Let me be very clear about something. I am not a natural morning person. If you’d have asked me four years ago, I’d have told you that anything earlier than 10am is still the middle of the night. But I overcame my natural urge to sleep until noon everyday and now I’m up for work at 5:15am every morning and I even set my alarm for 8am on the weekends.
‘How did you make this magical transformation?’ I hear you ask. Well, it’s certainly possible and today I’m sharing my favourite tips to teach you how to be a morning person.
1. Go to bed earlier
Okay, it sounds obvious, but if you don’t get enough sleep you’ll always be dragging yourself out of bed in the morning. Aim to get seven to eight hours of sleep each night and avoid sitting up in bed until the early hours scrolling through Instagram. The blue light that your phone gives off stops the production of melatonin in your brain and makes it harder for you to fall asleep.
2. Don’t hit snooze
In the grand scheme of things, are those extra three minutes in bed really going to make you feel any more refreshed? Hitting snooze is just going to make you feel that much more groggy and demotivated. Instead, get straight out of bed as soon as you hear the alarm go off. Don’t give yourself time to hesitate or convince yourself to burrow down into a cocoon of bedcovers.
If getting up at the sound of your alarm is challenging for you, put your phone or alarm clock over on the other side of the room. That way you have to choice but to get up and deal with it.
3. Be consistent
There’s no point in setting an alarm for 6am during the week and then sleeping in until 1pm on the weekend. Your body needs consistency so it can reset your body clock. That doesn’t mean you have to be up at the crack of dawn every Saturday morning. If you set your alarm for 6am on weekdays, set it for 8am on the weekends. That way you get some extra time in bed, but you won’t mess with your body clock.
4. Make a plan
It’s much easier to get yourself out of bed on the weekends if you know exactly what the day has in store for you. A day of lounging around in bed watching Netflix is hardly something you’ll be excited to wake up for. Instead, make plans so you have something to look forward to. I first trained myself to wake up early by signing up for an 8am Zumba class. By 9:30am I’d be showered, energised and ready to take on the rest of the day.
5. Wake up to natural light
This isn’t going to work in the depths of dreary wintertime, but it’s really effective during the summer. Leave your curtains open so the daylight can gradually fill your room. As the room gets brighter your body will naturally recognise that it’s morning and that it’s time to wake up. Waking up naturally will put you in an infinitely better mood than being woken up by a shrieking alarm clock.
6. Learn what makes your mornings enjoyable
A bad morning can ruin the rest of your day. You might never wake up and rejoice at the thought of leaping out of your warm, comfortable bed. I know I certainly don’t! But I do find ways to make my mornings more enjoyable. I make myself a breakfast I know I’ll enjoy, listen to some music and I purposely avoid all human contact for the first 40 minutes of the day. That’s just what I need in the mornings, okay? So figure out what you need to make your mornings more enjoyable and start doing it.
7. Understand that it will take time
You’re not going to wake up tomorrow and suddenly be a morning person just because you read this blog post. It’s going to take a little while for you to form the right habits and get your body into the right schedule. But if you’re consistent and keep your hands away from the snooze button, then with time you’ll find that getting up at the crack of dawn comes easily to you.
From the outside looking in, morning people might seem like another species. They always did to me! The truth is, anyone can be a morning person if they work at it. Hopefully these tips on how to be a morning person will have you feeling like your best self when your alarm goes off.
Or, at the very least, less like a zombie.
