How Hustle Culture Ruined Your Mornings

Okay, in this video I'm going to show you how to become an early riser, how to wake up at whatever time you want, 6am, whatever, 5am, doesn't matter. I honestly feel that this video can show you how to be an early riser. I'm an early riser, I wasn't always, for many many years I struggled with it, needlessly, thankfully. So there's no struggle involved with this idea I'm going to share today, in fact it's the opposite of that. But I want to make this video because I do get this question quite often because I think people who watch my videos, maybe you included, have issues with productivity, maybe getting the things done we would like to do to move forward in our lives. And one of the strategies that's looked at for that is become an early riser, that will help you with being more productive. Which is true, it does give you, certainly having a predictable wake up time in your life adds stability and it gives you more optionality about how to live your life and what you want to do. But the question is how do you go about doing it? How do you go about doing it? And the questions I get periodically, I got one recently from someone and it's typically the same thing, it's they've tried all these different approaches to doing it, like leaving the alarm across the room and taking melatonin supplements to sleep better and whatnot, all sorts of things and methods that people use. But it's frustrating because they have the intention of waking up at 6 or 7am, waking up at 11am afterwards. That's what I was like, I'll be, I'm not going to sugar coat it, when I was struggling with this, that's the pattern I was in. Okay, tomorrow or Monday morning, starting Monday morning, I'm waking up at 7am and I'm doing this and this. And I would wake up at 10, 11, right? And I'd hit the alarm. I'd have the alarm set earlier the night before. And whatever intention I had the night before was completely absent the morning of when I'd wake up, right? It was just as if it was two completely different people. So what's the insight I have here? What's the approach? Well, first of all, realize that you are not trying to wake up earlier, right? You think you are, but you're not. Now I'll explain this. Okay, just stay with me. It's a little bit more complicated than just set the alarm and whatnot. You're actually not trying to wake up earlier. You're trying to wake up earlier to be more productive. That's currently what you're trying to do, probably, if you're like I was and like most of the people who have this issue, struggle with it. So you're actually attempting to do two things at the same time. That's really what you've been doing. Because if I ask people about, okay, why do you want to wake up earlier? Certainly what I was trying to do was I'll wake up earlier so that I can do X, Y, and Z, right? I'll really get on top of things is the real motivation behind it, right? So actually realize it's not waking up early for the sake of it. I'm doing it so it's attached to another goal, right? So that's currently what you've been trying to do. Let's name what you've been trying to do first before we can talk about how to address this. Because I do think waking up early is very, very helpful. I wake up early and it's very useful. But there's a problem if you've attached waking up early to productivity initially, right? Because especially if you have procrastination problems in your life. Because what happens is you have now associated early rising with a battle, with a war zone. Because that time you wake up at 6am, right? And the intention, again, isn't just to wake up at 6am. It's to wake up at 6am to go to the gym, to do your work on your thesis or answer the work emails and knock off this list of things that you're going to do before 8am. So it's to wake up early and enter into this, this high risk zone, time, area of time in your life. And so your nervous system isn't just looking at the wake up call, the wake up time, the 6am or the 7am. It's looking at all the stuff that's attached to it. So you might have every intention of waking up early, but your nervous system is looking at it and it's like, that's too risky. First of all, there's too much energy in it. Maybe from where you're starting. It's like, okay, I don't think I'm going to be capable. Now you're probably not even aware you're telling yourself this. This is all sort of like what I call body thoughts, right? That part that doesn't feel safe is like, that's the part that says this bed is super cozy right now. And the bed is cozy, but it's really the sense of keep me away from that. Now it's not just the energy. That's not the main part of it. The main part of it is the judgments that wait for you if you fail to follow through on it. So hard enough as it is at the start, maybe to get out of bed, it's how much harder is it to get up and do two, three hours of really productive work? What if you can't do it? Well, now you failed. So you're setting up this, the morning has now become psychologically dangerous for you. Now, this is what I'm saying here, and I'll tell you the solution. Maybe if you haven't guessed it already, but this is why so many of the other self-help things don't work in this area because it is okay. All the wake up early things are get up early, meditate, do this, take a cold shower. And it's like this incredibly high stakes thing that's set up for people who are not anywhere close to that at the start, right? I wasn't, I have since been able to do it, but I had to first learn, unlearn. I had to break the association with the morning is dangerous, it's high pressure, high stakes. And I had to just look at, okay, well, what if I could take all that psychological pressure of waking up early and just learn to wake up early and actually enjoy it to make it an enjoyable experience first, right? So you do that for a while. I'll talk about that now in a second. And then your nervous system learns it's actually safe to get up. There's no psychological threat or there's no waiting judgments or assessments for me to pass or fail. And when it finally learns that you actually can eventually wake up in the morning and then be quite productive. But there's a phase you go through where you have to unlearn the threat that we've been teaching, previously teaching ourselves about it. So effectively what it looks like, how do you wake up early? How do you learn to wake up early? Well, people say that the thing is do it for 30 days, right? Really what they're saying, they're saying form a habit with that 21 days or 30 days, and you'll be able to do it then for the rest of your life. That's not true. That's not true. If you're still doing it with that sort of demands been placed on yourself for 30 days, even if you do manage to do it for 30 days, if the way you're relating to yourself and it hasn't changed, you'll go right back to it. You'll slide back eventually, right? Because that's bulldozing and it doesn't work. Really what will work is for 30 days. And there is something around the 30 day thing that makes sense. If you can create a morning routine for yourself without any high stakes, without any need to be productive or to be assessing yourself and make it a safe, enjoyable place for you to enter into as you wake up for 30 days, then you'll be able to maintain it. Okay. So you have to break the association with danger first, and then you'll be able to maintain it from then on. So what you do is pick whatever time it is, 6am, 7am, whenever you want to wake up early, and you create a routine for yourself in the morning that is not primarily, and a part of you won't like this because that voice inside is like, you have to hurry up. You have to do, do, do. You have to create a ritual or a morning routine. Some of these morning routines out there that is enjoyable and slow thread. Okay. And you do that for 30 days. So no demands, no self-improvement stuff necessarily. It's just whatever feels easy, whatever feels inviting, whatever feels like it's going to draw you out of your bed. I will want to go and do that thing. That sounds enjoyable. And that could be low energy. It could be you do something nice for yourself. You go and take a coffee. You, God forbid you scroll on your phone, even right. You, you go watch something on TV. You take a walk. Doesn't matter what it is, as long as you don't see it as self-improvement or productivity driven. Right. So you're now you're actually doing, now you're actually trying to wake up early. You're not trying to wake up early and be productive. Okay. So what you'll, you, your nervous system will realize is that's a safe place psychologically for me to go and stay in. I'm not going to be judged or pressured. Think of it this way. I remember one of the insights I had was when I was struggling with this was what, when in my life was I able to wake up early? And one of the examples came was Christmas. Why was I able to wake up early on Christmas when I was a kid? Think about it because there was no pressure. Not only was there no pressure, there was something enjoyable waiting for me in the morning. So that's kind of the attitude you want to take here. Get out of the idea that it's this self-improvement thing. Get out of the idea that there's something wrong with you. Or typically there's this huge amount of people have this sense of there's something wrong with my brain. There's something wrong with my body, my physiology. It's just not wired for this. I think it's much more about relating to yourself differently. It's more of a relational problem. I view pretty much everything in terms of a relational problem, how you're relating to yourself. So if you can look at, well, it's a bit of a cliche, but what if you're actually kind to yourself? What if you stop treating yourself like you're a machine? Now, what does this lead to in the end? Well, again, that voice will be in there saying you don't have time for all that self kindness and slowing down stuff. You need to hop out of bed and be on it. But if you look at it this way, you might say to yourself, okay, well, maybe I'll try it and I'll give it, I'll give myself half an hour to do something nice for myself. Well, I would challenge you there to give yourself more time than that initially. Because I've seen it as an example, right? Someone would say, okay, I'm going to wake up at 6am and I'm going to do all these things, self improvement things, and that doesn't work. That person would stay in bed until 1030. Right? So if that's what's been happening, why not use six until 1030? Right? You've not lost anything anyway, to instead of doing self improvement, do something nice for yourself, do something inviting, do something compassionate, something loving for yourself. Now, okay, you haven't done all the productivity things that you wanted to do, but you are up, you're out of bed, and you're learning that there's nothing wrong with my body, I'm perfectly capable of doing this. Yeah, you didn't do all this stuff. But you got the benefit of learning that this is possible for me. And after a while, when your nervous system learns that that's a safe place, it'll relax and you will be able to occasionally add in things that are more productive, maybe, right? But for a period of time, when you're learning this, there has to be using that time, you've not lost anything is what I'm saying, right? You can't lose with this, compared to the way you've been trying this before. Okay, maybe you're not getting the productivity stuff, but you are getting the benefits of learning that I can do this, I can wake up early. So challenge yourself to not just say, I'm going to give myself 15 minutes, half an hour of doing something nice, and then I'm going to get on it. If that feels be honest with yourself about if that feels like, well, yeah, but 15 minutes, but then on it, your nervous system might still feel challenged or threatened by that. So the challenge here is not to add more stuff, it's to remove to give yourself more time, more relaxation and more enjoyable time than you feel kind of comfortable with. That's the challenge. If you can say that's a bit that looks a little bit excessive, that looks a little bit indulgent there. That's probably closer to what you need than 30 minutes or something, right? Something really quick. So that, in my opinion, and my direct experience is how you become an early riser. All this stuff about getting up and doing stretches and taking a cold shower. And God knows what else leaving the phone across the room. All those things. Yes, the phone thing can be helpful. The alarm can be useful, right? Because there can be a brain fog thing. Okay, maybe leave the phone across the room if you need to, or do whatever that is. But it's about what happens after you get up. What are you going to do? How are you going to relate to yourself? Are you treating yourself like you should be this thing that's just switched on immediately? Well, that's not an effective strategy, in my opinion. So I want you to, if you've struggled, if you're already a riser and you've got no issues with this, you're fine. This video isn't for you. This is for people who have been stuck in this pattern for a long time. And they've tried because they've all tried it. People have tried all those other things and they don't work. So if you've been one of those people and you've tried that, this is an invitation to try a loving approach for 30 days, right? You can try it for 30 days if you notice. If you're still struggling with it, fair enough. I doubt you will be because I do think the problem here is a relational problem. So try that. And if you do try it, I want you to leave a comment below so that other people can say David was right or David was full of it. Or you can come back and say, yeah, that self-compassion stuff didn't work. I had all these lovely things planned for myself in the morning and I still didn't get out of bed. Fair enough. But my experience is you will get out of bed when the danger is taken out of the equation, when the threat is taken out of it. Because the truth is two things. You do want to wake up early because it is helpful. It does give you more control in your life in a sense of stability and predictability. Developmental psychologists call that the safe base, right? I have a predictability in my life. There's nothing wrong with that. That makes you more prone to be creative and do spontaneous things. It sounds a bit disciplined and structured, but it isn't. It gives you much more freedom and spontaneity in your life. So it's a very, very useful thing. So it's helpful in that regard. I can't remember the other point I was going to make, but the benefits are real, okay, for doing this. And once you realize that there's no danger in it, it'll happen. I do believe it will happen. Oh yeah, sorry. The other thing I was going to say was you actually are a natural early riser. So you do want it, but actually you're naturally an early riser. Most of us think we're not because we've been bullying ourselves for so long and we've been conditioned to do it. We've been told that that's the way you should relate to yourself. And you actually over, the more you go down that path, the more you convince yourself, I must not really like this. I must really hate getting out of bed. You don't. Anyone with kids will tell you. Children, humans want to get up and get on with it. They want to go and think about children. What do they want to do? Why are they so good at it? They're not, they don't think to themselves, I have to do a God, there's a list. When they wake up in the morning, they're going to go watch cartoons. They're going to go play with your toys. They're going to go outside and walk around and play, right. Play is the way you'll get out of bed. So, and yeah, you can still be productive, but at the start, start treating it as how am I relating to myself? How can I start to, to take all the fear and the pressure out of all of this that I've been told, you know, that our culture is so about being on all the time. So if there's any questions you have, leave them below. But I think that's a useful strategy and one that I would highly recommend you try if you've struggled with this. My information is below my new book. The link for it is below. Check it out if you're interested and thanks for being with me. Take care of yourself. Bye bye.