I'm Lucie Fink and this week is Five Days of Becoming a Morning Person.
Hey Guys!
Welcome Back to Try Living with Lucie where I challenge myself to live a better life.
And sometimes do weird things like eat only pizza for five days.
If you're new here don't forget to click right here, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
And also comment below and let us know what other challenges you want to see me try.
This week's challenge is very near and dear to my heart because it's honestly a topic
that I myself have been really into recently.
Even Michael can tell you that I just don't stop talking about it.
Hey Michael.
What's up?
Can you tell the camera what's the one thing, that I don't stop talking about.
The thing I want to do.
The thing you want to do is most definitely wake up early.
Why do I want to do that?
You want to be a morning person.
Do I ever stop talking about it?
Never, I am really sick of it.
So this past week I finally took some early steps to start becoming a morning person.
So now let's go back and I'll show you what I did.
Let me start off by saying that I myself have never, ever been a morning person.
If you leave me undisturbed in the morning I can probably sleep comfortably until about
11a.m.
Sometimes even noon.
And any time I need to wake up early and get out of bed.
I find myself snoozing my alarm multiple times.
So for someone who's not a morning person but really wants to become one, I've heard
that the biggest change needs to take place in your nighttime routine.
Mark my words, you will not be able to wake up early if you do not go to sleep at a reasonable
time.
My typical bedtime is around midnight, sometimes a little bit earlier, sometimes a little later.
But instead of going all in, and trying to push that bed time up hours at once, I decided
this week to gradually move my bedtime up piece by piece.
So that each day I was going to sleep a little earlier.
Slow and steady wins the race.
So on Sunday night to get ready for this entire week I made sure that I was washed up, and
in bed by 11:00p.m.
So that I had a little bit of time to read before I shut the lights off, and got to sleep
by 11:30.
Just 30 minutes earlier than normal.
You got to start somewhere.
When I woke up on Monday morning at 6:30 AM I woke up to a good old-fashioned alarm clock.
Right now you can see it next to my bed.
But actually for this entire week I did not sleep with it next to my bed.
I put it opposite the bed, which meant that I had to actually get out of bed to shut it
off.
And also using a real alarm clock instead of my phone meant that I didn't have to rely
on my phone to be the alarm.
So instead I could just turn it off entirely on Sunday night.
And turning it off had some other benefits because I didn't run the risk of waking up
on Monday morning, grabbing my phone, and just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
Which you know I tend to do.
So once I was up I just did a full morning routine in my apartment.
I made breakfast for myself.
I made a fresh juice.
I read the newspaper from the physical actual newspaper, the one that's thrown in front
of my door every morning.
And I just use the extra time to be productive.
So I did a little bit of work in the morning.
I did a little meditation.
And then I also popped in one of my favorite podcasts.
Monday felt really great, but to be completely honest with you the first day of a challenge
almost always feels great.
I'm always so into it and I'm really excited to try it, and I have all this adrenaline
pumping, so it's not really trying it out the first time that's hard, it's sticking
to it.
So on Monday night going into Tuesday I shifted my bed time up in another half hour interval.
And I moved it from 11:30 to 11:00.
I set an alarm for 9:30 p.m. to make sure I was off my computer.
Then another alarm for 10:15 to make sure I was in bed.
And the final hour was for at 11p.m.
Lights out.
One issue that I had on Monday morning when I woke up at 6:30 was that the room was incredibly
dark.
And I don't know about you guys but when I wake up and there is no sunlight in sight
it's difficult to get up.
So on Monday night I decided to open up the shades, and sleep with the windows wide open
so that in the morning all the light would leak in.
And it was actually a really cool view because I live around a ton of other high rise buildings
so the lights from different apartments were coming in, and it was kind of like I was going
to sleep with this shimmering city next to me.
I'm also finding that it's just not the easiest thing in the world to put myself to sleep
earlier, because I'm used to going to sleep kinda late.
If I try to put myself to bed earlier I wind just lying there and telling myself, sleep.
But it doesn't really work like that.
So on Monday night to help with this, I tried out these new melatonin gummies that a friend
recommended.
Refinery 29 has a whole article about melatonin, and how it affects different people in different
ways.
Some people experience some pretty weird side effects from it.
Other people swear by it.
But at the end of the day melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone in our bodies, so if you
use it every once in a while, supposedly it's okay.
My alarm clock went off on Tuesday morning.
And because the room was already bright from the shades being opened,
it was actually a lot easier to get up.
I just want the cheapest route and used the actual sun.
But if you don't have good sunlight in your apartment you can also try a wake up light
which mimics the sun.
I also didn't feel any weird side effects from the melatonin, which was good.
After I got myself out of bed on Tuesday, I popped in a productivity podcast, and I
brought myself to the gym bright and early.
I just couldn't believe how much time I had in the morning to do everything.
So by the time I was ready to go to work, I had already eaten breakfast, gone to the
gym taken a shower, meditated, soaked up an entire podcast.
It was honestly more than most people do in a full day and I had done it between the hours
of 6:30 and 8:00.
Gotta be doing something right, if that's what's happening.
Jeff Sanders is a person that I think we all should know.
He's a productivity coach and he's the author of “The 5 a.m. miracle.”
And he suggests that we all set a stop time for ourselves.
So this is going to be the time at the end of the night when we turn off all of our technology,
and we start getting ready for bed.
The reason why it's not a great idea to use technology just before you want to go to bed,
is that the blue light from our screens can suppress our body's natural melatonin production.
And remember melatonin is the hormone that helps us go to sleep.
He suggests powering everything off at 8:00p.m. for a 5 a.m. wake up call.
But since I'm not waking up quite as early, and I'm doing 6:30 instead I set my stop time
to be 9 p.m.
On Tuesday night,
I discovered that there's a setting on both your computer, and your phone that allows
you to reduce the amount of blue light that's emitted from your screen as the day goes on.
So by 9:00p.m. at my stop time I closed my laptop, and turned off my phone.
I was in bed by 10:00p.m. and lights were out by 10:30.
Wednesday morning was not an easy wake up call.
I was feeling very tired, but I did love the way I felt after going to the gym on Tuesday.
So on Wednesday I pushed myself and I went again.
One thing that I found that works for me, is going to the gym early in the morning feels
better for me, because it's the time of day when I'm not really motivated to do anything
else.
The day is a time when I feel extremely motivated and I actually want to just sit down and get
a ton of work done.
So when I go to the gym at the end of the day, I feel like I'm going to the gym when
I could be doing something else.
But if you go to the gym in the morning when there's really nothing else to do, you won't
feel like you're wasting time.
Wednesday night we had a bit of a problem.
So I got stuck at the office a lot later than I had hoped for.
It's nighttime, and I'm still here.
So the post-production department is basically all still here.
But absolutely none of the producers are here.
8:00p.m. time to go home soon.
And I actually didn't get home until I think about 8:30p.m.
And of course when I got home I still needed to cook, and eat dinner and I had a little
bit more work to do.
I had been aiming to get to bed by 10:00p.m. on Wednesday night.
But then I quickly realized that was just not going to fly by any stretch of the imagination.
I actually wound up not even closing my laptop until 10:30p.m.
But if I'm realizing anything about my new schedule is that this whole thing I'm doing
here, and trying here is not going to work out every night.
Some nights I might have more work to do.
Other nights I might be out late with friends, and I'm not going to come home early to put
myself to sleep at 10:00.
Life is just going to keep on happening around me.
And the conclusion that I'm coming to is that as long as they stick to this schedule on
most nights, it's going to be okay.
So on Wednesday I wound up not going to sleep until midnight, but that is okay.
We're all good.
Still moving forward.
Personally I think that a major reason why many people struggle to wake up in the morning,
is because they don't have much to look forward to in the morning.
Either they have to get ready for another long day of school, or they have another tough
day at their job ahead of them.
So I came to the genius conclusion that if I have something to look forward to in the
morning, it will be easier for me to get out of bed.
Do you ever notice how on Christmas morning, or maybe the morning you wake up and you're
about to go off on vacation, you have so much adrenaline coursing through your veins that
it really doesn't matter how many hours you sleep the night before because you up, and
ready to open presents, or get on that plane.
So when I started thinking about what to plan for myself that would excite me.
I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that I'm always excited to go on a date with Michael,
after a day in the office.
I'm usually at work typing away, wrapping things up really quickly because I'm so excited
to get out of there, and to see him, and to have a date.
But whoever said dates need to be in the evening.
So I made a morning workout date with Michael.
And the two of us woke up and we were so excited.
We worked out side by side, and it was just a little morning date that truly kicked off
the entire day on the right note.
That is definitely something that will wake me up, and get me out of bed in the morning.
So now I want you to ask yourself what is one thing you can set up for yourself in the
morning that will really get you up, and get your blood flowing, and get you excited for
the day?
On Thursday night I got to bed nice and early at 10:00p.m.
My computer was closed by 8:00p.m.
I had two long hours to read.
I took a nice warm bath.
I was actually really wiped out from the entire day.
So by the time I got in bed at 10:00p.m. my body went to sleep very easily.
When I woke up on Friday morning I decided to add in a meditation practice that I've
been doing to my morning routine.
So it's a 21 day meditation challenge, led by Deepak Chopra.
It's free.
It's on YouTube.
As you know I love challenges, and I love challenging myself to stick to something for
a long period of time.
Because challenges like that give me something not only to look forward to but to track.
So enter my bullet journal.
I made a brand new 21 day meditation tracker in my bullet journal.
And now not only am I excited to wake up and actually do the meditation practice, but I'm
also excited to track it because it means I get to watercolor in my bullet journal.
I read a few articles at this point that are sort of against the idea of trying to become
a morning person.
They say that changing your body's natural rhythms is neither possible nor desirable.
And while some people might wake up early to accomplish something.
Others would prefer to just stay up late and accomplish the exact same thing, and that's
okay.
But I really do feel that there is something to be said about rising when the sun rises,
and going to sleep when the sun sets.
It's like getting your body onto the natural cycles of the earth.
It feels like the right thing to do.
You know?
I've spent far too many nights just jamming away on my computer long after the sun has
set.
And this week has really helped me let go of that.
Even when I was in the middle of something.
I would just ask myself, does this really need to get done right now?
And more often than not, the answer was no.
So if the answer was no, I would just close my computer and do it when it's daylight.
Now I want to know if you're a morning person.
And if you are please comment below and share your tips and secrets with us, because I think
we all want to know.
And also let me know in the comments what you want to see me try next time for five
days at a time.
Bye guys!
Hey YouTube thanks for watching.
Click here to watch another episode of Try Living with Lucie.
And right here for another video from Refinery29.
See ya!