Waking up can be stressful

As a person who has experienced experiences like this, I find them extremely humbling routine. Hitting snooze until the last possible minute

and then rushing with stress to get to where I needed to be on time

but frequently not actually being able to do so. It was ingrained in

me. After hitting snooze, I flip out for 30 minutes, then the alarm clock rings again or so later and enjoy a lovely day prompted with tonsof anxiety and feeling behind just for me to do it all over again tomorrow. But recently I've been picking up somenewly inspired disciplines by this book The Miracle Morning and that'ssince turned around and I just want to share what helped me transition mybehavior from what I would consider to be a genuine nightowlinto somewhat of a high spirited morning person in the hopes thatyou could also enjoy the benefits of waking up early.Being a slave to the snooze button is something I'm extra familiar with.I think we can all relate to the dread of the alarm clock ringing inthe morning, us realizing it's already time to wake upand being hit with this overwhelming sense of tiredness and resistanceto getting up. We trick ourselves into thinking this single incident of hittingthe snooze only affects us in that specific moment and we arebecome by our poorly informed desires when in reality

actions like this can end up dictating our entire day and over a

period of time end up dictating our entire lives. From his book

Hal shares we hit this news button and resist the inevitable act

of waking up, unaware that our resistance is sending a message to the

universe that we'd rather lie there in our beds unconscious than consciously and actively live and create the lives we say that

we want. So when we hit snooze it's as if we're saying to ourselves

I don't want to live my life, at least not to the fullest. So why

are we like this? And how is it that we can go to bed with

the motivation to take on the following day but when that following

day comes it's just a few more minutes? Well, Hal describes this

as our WUML, which stands for our wake up motivation level. For most of us when the alarm clock sounds each morning

we are awoken from a dead sleep. Leaving the comfort of our beds is the

least appealing thing to do. If you were to rate your level of motivation

as it pertains to waking up at the moment the alarm clock starts

incessantly beeping on a scale of one to ten, most of us would probably

rate our WUML close to a one or two. It's perfectly

natural when you're still half asleep to want to hit the snooze button and keep on sleeping. The challenge is how do you give yourself the motivation youneedto wake up early and create an extraordinary day? Well, his answeris quite simple just one step at a time in which he breaks down what

he calls a five step snooze proof wake up strategy. You can consider

this like the pre workout to the rest of your morning.

I won't elaborate on these too much and highly suggest you get the book if

you want a more in depth explanation. But these first steps should

give you most of what you need to stop hitting snooze. With the first

step being to set intentions before bed. It's often that our last

thought when we fall asleep is the first thought we have when we first awake,so it's important to create a genuine excitement for the next morning.What do we even have to look forward to in the upcoming day? What inspiresus to not want to hit snooze? Just spend a minute contemplating those thoughtsand setting clear intentions for the following day. The second part of this fivestep process is to move your alarm clock to the other side of the room,somewhere that you have to physically get out of bed to turn it off.If you use your phone as an alarm clock, I suggest you don't, but in that case, same thing set your phone across the room. This should bring your wake up motivation level from a one to maybe a two. But you're probably still more tired than not. So the next step is to brush your teeth with the point of this being for, yes, not only clean teeth, but to do a

mindless activity while giving your body some time to wake up. Step four drink a full glass of water. We're usually mildly dehydrated after a long night

of sleep, and Hal shares that often when people feel tiredat any time of day, what they really need is more water, not moresleep. And lastly, step five dress in your workout clothes or hop in a quick shower and for an extra hit, make it cold.

By now, your wake up motivation level should be a five, six or even seven,

giving you the momentum to finally start your miracle morning.

Now, you can absolutely stop here and this hopefully helped solve your problems of hitting snooze. But next, I'm going to break down the rest of the miraclemorning, as it's found in this book. These additional steps will have a drastic effect on helping you maintain waking up early, so I suggest

you continue on.Essentially, the miracle morning was crafted as a method of personaldevelopment involving six different high return activities that seem crucialto maximizing productivity and creating and living the life you

want. Steve Pavlina stated this in a blog post which was referenced

in the book. It's been said that the first hour is the rudder of the

day. If I'm lazy or haphazard in my actions during the first hour after

I wake up, I tend to have a fairly lazy and unfocused day.

But if I strive to make that first hour optimally productive, the rest

of the day tends to follow suit. And this has most definitely proven true

in my own experiences. So how can we maximize an optimally productive

first hour? Hal breaks us down into what he calls the life SAVERS, six

practices guaranteed to save you from a life of unfulfilled

potential. In this highly overstimulating world of constant content being shoveddown our throats, I find myself often having this feeling that there's

just so much going on and there's so many things I need to do.

It's just difficult to take action on any one thing. Many people know

this as overthinking. What I found while dedicating time to intentional

silence, was that I feel so much more at peace regardless of

everything going on. And stress would feel as if it drips away.

Having a dedicated time just to yourself, no social media,

no consuming other people's lives, just you with yourself and your thoughts.

Guided meditations are a great way to settle your mind and prepare

mentally for the day. I feel it can have such a profound effect on dictating

the remainder of your day. And I highly recommend trying to keep

your phone on do not disturb, at least until you've completed these

six steps. It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief.

Once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.

It's well known that the things you say to yourself about yourself dictate

much of the experience you have in life. Whether positive or negative,

your mind creates the world around you based on your beliefs. So it's importantto ensure the things that we repeat to ourselves on a regular basis are in alignment with the things that we want to accomplish. See things as you would have them to be instead of as they are.

It can be so early to fall into the trap of visualizing negative happenings

in our lives. I'm sure you can relate to overindulging in breaking down

worst case scenarios. Our mind tends to fill in the blanks of all the what

ifs with our imagination. So when we invest a lot of our energy into

imagining those thoughts, it can result in our worst fears coming to fruition.

Either that or a lack of action in the direction of our goals, being

stunted by the fear of. So just spend a few minutes imagining

your life as you wish it to be. And this can even be as simple

as visualizing yourself, working on what you have planned for the day,

and seeing yourself enjoy that process.I had it wrong for a long time. I made the excuse that if I set aside time to exercise in the morning, then I would be drained of energybefore my day even starts, which resulted in me just never exercising.I was wrong. Per usual. Exercise actually gives you energy.Getting your heart pumping early in the morning is beneficial for so

many reasons. Hal says the benefits of morning exercise are too many to ignore, from waking you up and enhancing your mental clarity tohelping you sustain higher levels of energy throughout the day. And you don'teven have to go all out. Just a few minutes of aerobic exercises like jumping jacks, push up, pull ups, or going for a simple jog. Whatever you

find works for you, and it will drastically change the trajectory of

your day.Nourish your mind like you would your body. The mind cannot survive onjunk food. My mind loves junk food. Endlessly scrolling social media, almost as if in a trance, feeding my mind with nothing but literal

garbage. You are what you are, and you are where you are because

of what has gone into your mind. You can change what you are and you

can change where you are by changing what goes into your mind. Your beliefs,principles and outlook on life is entirely determined by what

you feed your mind, and the world around you conforms to those beliefs you hold. So we got to be very cautious of the things that we allow to fill

our minds. So read, read books, read things that interest you, things that actually

provide value to your life.Journaling has had one of the most profound impacts on my life. Getting toreview day by day your past experiences and reflecting on thingsyou wrote, wondering why was I even concerned with this? It opensa portal to your past thoughts, emotions, successes and failures,all while allowing you to look objectively at those things and realize

ways to improve upon your past self. While writing, it's frequent to have

profound realizations of how I could have approached things differently in a

specific scenario, and to just dump my thoughts early in the morning on

a piece of paper really helps remove a lot of stress that may have been

building up and gives me clarity. I highly recommend getting a blank journal and trying to fill it up over time. It's always a wonderful gift to your future

self. By now, you should have a decent understanding of the miracle morning andhopefully are ready to put it into action. But you also probably have somehesitation, thinking, there's no way that I'll be able to fit all of this inmy morning. And this sounds like a lot. Don't worry, you're not alone.

If that's true for you, try this, just 1 minute. 1 minuteto each of the exercises. Six minutes is all you need. And eventually

you'll just naturally want to start dedicating more time to each

of those areas. So just play around with the time you decide to invest into

each of those steps. I've been living this life of late nights and even

later mornings for so long, and I just never considered the thought that

becoming a morning person is something that can be learned, just as with

practically anything in life. But once I made the effort and experienced the

drastic changes of living my mornings on my own terms, I can honestly say

I never want to go back. There's something so different about waking up before the sun comes out and just being present through its cycle. It gives me sucha sense of groundedness. Now don't get me wrong, I definitely still strugglewith having a perfect miracle morning every day. But to

go from my repulsive sleep schedule of going to sleep at three to 04:00 a.m.Regularly and a desire to sleep in until late afternoon to

now waking up only one to 2 hours after the time that I would normally

go to sleep, I can confidently say these practices work. I simply

wanted to share with you so that hopefully you can make a better informed

decision on the practices that you decide to attempt for yourself. If something

suits you, great. If not, go on searching until you find something that

helps you out in your endeavors of becoming a better version of yourself.

I think we all have some idea of things that we could be doing that

would greatly improve the quality of our lives. Yet we all have this

resistance inside. It's human nature to avoid the discomfort of doing those

things. But just remember, your circle of discomfort contracts as

you consistently do things that make you uncomfortable and eventually

they become easy to do. So I urge you to try it. Start small and

just do the things you know you need to do to become the best version

of yourself. All the best to you guys.