How to Wake up Before 6am Everyday

Waking up early has been this weirdly life-changing habit for me. At some point in my life I decided that I was going to start waking up at 5am every single day, and I read many articles, I watched many YouTube videos, I tried and I tried again and I tried again, and eventually it became consistent. With that extra time in the morning, I built my YouTube channel. With my YouTube channel, I ended up quitting my full-time job, all because I started waking up early. In this video, I want to talk about the things that I still do to this day to get myself waking up early that have been the biggest difference for me. So usually when you are waking up early in the morning, you have a reason for it. You want to learn a language, build a business, read, meditate, whatever. And when you have your phone as your alarm clock, the first thing you're going to do in the morning is pick it up, start scrolling, check your notifications, and get sucked into the world of your phone. Your morning routine really quickly can slip into this kind of routine. Instead, store your phone in a cupboard, in a drawer, in a box, then get an actual physical alarm clock. They still sell these, and I think that they're getting so popular that they're even creating fancier versions of them. I have this one, and it's a Google Home one, so it's got lots of fancy settings, if that's what you prefer. But you can also just get five $10 alarm clocks from your local cheap shop. Force yourself to move. So with that alarm clock, you want to put it so out of reach that you have to get up. And you also want to place it close to the first step of your morning routine. So my alarm clock is literally in my lounge room, so I have to get up and walk a fair way just to turn off my alarm. Where my alarm clock is in my lounge room is right next to my bathroom, which is the first place that I go in the morning, so that's the first step of my morning routine. So by the time I'm there and I am turning off my alarm, I'm like, well, I might as well pop into the bathroom, and it kind of gets the ball rolling for me. Putting your alarm clock far away from you forces you to get up, which is especially important when it is cold. Putting it right next to the first step of your morning routine makes it so that you get the ball rolling and you're more likely to stay up. Trigger cortisol release. So you know how when you wake up at night and you need to go to the bathroom, you avoid turning on the lights at all costs, because you know that if you turn on the lights, your brain is going to start working, you're going to start actually thinking, you're not going to be in sleep mode. When the lights turn on, your brain tends to turn on too. Use that to your advantage in the morning. Dr. Andrew Kupferman, a Stanford professor, actually uses a ring light, so one of those ring lights some YouTubers use or some TikTokers use. He uses that, but he actually uses it all day, because in his mind, because we're inside all day, we're mucking with our system. So having that ring light there lets his body know it's daytime. Obviously the best option would be to literally step outside. Sometimes that's a really hard mental block to overcome, or it's dark where you are, or it's really cold. Your next best alternative is a bright white overhead light. Not only does it wake you up, but it's also just good sleep hygiene. It lets your body know consistently that at that time of morning is when your cortisol should start releasing. Your body goes light equals morning time. That's how it works. Therefore, if we are constantly exposed to light at this time, that means morning time. Have a why. You do not need to wake up early to work on your YouTube channel, to work on your business, to make any kind of money. You might want to wake up early because you don't want to be someone that lives to work. You want to do things for yourself outside of your nine to five. Maybe you want to journal, meditate, learn a language, learn the guitar. It's going to be really hard to motivate yourself to wake up early if you're just waking up early to wake up early, or if you're waking up early to do things that you're not actually looking forward to doing. If you can, integrate something that you really look forward to in your morning routine. So for me, nothing makes me happier than sitting there with my little coffee, reading my little book, taking my little notes. Michelle Segar, a behavioral sustainability scientist says, people are more likely to sustain behaviors that are essential to their daily lives in immediate and noticeable ways. So ask yourself, how can I make waking up early essential to my life in immediately noticeable ways? Things that immediately give you joy, give you happiness or make your life better. So maybe you can immediately see how much better you feel after you journal in the morning or how creative you feel after you work on your little mini burrito. Or maybe you can immediately notice how good you feel after your language learning lesson. Another class downer. You feel pride. You feel growth. If that's you and you're looking to get into language learning or just make your language learning journey even more impactful, Lingoda is hosting a sprint challenge. So Lingoda is an online language learning school with small classes or individual classes. They have native teachers and you can book a lesson 24 seven. But the Lingoda language learning sprint is this challenge that they do that anyone can join. So you're challenged to take either 15 classes a month or 30 classes a month for two months. And if you attend all the classes, you get either 50% back or 100% back. More than 45,000 people have taken part in these language sprints before. It boosts your confidence in speaking and it shows results in a short amount of time. There is definitely a big difference between going through flashcards and going to an actual language learning lesson with a native speaker and being prompted to speak in front of other people using your target language. So with this sprint challenge, you choose a language, you choose your sprint, and you claim your prize if you attend all of the classes. So Lingoda classes are available on Zoom. You can learn Spanish, French, German, and English, of course. Like I said, you can do one-on-one classes. You can also do group learning sessions, but the group sessions, it's five people max. So it's still going to be cozy and comfortable. You're still going to get individual one-on-one attention. All you need is an internet connection, 60 minutes in your day, classes are taking place 24 seven. I'm in Australia. They have times for me. No one ever has times for Australians. Lingoda can give you a language learning plan or you can just follow or create your own. If you are looking to reach new heights in your language learning, complete the language learning sprint on Lingoda to stay motivated and committed to your goal. Click the link below for 20 euros or $25 off of your sprint registration. Once again, click that link below to join the language learning sprint, 20 euros off or $25. Have a winter cozy plan. Wake you up in the summer, a breeze once you're used to it. Wake you up in the winter, mm-mm. And that is why you need a winter cozy plan. How are you going to make your winter mornings as cozy as possible? How can you make waking up early when it's bloody freezing out there, cozy, comfortable, doable? So for example, I always have my dressing gown right there ready for me to grab first thing in the morning. When I hop into my bathroom, which is the first place that I go, I have a heater sitting there that I can turn on. I am a baby. I also have a heater in my office, which is the next place that I go. I have these lights on first thing in the morning, so my room feels really cozy. I have two blankets sitting ready on my couch to be used, so I don't even notice the cold by the time I'm sitting down. Another thing that I have done in the past, I haven't bothered to set it up this year because it just hasn't seemed as big of an issue, is little timed plugs. So you can set up timed plugs that turn on your heaters at certain times, so if you wake up at 5.45, which is when I wake up now, your heater will go off at 5.45. Safety concerns, look into them. Plan your morning. So even if your morning routine is the same every single morning, so maybe you just want to meditate, journal, skincare, very simple, but you're struggling to get yourself to do it, try planning out your morning the night before. So instead of just going generic, this is my morning routine, be like, okay, I'm going to wake up and I'm going to journal on this specific topic because that's something I'm struggling with and I know it'll help me to do that journaling session. And I'm going to be doing this self-compassion meditation because I've been really struggling with being kind to myself lately and that's something that I know that I need to do. I'm going to make those yummy oats for breakfast and I'm going to sprinkle some strawberries on top. Something to look forward to. I might even put a splash of vanilla in my coffee. Just generally, when you are first starting to wake up early, you don't want to wake up feeling fuzzy about what you're doing or not being totally sure if you're actually looking forward to your morning. You want to wake up and be like, man, I'm ready for those oats with those strawberries. All that self-compassion meditation is going to be so good for me. I'm going to be able to feel the difference in my day. That's something I really need. This isn't even about what I was talking about before, which was making sure that you have something to look forward to. It's about making sure that you know that you're getting value out of waking up early because it's very easy to dismiss an alarm and be like, eh, well, it's not really going to make a difference. But if you're like, oh, I'm going to miss out on that specific journaling session, so I'm going to have to deal with those struggles all week and I'm not going to do that meditation so I'm going to be cranky at myself all week. You are going to be more inclined to wake up early. Savor your morning time. So there's this phenomenon that psychologists call savoring and it really is what it is. You are savoring the moment, literally looking at your experience, noticing the details of it, noticing what you appreciate about it, noticing how good it's making you feel. This is one of my favorite things to do in the morning and I also think it's one of the biggest motivators for me to wake up early. I love that morning feeling, sitting on my couch, looking out the window, being reminded that I literally am a tiny speck on the earth and all of my problems are wildly insignificant compared to the enormity of the universe, hearing the birds chirping, noticing the wind. It's these little pieces of magic that motivate me to keep on getting up early. And if you get into the habit of savoring those little pieces of magic, getting up early becomes easier. One way to trigger savoring is to sit there and do the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method, so 5 things you can hear, 4 things you can see, etc, etc. It forces you to notice those details and it puts you into this state of appreciation. Practice the habit before the habit. So waking up early and doing your morning routine is the habit that you want to develop. The habit before the habit is actually getting out of your bed, turning off the alarm clock and putting on your moisturizer or whatever it is that you do first. In my video that's currently titled How to Do Goals Differently, my change, I talk a lot about practicing the habit before the habit. So the habit before the habit is kind of the push down the hill. Once you've gotten up, you've turned off your alarm, you're putting on your moisturizer, the chances of you keeping on going and staying up are so much higher. So it's really that habit before the habit that you want to get down because once you get that ingrained in you, once you really get into the practice of doing that little first step, it's so much more likely that you're going to keep on going. So literally during the day, practice, you're lying down, you wake up, you get up immediately, you turn off your alarm, you go, you open your moisturizer. Practice that habit before the habit until it is embedded in your brain. You don't want to be thinking about what to do in the morning, you want to do, you want it to be automated. A lot of people talk about how habits are automated, but usually lengthy habits like a morning routine, that's not going to be automated. The automated part is going to be the start and the start is what is going to get you rolling. Unless you've done it from day dot, your morning routine is always going to be a little bit effortful. But that habit before the habit, if you automate that, the likelihood of you following through is so much higher. Go to sleep on time. Something that no one seems to talk about in videos on waking up early is the fact that you do need to go to sleep on time. If you're going to sleep at 12, trying to wake up at 5, that's pointless. The reason that I wake up early is because my energy is better in the morning. If I tried to do what I do early at night, it wouldn't go well. The habit of waking up early needs to be accompanied by getting into the habit of going to sleep on time. So one of the things that I've invested in for myself to get myself to sleep early are these little bulbs. So you've got the pink bulb in the background, I have like an orangey bulb in the bedroom, and those are the only lights that we have on at night. So we turn off all the overhead lights, and you can get these from like $8, it's up to $30, depending on what kind of website you're getting them from. That's just a really easy switch that you can make to make yourself more likely to be sleepier quicker. Another thing you can do is get into the habit of deleting any apps that give you any kind of dopamine. That's such a big ask. At about 6pm. So I have an app called Opal that actually blocks me from these apps past 6pm. If you're really trying to embed this wake up early habit, you also need to optimise your sleep. Make sure that you are getting the most out of your sleep, you're going to sleep at the same time. If you are interested in doing that, I created an entire video with tips and tricks on how to optimise your sleep. I'm going to have that on the screen as well as down below. I appreciate you so very much and I will see you soon.