How to Get Up Early in The Morning:

6 Tips to Help You Get Out of Bed

In this article, I want to share with you a few tips that will help you get up early in the morning. 

Why would you want to wake up early? 

You’ve surely heard that the early bird catches the worm and that many successful people get up early in the morning, for example, Tim Cook, Kevin O’Leary, Jack Dorsey and many others. 

Getting up early (or earlier) in the morning has several benefits. 

a) It’s a great way of strengthening your self-discipline. 

b) You don’t have to rush in the morning

c) You’ll claim back some extra time in your day

d) You’ll manage to get more done

Before I dive into the tips, I want to debug one belief you may have. 

“I can’t get myself to get up in the morning. I’m just not that kind of person.”

You totally can. 

When you’re going on holidays or have to be at work early for some reason, you set your alarm, get up early and don’t even question it. 

The difference is that you have a good enough reason to get up.

That’s all there is to it. 

So, here they are. 

6 tips to help you get up early in the morning. 

1) Don’t cut down on sleep.

If you decide to be getting up early, make sure you still get enough sleep. Somewhere between 6-8 hours is optimal for most people. 

If you’ve already figured out what your optimal sleeping hours are, then when you’re making changes to your wake up time, make sure you shift your bedtime as well.

There is no point in getting up early if it turns you into a zombie. 

2) Set the intention to get up early

This tip may seem little woo-woo but bear with me. 

I’ve observed that when I set the intention in the evening to get up at a specific time, I naturally wake up around that time. By setting an intention I mean: I tell to myself or write down very clearly “Tomorrow I’m going to wake up at 6 am”

Don’t ask me how it works. I believe there is a biological explanation to it. If you know how it works, leave me a comment below. 

Try it for yourself. As you’re lying in bed just focus for a moment on wanting to wake up at a specific time. 

What also makes a big difference is to visualize yourself getting up early in the morning (joyfully and with ease) a few times a day.  

Use the power of your mind. 

You can read more about how to create the perfect morning routine here. 

3) Make gradual progress towards your wake uptime

If you’re used to getting up at 8 or 9am and want to start getting up at 6 am, I suggest that you make a gradual shift towards it, rather than all at once. 

Move your wake up time by 15-30 minutes every week until you get to your desired wake up time. It makes the transition a little easier. 

4) Have a good reason to get up (have a plan and WHY)

Getting up early is a great habit to develop. 

But before you decide to do so, make sure you are clear on WHY you’re doing it and what you’ll do with the extra time. 

If you don’t have anything to do or to look forward to, you probably won’t give up the comfort of your bed when the alarm goes off. Why getting up early for nothing if you can get extra sleep? 

Spend some time planning how you’ll use the extra time. 

Make sure it’s really worth it. Invest the time in yourself, your growth, hobbies, health and fitness, or anything that excites you. 

Read books, workout, do yoga, meditate, whatever you’d love to do but normally don’t have time for. 

5) Tips to help you get out of bed

This will be a quick list of methods that will help you get out of bed

• Put your alarm as far away from the bed as possible. If it forces you to get up to switch it off, that’s perfect. 
• Use smart alarm apps on your phone. There are many alarm apps with various games or challenges you need to complete for the alarm to stop. These are really helpful. Check out what apps are available for your phone and try a few out. 
• What helped me in the past was to just sit up on my bed for a bit and stretch. It’s enough to get my body and brain going to actually get up.  
• Tidy up the place where you’ll spend the extra morning time. It’s really demotivating to get up into a mess. 
• Prepare the things you will need or use in the morning the night before. Maybe it’s setting up things for breakfast or getting your journal and reading ready. It will make you look forward to it a bit more. 

6) Use accountability

Having someone holding you accountable for your commitments always helps. There are many ways how you can create accountability. 

• First one, of course, you can get a coach who can hold you accountable. I’ve had clients who were checking in with me in the morning. 
• You can find yourself an accountability partner who is also working on getting up early, and you can check in with each other or even have a quick call right after waking up where you confirm you’re up and perhaps also share your plan for the day. 
• You can join one of many facebook groups that are out there and post your goal there as well as confirm each day that you got up as planned. 
• If you’re really serious about it, one extreme and equally effective way of being held accountable is that you transfer, say £1000, to someone you trust and ask them for the next 100 days to pay you back £10 every time you prove to them you got up early. If you don’t, they can keep the £10. 

Use accountability. Be creative. 

So, that’s it for now. Try these tips and see how they work for you. 

Getting up early is just a matter of habit. 

Once you get used to it, it will be just as easy as getting up at any other time. 

Do you have some other tips that have worked for you? 

Share them in the comment. 

If you need the support of a life coach to hold you accountable and help make progress, contact me and let’s schedule the initial discovery session and find out if we’d be the right match.