On Becoming a Morning Person

I have been a wannabe morning person my whole life. It has caused me untold stress and strife, and yet I have never quite been able to make my head spring off the pillow like my husband's does. I remember, even as a little girl, getting into arguments with my dad because I just didn't want to get out of bed.

I have tried putting my alarm clock on the other side of the room, employing one of those fancy Phillips sunrise alarm clocks, making my husband talk to me, a series of like 4 different alarms that go off in intervals, going to bed early...some of these have helped, but none have solved my plight entirely.

And it doesn't help that this world is made for morning people, you know. "The early bird gets the worm." "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Annoying. I hear all about how having a consistent morning routine can be life-changing and I have always wanted one. A good one. But the first, and most important habit in my morning routine would be to actually GET OUT OF BED.

It's hard for people who don't have this problem to understand just how hard it is to change. I honestly can't comprehend a life where I would feel awake and refreshed when my eyes first open. Because every morning when my alarm clock goes off, I feel like I could sleep for several more hours. All I want in the whole world is to hit that snooze button and bury myself under my covers. (And I usually do) So yeah, I'm at a disadvantage for cultivating a consistent morning routine that can exist in the time before my kids get up at 6AM.

But on Monday, all my routines changed when both kids started new schools. Sometimes when one big change happens in your life, it can be a great tool to kick off other changes. That single change can symbolize a more encompassing shift in the way you live. So I decided to use this change to my advantage and try, yet again, to establish a consistent (early) get-up time and subsequent morning routine.

How do you make yourself get out of bed (and stay there)?

After some Googling, I settled on visualization. I lay down in my bed at night with my eyes closed and imagined how I would feel and react when I heard the alarm clock go off the next morning. I visualized lying there for a few moments, feeling that initial resistance, and then getting up to turn off my alarm. Even though it was hard. Because that's what I do now. I get up. I read a thing that said you should visualize not only from the first-person perspective, but also as though you're watching a movie of yourself doing the thing. So I did that too. It was weird. All-in-all, I ran through the scenario in my mind about four times and then called it quits for the night. Here goes. It probably won't work.

Holy shit, it worked.

When that alarm went off, it's like my brain went on autopilot. I still felt super groggy and resistant to getting up (Do you damned morning people really not feel this way?!), but I'd practiced feeling those feelings and getting up anyway. AND SO I DID. And I have done this for the past four days in a row. And despite the tension I feel each morning, it hasn't really been "hard" to do because my body is just following orders.

My hunch is that if I can change this one habit of getting up, it could set off an avalanche of other improvements. I'm certainly not out of the woods yet, but it has me excited for the possibility of changing my way of being in so many other ways that currently feel like "just how I am." So I'm starting a list in my bullet journal of all of my worst habits I'd love to break (or most desired ones I'd love to develop). My plan is to rank them in order of impact to my life and then incorporate them, one-by-one. Pretty soon, I'll be a daily-exercising, mom-and-dad-calling, shower-squeegeeing freaking masterpiece.