There's an art to waking up refreshed and energised, but you need to earn it. If you can't seem to wake up at all or you struggle to wake up to an alarm, there are a few tactics we can deploy that will allow you to wake up at at 4am or whatever time you need to rise and shine. In this post, our goal is to eliminate the 'I can't wake up' reason from your personal excuse book!
Like I say, there's an art to waking up and being alert all day. How good your day will be totally depends on how well you sleep. If you sleep poorly consistently, this can actually lead to tangible health defects - something we obviously want to avoid.
With hope, you aren't at that stage yet. You just want to learn how to wake up and not be tired, and amen to that.
Recently, I covered the 8 techniques to get to sleep in the first place, you can check that post out here. That post actually acts a pre-requisite to this one so be sure you check out both!
In this post I'll cover a handful of techniques that have the potential to significantly change your life by optimising the way you wake up. The human body is very strict about it's patterns and methods, listening to it will reward you greatly.
If there's one prevailing pattern it likes to get right, it's the method by which it wakes, if you go against our natural and effective programming, you set yourself up for a terrible groggy day.
If you can't seem to wake up with a spring in your step, can't wake up early, can't wake up AT ALL...I invite you to take a read and try out any or all of the below.
How to Wake up Early in the Morning?
You've heard it all before, the power of waking up at 4am or 5am. Honestly, I've practised this for a while and I find this to be true. Accessing this portion of the day may be one of the most important changes in your life.
Having all of your cylinders firing when it's a cold crisp and quiet morning is a very welcoming feeling. Watching the world start up, having some music in your ears and feeling fresh is...one of life's pleasures - I believe anyhow.
The secret to waking up early in the morning obviously relies on your ability to get a good nights sleep, so for this I will point you over to an associated post I wrote recently. In there is 8 simple techniques to improve your sleep DRASTCALLY, some of which I bet you haven't heard of thought about, but again, are simple!
Some of these include not eating 2 hours before bed, brushing your teeth 1 hour in advance of bed, taking advantage of temperature to make you fall asleep. Though these sound simple, I explain the why's behind those techniques in that post.
Ultimately, to wake up early in the morning consistently, you need to practise the discipline of going to sleep and waking up...consistently. Establishing a sleep pattern takes time, but not as much as you think, it may be a week, or perhaps a few weeks.
Below I talk about exactly HOW you should be waking up to gain all the advantages of a good nights sleep.
Use Light to Wake up Slowly
If you were to ask for the one thing that triggers you to wake up, I'd immediately default to this. Using the gradual increase of light is the best way to wake up and feel refreshed.
The world has a natural means of signalling the body to wake up and fall asleep, the early morning sun rise and late afternoon sun set act as natural milestones in the day to change the patterns of the body.
In a modern world we have lost our sensitivity to this thanks to artificial stimulation and the dampening of sensitivity to any or all natural sources.
However, you CAN claim back this incredibly useful and effective tool of waking up. The sunrise would be the best way to do this, whether it be by leaving a part of your curtain open just before you go to sleep or by having some kind of automatic curtain puller to trigger in the morning.
On a simpler note, you could use a wake up sunlight alarm clock to support this mission. Though artificial, it's the closest thing to a 'more controllable' sunrise event.
The benefit of waking up gradually is profound, your body drifts in and out of many different sleep cycles in the night, some deep and others light.
Usually, you have an abrupt sound alarm that urgently wakes you up while you are in a deep sleep state - this leads to a very groggy morning and an underwhelming day, you then medicate yourself on coffee and sugar as a means to feel more awake, but this leads to a unproductive evening evening of sleep and the cycle continues.
Alternatively, we can use a low and increasing exposure of light that can penetrate your eyelids and enter your eyes (which are sensors) These signals trigger the brain to start getting out of a deep sleep cycle, if it's still in one.
This gradual wake up event could be as much as 40 minutes to an hour. When if your body receives a signal that it is morning time, your body has enough warning to choose the correct moment to enter a light sleep state from a deeper one - allowing you to wake easier.
This is my most significant sleep tip, if you want to wake up refreshed, this is going to be your ticket!
Using a wake up light, you can set an alarm for say 7 am and at 6:20 am a light will begin to shine (make sure the light from the clock can get into your eyes) Over time, the light will increase from a 1 intensity to a 10 intensity. At 7 am a sound alarm will begin to slowly play.
By which time, your body has received all of the signals it needs to be in the right sleep cycle at the right time. You then wake up feeling refreshed and NOT disturbed or disrupted.
Avoid Caffeine Immediately after Waking
This is going to disrupt a few routines Im sure, however, it's with good intent and great efficacy.
If you have ever experienced the afternoon 'blues', which is the unpleasant crashing feeling in the early afternoon, despite consuming all of the coffee in the world. There's a simple trick here to solve it.
Once you've conquered waking up slowly and feeling refreshed, it's important to sustain that feeling. The one way to derail that feeling is to drink coffee right after waking up.
If, however, you wait 2 hours after waking up to consume coffee you will notice a sustained feeling of momentum during the day.
This happens because your body begins to process a lot of sleep hormones when you wake, by having caffeine you stop this process and the sleep hormones build up (namely adenosine)
If you instead allow this process to continue after you wake up, you avoid the build up of adenosine hitting you in the middle of the day which causes you to feel tired.
Exercise in the Morning
When I say this, you probably imagine a really intense workout, but I'm not talking about that. Exercising in the morning could be anything from performing a few push ups and squats to taking a 15 minute walk.
The aim here is to get your heart rate elevated, this is because this is in direct contrast to when you were asleep. When you sleep your heart rate is the lowest it will be for the whole 24 hour period.
Elevating it in the morning tells your body you are ready to go, and furthermore, doing this consistently will train your body to wake up to be ready for movement.
Exercise is a fantastic way to introduce the body into a sleeping pattern, you will begin to train the mind to be ready for the physical activity - but stay consistent with it!
Of course I don't need to speak about the other health benefits of doing this, but something as simple as a daily walk can really help you in many other areas of your life.
Use Music to Get you Going
Music is fascinating, it can transform your mood in seconds. Have you ever thought about using it to wake yourself up?
This can come in the form of using a song as an alarm or...you could use it by putting earphones in early on in the morning and listening to something that way.
The point of this is that you listen to something that resonates with you, after all it's all vibrations and you are looking for particular vibrations that allows your mind to lock into the idea of waking up and being active. Typically something 'high energy'.
This is a great technique for those of you who struggle to get out of bed, you can be awake but maybe you just lay there for a long time. Put music in, it's only a few physical movements to get it done and then just lay there as you normally would, but be listening to something.
After some time, you'll feel a natural pull to get out of bed! Furthermore, if you use music throughout the day as a means to concentrate that's also a very effective way to prevent yourself from napping or getting lazy.
Avoid Large Meals
Food is great, however, consuming a lot of it as once may be satisfying but it's very taxing to the digestive system.
To deal with such large amounts of food requires the body to prioritise it over many other things, which means it will begin to leach on your ability to be active and present minded.
Eating large meals will often make you feel sleepy and disrupt your sleeping pattern if you manage to fall asleep ahead of your declared bedtime.
Practise the discipline of eating small meals throughout the day that are satisfying but not overwhelming to your body.
Regarding which kinds of foods, avoid high fat intake in the afternoon (fat promotes the production of hormones which are best used when sleeping)
Eat fat in the evening and of course avoid sugar as much as you can. When it comes to caffeine, try to stay away from that about 8 hours before bed if you can, at least take a stepdown from coffee, go to a lesser dose of caffeine, like tea!
What time is best to Wake up?
There will be many different opinions on this, all subjective. The best time will be in line with what ever scenario you have to tailor your sleep pattern for.
When people speak about the 'best' time, you'll notice that it's always in the morning, it's never 11am or something.
What they are gradually getting toward is the idea that the morning has many benefits in it that you can't miss out on, if you can catch the rise of the sun and use that as a means of waking up then you are already ahead of many people.
If you want to know how to wake up at 4am, it's simply by practising the above. Though you may be too early for the naturally sunrise, you can use artificial light to gain the same benefit.
If you have difficulty waking up at this time, it will likely improve in a week or so, it's just the practise of the routine you need to get down.
Be Environment Specific
This takes some preparation but if you want to be alert and ready for the day, you need to get specific about your environments. This can be a bit difficult for those of you who live in dorms/halls of student houses.
Try to keep the bedroom for sleeping, Woking in there can always lead to a dangerous scenario of napping. If you are honest with yourself and aware of the dangers, you can move yourself to a library or a more appropriate environment.
Doing this will allow you to focus on what you need to do and be present minded while doing it.
Equally as important as selecting the right environment is the investment in your environments. Invest in improving your environments in every way possible. If you need to make your bed comfier for bed time, do it! Maybe you need to give yourself a good working environment or a fancy desk setup - do it!
Spending time and money in these things are investments in you as a person, they are more than worth it.
Define your environments with purpose and intent, hold a level of discipline to maintain that ethos and you will train yourself to have the right mindset while in each environment, be that an energetic, active or productive one, or one of rest, relaxation and peace.
There are my bundle of tips to wake up with a bit more of a spring in your step, be sure to give these a try and really make an effort to stick to them for a short amount of time. Sleep is the cornerstone of a happy life, zoom in on it if you need to, it's your biggest asset.
If you have any questions for me or other readers, pop them in the comments below. Hit the <3 icon if you enjoyed the post! (doing this also follows the post, if you have an account, which I invite you to get!)
Thanks for reading
PutSimply
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