Getting the Mornings Right
Every morning just as my alarm rings at half past six, the world starts to distort into something surreal. The laws of physics seemingly bend and twist, and my already fuzzy mind fails to make sense of anything around me—my bed suddenly turns into a strong 'human' magnet and I feel stuck to it, unable to move. My pillow whispers into my ear, "You need some more sleep, look just how tired you are," while my blanket gives me a hug. Oh! Those hugs are the warmest, I swear.
All my plans from the previous night to wake up early and my continuously-beeping-but-helpless alarm seem to not matter at all. The alarm? The poor guy gets turned off soon after some of my mental fog clears, while my bed, the pillow and the blanket cheer and tell me how right I was to do it. The blanket hugs me even tighter, and my pillow whispers some weird lullaby to put me to sleep.
I oversleep and wake up quite late—ten in the morning, and I feel as if I had been dead all that while and someone had suddenly kicked me back to life. It's already too late to have breakfast, I decide to have lunch at twelve instead and proceed to brush my teeth, or sometimes boot up my laptop—only to realize later that I still had to brush my teeth. Just like that, maybe it is sometimes three in the afternoon and I still haven't had my lunch or even taken a bath and my schedule just gets screwed up. This leads to a lot of unproductivity and even affects my physical and mental health in ways unimaginable.
Our bodies have unique biochemical clocks within, which time periodic bodily functions and synchronise various bodily processes—when you feel hungry around your usual lunchtime, that's your awesome internal clock in action. This clock, which is within all of us, relies on certain cues from the surroundings, as well as our actions to set itself. If our actions are rather confusing, the clock can sync out which disrupts everything, affecting your body and mind negatively.
Suppose you sleep at ten one night, your mind goes, "Okay, sleeping time around ten. Set," and the next night, it begins to prepare you to sleep at around that time. If you were to continue to sleep at ten every night, then your mind progressively gets accurate at lining up your internal clock with your external clock—you reach a time when you feel sleepy at exactly ten. However, if you were to sleep at twelve the following night, your mind again goes, "Sleeping time around twelve. Set," and If you keep changing your sleeping times often, your mind fails to narrow down on what the exact sleeping time should be and becomes confused. As a result, it may entirely stop making you feel sleepy at the conflicting time range and will make you feel sleepy at times you wouldn't want—times when it feels sleep deprived and begins to shut you down to squeeze in some sleep. Such a disturbed internal clock causes your internal processes to go haywire—hormone imbalances, appetite changes, out of sync sleep cycle, and so on.
This really needs to stop and should be replaced by a strict schedule which will keep your body and mind at its best. You'll really experience a tremendous difference in just a few days—you may feel more motivated instead of lost, more energetic instead of drained, more driven instead of confused and more active instead of feeling sleepy the whole day. This new drive, energy and motivation will awaken your mind to a plethora of possibilities and solutions and you will be more likely to take action instead of letting life slip by.
Habit Transformation: Log Series
I wish to incorporate a lot of healthy habits into my life, which will transform my life for the best. Actions which will benefit me mentally, physically and financially—should be automated so that they become effortless. It all begins with fixing up my morning routine. This action routine, if I can solidify as a habit, can make a lot of difference. These days, I am not working out and even skipping my breakfast. If I wake up early, I'll build the habit of working out regularly as well as having a heavy and hearty breakfast—just establishing one habit creates a chain reaction of other transformations.I have decided to start a Habit Transformation log series here, which is me sharing my daily progress on my goal of waking up early. Remember, I need to sustain this for only 30 days, which if I can then I will have automated it to the point that it will no longer be so difficult to wake up early, or rather that it will be difficult to sleep past my fixed waking time. I also encourage you to start with me. We will do this together. If just one day I miss to get up on time or even wake up a couple of minutes late, then I will have to start over—I better get it right.
To get started, think of a time you need to wake up and think of the earliest that you will have to wake up usually. For me, my holidays are going on and I can wake up at seven or eight, but that isn't the earliest—I've had to wake up at six-thirty for my classes and this should be my waking time. Your waking time should be such that in the coming thirty days, you won't have to wake up any earlier than this, and if you got locked into this time you won't have to wake up any earlier than this frequently.
How to Go About This Challenge
But I haven't been able to wake up early even a single morning, how am I to do it? I know, even I haven't. From the last so many months, I've had this six-thirty alarm and I've always turned it off and slept back—something, I've gotten so used to by now that it has actually turned into a habit. Sometimes, I won't even realize that I was turning off the alarm and only after waking up; I'd wonder why the alarm hadn't blared that morning.But do you know? Though I fail to get up in the morning usually, I'm the one who wakes everyone up when it comes to early mornings. Whenever we have to go out or for something we need to wake up early—something three or four sometimes in the morning, then I will wake up before everyone else and I'll wake the rest of the family up. When recently I had gone to my cousin's wedding, we had to leave the house at seven and so we had to wake up at five in the morning and again, I was the one who had risen up the earliest and had woken up the rest of the family. The trick? I had the responsibility or better that I had taken the responsibility. Before sleeping the previous night, I had declared that I'd wake everyone up. The next morning I had to wake up myself and make sure everyone else got up, or otherwise, we would have gotten late.
Even this series I am starting? I will have to wake up early each day for the next thirty days because I have declared so here. I have to log about establishing this habit here—I can't stay in the bed. So, how would you use this trick to your advantage? If you have a friend or a sibling, involve them in this 30-day habit formation challenge. However, you take the responsibility of waking them up. Tell them that you will wake them up each morning. If you're doing this with your friend, tell him that you'd call him the next day at the decided time. Don't use 'maybe' or 'mostly' or other words which give off weak possibility, rather declare confidently," I will wake you up tomorrow at (your decided time)." Now that you have given your word, you will be more than likely to wake up the next morning, since you are now responsible for your friend's progress too. If you wake up, then only he will. Try this out, and as days go by, it'll just get easier and easier.
So, this thirty days challenge starts tomorrow.
P.S:
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Other Posts in This Series
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