The old proverb says: “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
But learning how to wake up early and feel rejuvenated is quite a challenge for most.
It seems that many great men from the past took this proverb seriously.
Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt would wake up very early in the morning to plan their activities. Ernest Hemingway claimed that he did his best writing early in the morning. But, no matter how bad some people want to have more productive mornings, they simply do not know how to wake up early in the morning.
Waking up early and getting enough sleep seems like an impossible task these days. But if you’re yearning to become an early bird, we have a few tricks in store.
Here are some ideas to get you started.
How do I wake up early without being tired?
People tend to keep their alarm far from their beds so that they’re forced to get out of bed once it goes off.
But if you are trying to learn how to get up early easily and feel positive, this may not be an effective strategy.
If you want to wake up early and enjoy your morning without being tired, you don’t need this type of stress.
Instead, set up two alarms; one to wake you up and the other as a reminder to get out of bed, in case you fall asleep. Set the first alarm 5 or 10 minutes before you actually need to get up.
Then, after your first alarm goes off, spend some time in bed stretching, taking long, refreshing breaths, and conjuring up a few reasons to be grateful.
When you’re ready, sit up in bed and let your feet touch the floor.
How can I wake up easier in the morning?
Have you ever woken up a few minutes before the alarm? You likely felt well-rested, more alert, and in a much better mood.
We all have our own circadian rhythm. It’s what makes us feel alert in the morning and sleepy in the evening. And the circadian rhythm is what can help us wake up easier in the morning.
When we allow this rhythm to wake us up naturally, we will feel alert, relaxed, and ready to start the day. But for too many of us, our alarms interrupt our natural circadian rhythms.
The solution? Try a sleep app designed to monitor your circadian rhythm as you sleep.
You simply tell your app when you need to wake up in the morning, and it will pick a time within a designated window that is the most optimal time for you to wake.
3 ways to wake up feeling refreshed
1. Get enough sleep
According to research, an average adult needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep.
While we sleep, we go through five stages of a sleep cycle. The first stage is light sleep, followed by a stage that prepares us for deep sleep. Then comes the stage of deep sleep, and it continues to the fourth stage. After these four stages, comes the REM stage.
Sleep cycles last for about 90 minutes and it is recommended to get five sleep cycles each night (7.5 hours).
If you have to go to bed very late, then it is recommended that you ensure at least three sleep cycles or 4.5 hours of sleep.
2. Be consistent
Once you’re getting enough sleep, you need to focus on consistency.
The human body loves consistency. Both your body and your mind will be grateful if you go to bed and wake up every day at the same time. By doing so, hormones and chemicals that our organs release will get used to a regular pattern.
And when you change that pattern, it takes time for your body to adapt. This is the reason why people suffer from jet lag after they change time zones and completely disrupt the pattern organs were used to.
Every time you change your sleep pattern, your body will suffer from something that resembles a micro jet lag. You will have a much harder time waking up, you will feel groggy, and you definitely won’t perform your daily tasks as well as you could.
3. Make sure you relax at night
After you’ve decided to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, ask yourself the following question:
“What do you do before you go to bed?”
Many people tend to collapse into bed immediately after they come home late from work or from a night out on the town.
This is not healthy for the body or mind.
What you should do instead is devote an hour every night to proper sleep hygiene.
Read a book, take a bath, or listen to some music. And at all costs, stay away from screens. The blue light from mobile devices, computers, tablets, and TVs disrupts the production of melatonin in the brain – the sleep chemical that helps you drift off to dreamland.
How do you go to sleep late and wake up early?
It’s not always possible to get a full 8 hours if you’re used to going to sleep late. And this can become a regular habit on weekends.
But one of the great tips for waking up early is to do it on the weekends as well.
We use our weekends as our time off, so it may seem pointless to wake up early. But, by sleeping in, you will disrupt your consistent routine.
Use the extra time you get by waking up early during weekends to do something fun. Sign up for some morning class, go out and grab coffee with your friend, or, if you want to improve your health, go jogging.
Make sure that you actually plan your leisure activities.
If you don’t, then you probably won’t have a good enough reason to wake up.
Learning to wake up early at the top of your game is as simple as sticking to good sleep hygiene, setting a consistent sleep schedule, and doing your best to wake up at the ideal time in your circadian rhythm.
Once you get these strategies working for you, you’ll be amazed by how easy it is to wake up feeling refreshed and ready to start the day.
