Hello my little squirrely acorn gatherers, my beautifully rock-hard golden chestnuts, my fiery-orange oak leaf dangling off a branch ready to fly through the autumn wind.
I hope you all had a peaceful night’s sleep with soothing dreams filled with whatever you find comforting. I often contemplate if it’s better to have good dreams that make you want to stay asleep, or if it’s better to have odd slightly nightmarish dreams that stun you into consciousness. Now that I type it out, the former is definitely better than the latter.
Well, you guessed it: this week we will be diving into how to become a morning person! Personally, I do not know if I am a morning person or if I am a night owl and feel as though I may not know until I am 36 years old, either while eating a cabbage salad at 7 a.m. or jogging around a seaport town past midnight. For now, I love being asleep by midnight and waking up at 7 a.m., so I think this makes me a morning person in terms of college students, but who really is to say?
First things first my sweet pumpkins, developing good sleeping habits is crucial. It may take some time to get your body into a new sleeping pattern, but going to bed earlier typically leads to waking up earlier. I’m no mathematician, but if you need 8 hours of sleep each night, and you typically go to bed at 2 a.m. and wake up at 10 a.m., then if you start going to bed at 10 p.m., then you should eventually start waking up at 6 a.m.
Secondly, imagine how much you can get done in the morning when you wake up earlier. I have somehow gotten in the habit of procrastinating long enough so that I have to wake up early to complete my homework that is due that day. When I do all my homework early in the morning by noon it feels like I have accomplished so much and it honestly just feels so good.
If neither of those worked for you, my most important step is imagining what you’re going to have for breakfast and changing your eating patterns to force you into sleep earlier in the night, which will lead you to wake up earlier in the morning. I cannot lie, I have decided to go to sleep early in the night because then I would be able to wake up earlier and be able to drink coffee sooner.
Yes, I know you can drink decaf coffee or even regular coffee, but coffee in the morning is a different kind of love. That’s soulmate love. If you’re not a coffee drinker, then think about what you are having for breakfast. I’ve also gone to bed earlier so that I could wake up earlier to eat Greek yogurt and honey for breakfast sooner, which is divine. This comes hand-in-hand with changing your eating habits to force yourself into a state of consciousness at early hours of the morning.
If you eat your last meal earlier in the night, you logically should wake up hungrier than in the past. You know how everyone has certain eating habits that are instinctive and inherent in themselves that they cannot change or that would be very difficult to change? This could be one of those deals.
For example, my natural caloric intake begins early in the morning and ends earlier in the evening. Half of the time, I wake up before my 7:13 a.m. alarm because I am starving. However, two of my sisters don’t eat breakfast no matter how early they wake up, and therefore, this would not work for them. These food tips sadly do not work for people that do not eat breakfast or drink coffee, but maybe something else along those lines will work for you.
We are all very special and unique in our ways and some of us may not naturally be morning people, and that’s okay! If it’s crucial to your wellbeing to wake up early, then find something that works for you no matter how niche it may be!