I know there exists a breed of people who just pop up and can get it done. Kudos to those who are natural morning people. I’m not one of those people. I wake up and have to spend 15-25 minutes just waking up. Over the years I’ve had to adapt and extremely annoying alarm and even then it doesn’t always work because the morning version of me is a tough one to convince that the plans the night version of me made are worthwhile. But how do you go about motivating the morning person so it doesn’t fail (as often)?
1. Find your “Why?”
It’s hard to be motivated if you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing. You might know what you want to do and how you want to do it but without a strong “WHY?” you’re going to eventually lose that motivation that originally got you started.
Simon Sinek gave a great TED talk titled “Start with Why” that you can view below that covers it from a business point of view but that can easily be tailored to any personal aspirations.
If you’re still having trouble finding your why I suggest reading my post on “5 Mental Shifts to Dream Again” to help encourage you to find some of that childlike inspiration again.
2. Make adjustments not excuses
After finding your why, the biggest hurdle to waking up early is removing excuses by making adjustments. This can probably be another 10 points itself but instead of outlining 10 adjustments to make instead of excuses I think it misses the main point. It may be hard to understand so I’ll give some examples from my own life to show how I’ve adapted this:
Excuse: “I don’t have enough time to get a good workout in before I have to get ready and go to work.”
Adjustment: Go to bed earlier and wake up earlier.
Excuse: “I won’t have enough time to get my breakfast and get my food ready to take for lunch.”
Adjustment: Food prep on the weekends for the whole week.
Excuse: “I get frustrated and it takes too long finding and getting all my stuff ready in the morning.”
Adjustment: Get it all ready the night before. Lay out clothes, pack a gym bag, pack your lunch, prep pre-workout for going to the gym, etc.
I can go on but hopefully the principle is clear.
3. Find ways to measure success
Even after finding your “why?” you might not be able to be motivated by it for long unless you’re seeing some success. It will take some work to create some measureable milestones but it’s crucial for long term success. I myself have started and stopped multiple times because of this very reason.
I was getting up early to workout and start my day early but it wasn’t until I incorporated taking weekly measurements of weight and inches (inches are important because there will be times the scale doesn’t move but you’ll see that you lost an inch or two on different body parts). Taking pictures weekly was also incorporated so I could compare side by sides along the journey and visibly see how I had progressed because the progress was so slow and gradual it was hard to tell.
Even looking at pictures it’s hard to tell but the pictures above are after a year of training and I lost 30 points and 10 inches.
Aside from my physical goal I was also working to:
- Read daily and made my milestone to finish a book by a certain time.
- Learn more about areas of engineering I was lacking in so I was taking a self-paced online class and made a goal to go through 3 lessons a week.
- Meditate more consistently so I found a few guided meditation courses, one in particular that was a 28 day course and set a goal to finish it.
- Plan my day first thing to be able to get a lot more done with a clear focus on what’s important.
4. Start small and build
After reading the last section it might be tempting to create a big and lofty set of things for waking up early and do a lot of things but it’s far better to start small and build. Start off by waking up just 15 minutes earlier and going for a walk. Eventually that can build to 30 minutes earlier and doing an at home workout with your walk. Maybe build to doing a quick meditation after the walk. Too much at once can be overwhelming and be something that seems too daunting to do so it won’t get done. Remember to make adjustments, not excuses and build a morning routine that matches needs and is centered around a why. Copying and pasting someone elses morning routine might sound good but will quickly fade in motivation.
5. Stay consistent
Starting over again and again can be much more draining than simply sticking to the plan. As mentioned in the last point it’s best to pick something that can be consistently done and make a unbreakable promise to do it daily, without fail. That is how results are seen, that is how motivation is maintained, and that is how it becomes a new way of living. Waking up early can be life changing if done consistently.
Final words
No system is perfect. No plan is fail proof. Just start where you are. Circling back to the first point, find a good WHY and go from there. If there is a solid WHY, the HOW and WHAT will figure themselves out. It won’t be perfect at it but as the quote says
‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’
Samuel Beckett
Just keep trying. Keep doing it. Find the WHY.