Monday Motivation - Waking Up Etiquette

You ever woken up still feeling tired? I want to share some tips with you that can help you wake up "the right way".

First of all, to wake up refreshed, you need to get a good night sleep. This is a whole topic in and of itself, which I will discuss in later posts. However, this is (quite obviously) very important. A great, energetic day starts the night before!


TRY TO WAKE UP NATURALLY WITHOUR AN ALARM CLOCK
This one is probably the hardest one of them all since it takes practice. Accomplishing this also requires changes to your nighttime routine. The reason you want to wake up naturally is because alarm clocks may interrupt your all-important REM sleep (deep sleep). It's during REM sleep that your body is repairing itself, so you want to interrupt this as little as possible!  If you go to sleep earlier, your body will wake up earlier, which hopefully means it will wake up around the time your alarm clock would usually ring. You'd be surprised at how good your body is at telling time while you're sleeping. Once it's been properly trained, it will wake itself up when you need it to.

DON'T HIT SNOOZE
Whether you wake up naturally or with an alarm clock, you shouldn't go back to sleep for those extra 5, 10, 20 minutes! I know it feels good, especially when you're really tired, but doing this will only make you more tired. When you go back to sleep, you're telling your brain that it should expect to rest for a couple more hours. When it wakes up 5 to 20 minutes later instead, it's going to wake up more tired. Instead, you should try your best to jump out of bed as soon as you wake up. This signals to your brain that you're done sleeping and it should prepare itself for the day. There's an entire book written about this.

STAY AWAY FROM YOUR PHONE
Give yourself and your brain some time to breathe without reaching directly for your laptop, phone, TV, etc. Try to wait 30 minutes to an hour before gluing your eyes to screens for the rest of the day. What can you do in the meantime? Take a cold shower, make some breakfast, journal, meditate, anything that doesn't require technology!