Do you find it hard to get up early in the morning? Have you tried everything and nothing works for you? Don’t despair, in this article we bring you 12 psychological strategies to get up early..
As you know, a good way to get up early is to get a good night’s sleep. To do this, we must apply a series of sleep hygiene strategies. We explain what these and some other strategies to get up early consist of.
- Recommended article: “12 ways to fight insomnia effectively”.
12 psychological strategies to get up early
The psychological strategies to wake up early that we bring you include measures related to the environment, our body, stimuli, routines….
These strategies include different aspects that we can control and modulate so that we do not have difficulties when waking up early. It is important that you try to apply them every day so that your body gets used to a series of routines and associates them with sleeping early and waking up early. In other words, this can also be trained!
Let’s see what these strategies consist of below.
1. Maintain good sleep hygiene
The first of the psychological strategies for getting up early encompasses a series of measures, typical of sleep hygiene. The most important thing if we want to get up early is to sleep well and rest properly.
And what does sleep hygiene consist of? It consists of all those measures and strategies that help us to get a quality sleep, through which we rest properly.through which we rest properly. It involves taking care of our sleep, and for this, taking care of our environment when we go to sleep.
Thus, we consider this to be the most important point to deal with if we want to get up early, since by sleeping well, we will rest well and get up with less difficulty. Some of the measures included in sleep hygiene, which can also be psychological strategies to get up early, are:
1.1. Avoid caffeine.
The first measure involves avoiding caffeine before going to sleep (the ideal is not to drink caffeine after 7 p.m.). While it is true that there are people who drink caffeine and can sleep so peacefully, if we stop consuming it in the afternoon we will reduce the risk of possible insomnia. This will make us sleep better.
1.2. Maintain an ideal temperature
The environment is very important for a good rest. Among the environmental factors we find the temperature; this must be adequate, since to sleep well we should not be cold or hot.
1.3. Go to sleep at the same time of the day
Ideally, we should have a timetable for going to bed; it does not have to be the same time every day (although that would be ideal), but simply go to bed at the same time (for example between 22.30 and 23h).
1.4. Do not do a stimulating activity before going to bed.
If we do sport just before going to bed, or any other stimulating activity, it is very likely that we will find it difficult to sleep when we get into bed, as we will be over-activated.
Many people think that if they do sport they will be more tired and that will facilitate sleep; however, it is not quite so, and it depends a lot on the time at which the sport is done (if it is done the hour before going to sleep, bad sign), the person and the type of sport. So let’s keep an eye on it if we want to sleep satisfactorily (and as a consequence, we have to get up early).
However, it is worth mentioning that doing physical activity during the day will help you rest better, since your body will “get tired” and fall asleep when it sees the bed.
1.5. Establish a routine
The next of the psychological strategies for getting up early, within sleep hygiene, is to establish a bedtime routine. This involves following a series of steps in the hours (or minutes) before going to bed: for example, having dinner, listening to relaxing music, drinking a glass of milk, turning off the lights, getting into bed, etc.
If we perform these actions at approximately the same time each day, our brain will associate these patterns with bedtime and this will facilitate sleep.
1.6. Only use the bed for sleeping
It is essential that our brain automatically associates our bed with sleep. This is a classical conditioning process (the association of stimuli and responses).
This can be trained, and is as easy as doing nothing else in bed but sleeping (or having sex). This includes not eating in bed, not watching TV series, etc.
1.7. Take care of your dinner
Another of the psychological strategies to get up early that we propose is to have dinner two hours before going to sleep, little and light. Large dinners will not let you rest well (they will make it difficult for you to have a good night’s sleep); in addition, you should give yourself that two-hour margin for your body to digest.
2. Calculate the hours you will sleep
Another psychological strategy for getting up early is to get enough sleep (about eight hours). is to get enough sleep (about eight hours).. Resting well, as we said, will increase the likelihood that we wake up more easily and early.
If we go to sleep at 10 p.m., for example, and we have to get up early, at 6 a.m., we will have slept 8 hours, which is ideal. In short: go to bed early if you must/want to get up early.
3. Put the alarm clock away
If you are one of those people who find it difficult to get up, and especially to get up early, a good strategy is to, the night before, place the alarm clock far away from where we sleep (not on the bedside table). (not on the bedside table, for example).
The fact of having to get up in the morning to turn it off will make us at least make that effort and “clear our heads” minimally.
4. Play music when you wake up
We have talked a lot about measures to get a good night’s sleep and, as a result, to wake up more easily. But what about when we wake up? Another psychological strategy for waking up early is to play motivating (and a little loud) music just when we wake up.
It has to be music that we like, lively, and that “invites” us to get out of bed. If we activate our body and our energy, it will be easier to get out of bed.
5. Try a sleep app
It is a reality that nowadays there are mobile applications for almost everything. The same happens in the field of rest, so another tip we give you to get up early is to use an app to help you get up early.
Some of them are: “I can’t wake up!”, “Drive me awake” or “Wake up or die”.How do these apps work? Some of them, for example, require you to complete a series of activities to turn off the alarm (e.g. perform a numerical operation).