grumpy and tired in the morning when you finally wake up.
10. Set Aside An Easy-To-Maintain Sleep Time
Depending on the nature of your job or school, set aside a particular time you go to bed and when you wake. In the long run, this will help your body adjust accordingly and make it easy to get your mind and body ready for the new day.
11. Have A Night/Morning Playlist
As you might have surmised by now, these guidelines won’t be complete without talking about a playlist. This works both ways; for nights and mornings. You can create a playlist containing calm and soothing songs for when you lay on your bed to sleep.
This aids in the improvement of sleep quality. Also, getting out of bed early and accompanying preparations for the day using a playlist comprising mood-lifting songs, can leave you feeling even more vibrant than you ought to be.
6 Benefits Of Being An Early Bird
1. It Encourages Productivity
One major edge early-risers tend to have is that they are generally more productive as waking up early gives them enough time to plan ahead for the day.
It also gives the brain enough time to adjust. This makes it easy to go through the day at your own pace thereby leading to early accomplishments of daily goals.
2. It Helps To Check Weight Gain
When it comes to maintaining weight balance and keeping in shape, eating healthy and exercising alone won’t do the job.
Backing up this claim is a 2015 study carried out by researchers at Northwestern University on 54 volunteers. This study showed that early daylight exposure leads to lower body mass index (BMI) in individuals and vice versa. And what better way to be exposed to daylight on time than rising early?
3. Gives Enough Time To Exercise
Majority of the time, people who don’t exercise tend to give the ‘lack of time’ excuse to escape further scrutiny. If you belong in this category don’t you think becoming an early riser to accommodate exercising in your schedule would be beneficial?
You could even chip in a little jog around the neighborhood in your morning routine to leave you feeling refreshed and energetic to face the day head-on.
4. It Helps In Fostering Concentration And Focus During The Day
There is an optimistic feeling associated with rising early that gives a boost of confidence which improves concentration and gets you focused throughout the day.
It also influences attention span and can overwhelmingly improve the ability to recall. This may be so because of the time you’ve had to prepare for the day’s job. You just know no hurdle thrown at you for the rest of the day would be too high to scale.
5. It Helps In Maintaining A Healthy Diet
Knowing how to become a morning person helps you in maintaining a healthy diet. I think the saying about breakfast being the most important meal of the day has gradually become a mantra.
Getting up on time could make you inclined to never miss a day’s breakfast as there is enough time to prepare a meal that works for you rather than having to grab junk food later in the day. Furthermore, there is also the luxury of having a variety of healthy options to choose from when you rise early.
6. It Helps In The Regulation Of The Body’s Internal Clock
The idea of a clock within the body may sound like a quaint metaphor but there is a distinct brain region that is charged with keeping time.
One of the most basic daily rhythms which shapen our lives is the sleep-wake cycle, which (for most) is related to the cycle of the sun. This cycle is governed by the body’s internal clock. Waking up on time can help in keeping the body’s clock regulated and leave your body on an even level. This is one of the best things you could do to improve overall health.
For some, the first hours of the day can be really rough hence the tendency to get up late feeling tired and therefore ending up transferring this fatigue into their day. Waking up early in the morning is not something you can start doing all of a sudden so don’t get discouraged when you are not able to do so almost immediately.
It is a habit you build over time with the right attitude and energy and as far as motivation goes, you can gradually develop this habit by rewarding yourself with points each time you get up from bed on time. Then gratifying your efforts by taking yourself out for special treats when you hit a certain point mark isn’t a bad idea.
Lest I forget, you can also have an activity you engage in as you get started for the day. Simple things like writing sticky notes, binge-watching a show, reading a book, replying to your mails and so on. At this point, you should be convinced that the benefits of waking early far outweigh the demerits; if any.
So why not subscribe to early rising today and discover the whole lot of differences it would make in your overall performance? From experience, I would say the custom of early rising has to be fully instilled in order to reap its benefits.
To leave you feeling motivated, I implore you to bear in mind the illustrious words of Benjamin Franklyn as you go through each day “Early to bed and early to rise, makes man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
FOR YOU:
Hey there! Thank you so much for reading up to this point. I strongly believe that if you follow the tips in this article, you should be able to work around knowing how to become a morning person and the idea of waking up at the right time.
