Morning Person

Hello friends,

I’m trying to become a morning person.

I’m not a morning person. I’m not even a night owl, as you’ll rarely find me conscious after 10pm. So I’m in that limbo place of existence in which I basically hate being awake. And there isn’t anything valuable or productive about that! So I’m trying my hand at “being a morning person”.

So, let me start off by saying that this is only day one of being a morning person, and yeah, it totally feels great! But I immediately recognize that this pleasure will not last forever; starting the habit of waking up early will have hard days, and I imagine those cold winter mornings when my sheets feel like a welcome escape from the world will be the hardest of days. But today I was successful, so let’s just take it a day at a  time!

I woke up at 5:40 this morning. Well, technically, it was around 5:35am. I downloaded an alarm that gradually increases it’s volume as time progresses. It begins as birds chirping softly, and then eventually introduces the alarm sound I chose: Tibetan bells ringing, and people chanting, “Aummmmm”… I really can’t imagine a more relaxing sound to wake up to!

I immediately considered my options: continue with the wake-up process, or extend my alarm until 6:30. No, no… just move, just start walking, look at your bright phone, wake those tired eyes up…

Coffee was the next step. I’m going to associate “being awake” with “drinking caffeine”, in the hopes that my body begins to understands the correlation between my alarm and that morning kick.

And for once in the morning, I was able to take it slow. I drank my coffee and browsed social media. No rushing into the shower immediately upon getting up. No tossing my cat off my lap because she was wasting valuable prep time. I could take it easy.

Following my shower and the usual routine of morning prep, I was able to sit and do this; write in my blog.

Yes, waking up early has left me time that I can dedicate to me, to my personal growth, my personal success, and my productivity aside from the career I go to every day. These aren’t morning hours spent to obligatory things, but passions. I can spend these mornings reading, I can spend these mornings browsing online shops, I can spend these mornings on Pinterest. These mornings can be dedicated to something creative and enjoyable, so I can enjoy being awake, ready to take on the world, and eventually not dread that drive to my actual work that I’ll be doing in an hour or so. There are no expectations of me, I’m not just waiting for the time to come for me to get in the car and head off, I’m actually enjoying these moments. I feel relaxed, I feel as though I’m accomplishing something, just be being awake and actively using my mind for reading or writing, and I feel good.

I know some people who head to work this early, but I don’t think these moments would feel as good as they do right now, if I wasn’t in my own creative space. I associate home with comfort and happiness (not that work doesn’t make me happy, but I still associate the school with ‘work’), and so I feel like I’ve started my day on a comfortable foot; I feel happy to take on the day!

Now, I’m not going to be foolish and assume that this day will be fine and dandy and great and grand. By 1pm, I crash (after lunch), and I’m wondering to myself how heavy that crash might be considering I woke up so much earlier than I normally do, or even whether my crash will happen a bit early than expected. Again, these are things I should worry about when and if they occur, not now that I’m feeling so “in the zone”.

So, day one of being a morning person has been great! I’m hoping to dedicate these morning hours to more script and novel writing, as by the afternoon, I’m pretty mentally exhausted when I come home and those aren’t my most productive hours. Plus the whole early bedtime thing… We’ll see how long I keep this up for, but I’m hoping it becomes easier as it progresses, eventually just becoming a natural wake up time for my body.

Do you have any early morning tips? Or do you have any necessary rituals that help you get up in the morning? PLEASE share in the comments; I’ll take anything I can get!

xo
C