There's many times where you wanna wake up earlier,
you know the benefits of doing so, but you're not doing it.
It's uncomfortable, it's hard at the beginning just like with any new habit
that you're implementing in your life.
Cause that's what this is.
If you're gonna wake up at 5 AM or 6 AM or 4 AM,
that's a habit that... anytime you implement a new habit,
the beginning is the most uncomfortable, it's the hardest.
But once you get past that initial period for the first maybe week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks,
then it becomes automatic.
Then it becomes easy.
Then it becomes natural.
So you gotta understand that process of implementing a new habit.
Now I think the first and most important thing is getting to know why you wanna wake up earlier.
What's your purpose for doing so?
You gotta know the benefits of waking up at 5 AM
and associate to those benefits.
Because your why is what's gonna discipline you
to actually go through that uncomfortable period at the beginning
to really make it a must and to wake up at 5 AM, even when you don't feel like it,
even when it's uncomfortable, even when you would still wanna sleep in.
For me my why, my purpose of doing it is I know that by waking up at 5 AM,
I'm building discipline, I'm building willpower in my life that's setting up my day for success.
I know by waking up at 5 AM I feel like I get such an advantage over most other people.
By 5 AM I can have a great morning ritual, I can go to the gym, I can plan out my day,
I can already get my highest income activity done for the day
or the highest leverage thing in my business that can really propel my life more than everything
else and so by the time it's like 9 AM, 10 AM,
I already feel like I've got so much done and that psychologically gives you such a
great advantage.
You feel like you're getting ahead.
And then another great benefit that I love of waking up at 5 AM,
is that it forces you to go to bed earlier.
And I've noticed that a lot of the times in the evening time,
people spend it at 9 PM, 11 PM, midnight.
If you're up at that hour, it's most often people aren't the most productive at those
hours.
Often times it's just kind of wedging out on the couch or on bed watching Netflix or
TV or watching YouTube videos or even eating
junk food in a lot of cases too, because your willpower is at the lowest point.
So for me, by forcing myself to go to bed earlier,
I can spend more of those hours in the morning and actually get more out of the day.
So I found I can just get so much more done and be so much more productive by waking up
earlier.
But you gotta know what is your why.
Why do you wanna wake up at 5 AM?
Write down what those reasons are cause that will motivate you to actually do this.
If you believe it's important enough, you'll do it.
Half of the battle, waking up at 5 AM, is knowing what time you gotta go to sleep at.
Because you still gotta make sure you’re getting a sufficient enough amount of sleep.
I mean if you go to bed at midnight, for example, then you gotta wake up at 5 AM,
you're only getting 5 hours of sleep and so, of course, it's gonna be challenging to wake
up at 5 AM because you're gonna be tired, your body's
gonna be craving more sleep and especially if you're being used to sleeping
7 or 8 hours a day.
So if you still wanna get 7 or 8 hours a day asleep every day, which is what I recommend,
that means that you have to plan what time you're gonna go to bed at.
So if you're waking up at 5 AM, let's say you're getting 7 hours of sleep,
that means you have to go to bed by 10 PM.
Or 9 PM if you wanna get 8 hours.
And so what I recommend that you do, is you gotta really plan and schedule
what time you're gonna go to bed, prepare for that
and I actually recommend setting an alarm on your phone 1 hour before your designated
bedtime.
So if you're gonna go to bed at 10 PM, set an hour on your phone
or like a reminder on your phone at 9 PM that says you gotta start getting ready.
You gotta start to settle down whatever it is that you're doing.
Maybe you can have like an evening ritual to help settle yourself down.
Maybe it's reading a book, maybe it's journaling, maybe it's meditation,
but things that can help you switch gears to kind of preparing for sleep.
I think that's really important to make sure that you have that.
The next thing when it comes to waking up is obviously you wanna set an alarm clock
for 5 AM, but what I recommend that you do, is take
your alarm clock, let's say it's your phone, but put it on the other side of the room
or even outside of your room where you can still hear it that'll wake you up,
but it will force you to actually get out of bed to then go and turn off the alarm.
Because if you have your alarm right next to you on your bed,
then you can easily hit the snooze, you can easily ignore it and go back to sleep.
So by actually forcing yourself to physically get up in the morning, now you're up.
Right?
Now you got some momentum, it's a lot harder than to go back to bed.
And half of it's just getting out of bed in the morning.
So setting the alarm, putting it further away is great.
I also recommend if you can, change the alarm clock.
So it's something that gets you fired up.
Something excited in the morning.
I love really inspirational music or pump-up music,
maybe you have a favourite song that you listen to.
Try to set that as your alarm.
If you wanna take it a step further cause I struggled with this for a long time
and what I did is I realised, I needed to have a purpose for waking up at 5 AM
and so what I actually did was I actually had a friend that also wanted to wake up earlier
or it could be a friend that already wakes up at 5 AM.
Where you reach out to that person, you make a deal with them.
And you say, "hey listen.
I'm trying to wake up at 5 AM every day, I need your help,
so here's what I'll commit to doing.
How bout' we do this?
At 5:10 AM what we gotta do is hop on a call.
I've gotta call you at 5:10 in the morning or you call me.
Kind of like a wake up call I guess.
But that way I'm forced to have a conversation with someone
and the call's just gonna be very simple.
We just gotta share what we're committed to doing for that day.
What's 1 or 2 or 3 things we're gonna commit to accomplishing that day."
So now you have a reason to wake up.
Cause if you don't have a reason to wake up at 5 AM, you won't.
You'll sleep in if you're given that opportunity.
But if you had like your job that you gotta wake up at 5 AM cause you gotta be at work
at 5:30, you're more likely to because there's a consequence
for not doing it.
So at least being accountable to someone else will force you to wake up at 5 AM
and then having to get on a call and then I even take it a step further,
where I say to my friend, "listen.
If I don't call you at 5:10, even if I'm 1 minute late,
then I'll give you 10$.
I'll give you 20 bucks or I have to donate this to a charity.”
But that forces me to have a consequence for missing it.
So now, I'm forced to actually make sure that I do wake up at 5 AM
and I honour my commitment and I have integrity with that.