First Important Habit: Rise and Shine
The first and most important habit one can ever adopt is Waking Up Early. I know, I know...and before you stop reading and say "I can't do it" or "I need my sleep" or "I'm not a morning person", I was just like you! Many of us are not early risers and like to stay up at night like myself hanging out with friends, watching tv, vegging out and just relaxing, especially after a long work day. I hear you, but if you want to have any meaningful change in your life, if you truly want to succeed, you have to start by waking up early.
Here's why:
before we have to run over to your laptop or outside to go to work
- Waking up early allows your body and mind to slowly wake-up before it has to be in full gear. Waking up early literally gives you more time, space, and clarity to just think and be creative which are essential to becoming successful, and it allows your body to reach its full wakefulness before it's time to start working.
- Waking up early reduces the likelihood for depression. According to the Journal of of Psychiatric Research, women who typically wake up early, are less likely to experience depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders than those who sleep later.
- Waking up early makes you more productive; being 2-3 hours ahead of others allows you plan out your days, be able to accomplish more things and gives you the ability to focus. By the end of the day, you'll notice how much more productive you were because you had the extra hours than most people.
- Waking up early adds to your motivation set you up to be more successful - if you are thinking about changing certain things in your life like finding a new job, looking into doing a side hustle for extra money, finishing school or taking online courses, this time will give you an extra leg-up and the motivation to do these projects.
- Waking up early allows you to adopt the new habits that we will be talking about. This is like when the genie gives you 3 wishes and you wish that one of the wishes is 10x more wishes etc..These two hours allow you to do things like blogging, journaling, exercising, meditating, reading a book to develop new skills, or really anything that you think will benefit you - these 2-hours will get you on track to change your life.
- Waking up early forces you to start sleeping early, improving your overall quality of sleep, which is better for your health and will give you more time to sleep and wake up refreshed.
Now the key to waking up early though is not to directly run to your phone and watch TikTok videos or check your Instagram (although I'm guilty of that when I feel like just unwinding), checking emails or jumping on your laptop to finish home work or last nights project that is due today. That would be the wrong approach - the point of this time is to give your mind and body time to recalibrate; think about your goals for the day, and prioritize what you need to focus.
By 9 AM you will be so energized to start working or studying or whatever it is you typically have to do.
All successful people that I've read about have this important habit, and swear by it, and attribute a large portion of their success to this habit. Think about it, you have 2 extra "productive" hours per day than most people, that is 10 hours a week more (not including weekends), 40 hours a month (one week) over other people, 4,800 hours per year!!
Imagine how many things you can accomplish in that amount of time!
Check out my favorite Alarm Clocks that keeps me true to this new habit of mine, or the one below that slowly helps you wake up by changing the light inside your room to simulate sunrise; it's so cool and helps wake us up gently and naturally.
