How to Wake Up

Getting up in the morning has been a continual battle for me. In my line of work I usually have be to up by 6 to fully be able to get ready and be at work. Finding the correct balance between how much sleep I need and when to get up is only half the battle.

After some research it has become apparent that not only are sleeping hours important but so are your eating habits. Left over or latent amounts of caffeine in your system can cause sporadic or sleep that is not 100% restful. This situation can easily be handled by reducing caffeine by cutting out that last cup of coffee or pop, or even cutting out all caffeine which I have heard is even better.

The biggest breakthrough in my research and knowledge was the idea of natural sleep times. This being the idea that you should not set certain times to go to bed. Instead you wait until you body feels tired and then go to sleep. That coupled with a strict time to wake up will make you body settle into it own cycle instead of forcing one on it. For example if you wake up at 6 am everyday and one night you fall asleep at 11pm you may be tired that day but by the end of the day you'll be ready to go to sleep sooner and will sleep longer than the night before. This practice actually lets your body create its own sleep cycle. One important thing to remember is that you cannot fully listen to your body for signs of being tired if you are out running around or doing something that keeps your mind busy. For me if I am up playing games my mind can ignore my body for signals for hours longer than if I am actually relaxing. Another weird habit to make myself stay awake when I was tired was to eat something, my girlfriend pointed this one out. I never realized that I had this habit. This is of course where Associated content steps in, or where the old pen and paper of daily journals would step in in the older days. By sitting back and typing or writing and what I call "thinking inwards". Your mind has a better chance of not ignoring your body's signals for sleep. The key to this whole process is to keep an very strict wake up time.

Of course a strict wake up time is easier to say than do. In the morning the trick is to not worry about how tired you feel. I have learned that the body creates chemicals to help you sleep, these chemicals do not shut down immediately when you wake up. Depending on your metabolism it may take some time to filter these chemicals out. So instead of staying in bed grumbling about being tired just get up at the first alarm, hit the shower and you will naturally wake up as the chemicals filter out of your system. Now as far as alarms to wake you up, you should do what works for you. If your body wakes better to the gradual alarms then get one, if you do better with the ear splitting instant annoyance method alarms get one of those. Or is you are like me set two alarm that are different from each other and place them about 2 feet apart then set your cell phone alarm and set that another foot away. Over time my mind learn to filter out the certain sounds of m alarm clock, so I have to keep the actual alarm sound in constant change. I fully blame having a nagging and annoying mother to this side effect of my mind. I learned how to block her out on a mental level instead of physical since when I was little I spent a lot of time in a car with her and no escape. Unfortunately now after enough of the same thing I sometimes unintentionally block these things out on a mental level for better or for worse.

With these new tricks I am ready to tackle my days and let the nights come and go. Hopefully I will be able to feel better about the day, myself, and what I get done in 1 day. Of course I also just want to be able to get to work on time, and feel better all around.