10 Ways You Can Be A Successful Early Riser

The average person sleeps about 8-9 hours a day. Now, just imagine for a second how much more exciting and successful your life could be if you would gain 3 additional hours of valuable time every single day.

Imagine, getting up at 5AM without being tired and buzzing with energy throughout the entire day.

In only one year, you would gain almost 1100 hours or 45 days.

What would you do with all that extra time?

You could take your business to the next level, you could learn a foreign language, you could spend more time with your family…

But, isn’t it terribly difficult to get up early every day?

Sure, forming a new habit is always somewhat challenging at the beginning. You may be struggling a bit the first few days. After one week it is already much easier and after 3-4 weeks you will have created a new habit and it surely won’t be a big deal any longer.

So, yes, you probably will be tired for about a week. But, your body gets used to the new rhythm and to having less sleep very quickly – much quicker than you may think.

And you know, it is not so much the quantity of sleep you get, but much more the quality of your sleep that really counts.

Several years ago, I was sleeping almost 9 hours a day. And still, several times during the day I felt very tired. Now, I’m sleeping only 6 hours a day and I’m feeling much fresher and much more energized.

Here is the simple formula to greatly improve the quality of your sleep and to make getting up at 5AM really easy:

1: Change your beliefs about getting up early

Most people believe that they need 8 or 9 hours of sleep a day to “function” properly. I know from my experience and from the experience of many other people, that 6 hours is absolutely enough.

Re-condition your mind and tell yourself that after a short period of adaptation you will be feeling absolutely great with only 6 hours of sleep a day and that it is NOT a big deal at all to get up at 5AM.

2: Don’t eat several hours before going to sleep

I recommend, you don’t eat anything after 7PM. Also, avoid drinking coffee, black tea or alcohol 6-7 hours before going to sleep.

If you eat before going to sleep, additional energy will be required by your digestive system, the quality of your sleep will suffer and you will wake up tired in the morning.

3. You need a good reason to get up early

Think about why you would like to have more time in your life. What drives and motivates you? This will help you to get up early.

I also recommend you write a task list for the following day and you define what task(s) you will tackle first thing in the morning. If you get up early and then you don’t know what to do, there is a “risk” that you just go back to bed.

4: Calm your mind before going to bed

Make it a habit to meditate or relax 20-30 minutes before going to bed. Don’t work or watch TV just before going to bed. If you do that, your mind keeps on running, it will take you longer to fall asleep, your sleep won’t be as deep and relaxed as it should be and you will be tired the next day.

5: Make a firm decision to get up at 5AM and turn it into an exciting challenge

Before falling asleep, tell yourself to get up at 5AM – no matter what! Visualize yourself having a deep, relaxing and energizing good night’s sleep and getting out of bed at 5AM feeling refreshed and excited to start the day.

That way, you condition your subconscious mind and getting up early will be much easier.

Make “getting up at 5AM” an exciting challenge. Most people won’t even try their entire life, many of those who try give up after only a few days… Yes, getting up early is a habit mostly used by highly successful people.

Will you succeed? Of course you will!

6: Don’t Snooze

I know, it’s tempting to snooze when the alarm clock rings, but it only makes your challenge of getting up early more difficult. You snooze once, the next day maybe twice, then you stay half an hour longer…

Don’t think, don’t negotiate, don’t try to find any reasons why it would not be a problem to stay a few minutes longer… just get up, just do it!

You can even practice this behavior during the day: Lie down, set your alarm clock to ring in 5 minutes, relax and pretend you are sleeping… and as soon as the alarm goes off, tell yourself: “Time to get up, I’m looking forward to another exciting day…” – and just get out of bed.

7: Put your alarm clock out of reach

If the temptation to snooze is too strong, put the alarm clock further away from your bed so that you have no other choice than getting out of bed to switch off the alarm.

8: Time to fully wake up

Ok, you just got out of your bed, but probably you are not fully awake yet. Open the window and take 5-10 deep breaths of fresh air. I also recommend some light physical exercises for at least 10-15 minutes to fully oxygenate your body and to get ready for the day.

9: Be proud of your achievement

Less than 1% of the population gets up at 5AM and typically it’s only the high achievers and the super successful people. So, take a minute, enjoy your achievement and be proud of yourself.

This may sound a bit childish, but it’s really important. Having this feeling of accomplishment will provide you with additional motivation and it will make getting up early easier for you the following days.

10: Make sure your nutrition is healthy and balanced

The quality of your nutrition has a huge influence on your energy level. The higher the quality of your nutrition, the more energy you will have and the less sleep you will need.

I recommend you buy a good book on healthy nutrition. Here are some basic tips to give you some ideas: Eat more fruits and vegetables (ideally organic), drink enough water. Avoid alcohol, fast food, junk food, too much coffee or black tea… Reduce your consumption of sugar, unsaturated fatty acids, meat… as much as possible

Trust me, it’s not as difficult as you may think and it gets easier every day

The Conclusion:

Once again, getting up early will probably be somewhat challenging at the beginning, but it gets easier every day. You just have to push through the first 7-10 days. This takes some discipline and will power, but it is well worth it.

Yes, you will be tired at the beginning, but after a week or so you will realize having more and more energy during the day and feeling less and less tired.

Our goal here is to be buzzing with energy throughout the entire day while sleeping less. There is no point in getting up at 5AM if afterwards you are tired for the rest of the day.

Some people recommend to make getting up early a slow and incremental process, where you get up 15 minutes earlier every 1-2 weeks.

When I decided to get up earlier, I immediately went from about 8AM to 6AM and about a year later I decided to give 5AM a try and it worked quite well for me.

But, you can experiment with both approaches.

This Is More Effective Than Your New Year’s Resolution

We are creatures of habit. Unfortunately most people never decide how they want to live. As a result they get taken wherever the wind blows.

But not Addicted2Success readers, you want more. You live consciously. You decide how you want to live and what you want to have. You build the habits conducive to the good life.

Aristotle famously said:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”.

Unfortunately, most people never set goals, or challenge themselves. Year after year on December 31st whilst jacked up on alcohol, in the midst of self-pity they decide to set some new year’s resolutions. Their excitement may last for a few days, or even two weeks, however, because the resolution was formed on alcohol and emotion they rarely see this through.

How do I know? Because I was one of those frustrated individuals on every January the 15th. I decided 9 years ago to no longer be flimsy about my approach to life. I realised that if you don’t consciously choose the direction of your life, you will most likely go with your emotions. This is the last thing you want to do. Success will rarely come on this path.

When you decide the life you want, you start to think about your daily, seemingly unimportant actions. To the onlooker what you are doing seems irrelevant and redundant; you know that those conscious daily actions will become habits.

Your habits will naturally draw your dream life into existence. Leaving that onlooker dumfounded.

“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so masterful at all.” – Michelangelo

Habits and the examined life is something I treasure greatly. About 10 years ago I was, well, a bit of a no-hoper. I was failing school, university was a no go and I lacked any kind of direction. That was until I read my first personal development book. 100s of books later, I’m now my own best-selling personal development author.

It wasn’t just knowledge that awakened me to my greatness. It was the action that succeeded it, that truly made the difference. I started doing 30 day challenges. With the sole purpose of building good, constructive habits that put me on course for the life I knew I was capable of.

In 30 days you can remove a vice or learn a new skill. The time frame holds you accountable to see the challenge through. The main benefit I found from challenging myself was the increase in discipline. Where I was disciplining one area of my life, all the other areas of my life became more structured and productive because I was motivated from honing my mind.

Over the last 10 years I’ve done various challenges such as quit meat, stopped consuming sugary drinks, started writing a book an hour a day and quit masturbating (it was hard – pun intended).

You really can use this simple tool to improve your life drastically. Before you get started ask yourself some questions like:

• What area of my life can I improve?
• What could I give up that would make me happier/healthier?
• What would excite me for 30 days?

From your answers you should have an idea where you want to start.

I have failed many times, so let me give you 5 tips to help you successfully complete your first 30 day challenge.

1. Know your success criteria

If you don’t know where you’re going you won’t know when you get there. By clearly defining your outcome and what you need to do (or don’t do) daily, you will be setting yourself up for success.

When I first started doing the challenges I would have a loose idea but never clearly define it. This caused many slip-ups, especially when I was quitting sugary drinks.

2. Nothing wrong with failing

Yep, it’s true. There is absolutely nothing wrong with failing a challenge. Mistakes happen, what matters is you learn from it and start again. Try not to leave it too long before you start the 30 days again, maximum of 3 days.

Life has a funny habit of getting in the way. Then it’s 2 months later and we never started again. See through what you committed to completing, after all there was a reason you started.

3. Visualise yourself succeeding 

Let’s say you are doing 5am wake ups for the 30 days. For a night owl this is an unbelievably hard challenge – I know I’ve done it. What helped me was visualising myself hearing the alarm clock, waking up (and being happy about it) and getting straight out of bed to make a coffee. You can do this daily, weekly or once. The more frequent you do it, the more impact it will have.

When we visualise a better future we are creating a neural pathway in our brain. This pathway will trick your mind into accepting this as truth.

4. Do one challenge at a time

It’s easy to get carried away. I’m still struggling to keep to one at a time. Now I just want change, hopefully you will too. If that’s the case it’s easy to want to do multiple challenges at once. The issue here is that we only have a finite amount of will power each day.

Some of these challenges can be very trying. To start with just pick one that will enrich your life.

Then after your first challenge, consider picking two that compliment each other if you have the desire to do more than one.

5. Reward yourself

It’s important to reward yourself. You may get disheartened at times throughout the challenge. Energy is low, will power fading and you are starting to forget why you even began.

It’s important to reward yourself each week with something that is meaningful to you. That may be your favourite meal, a hot bath or drinking with your buddies.

Conclusion

Most of my good habits that are building success in my life right now have come from doing these 30 day challenges.

By challenging yourself you will increase your motivation levels, clarity for your goals and be building success habits that will propel you towards your dreams.

So many people in life don’t try or at best set New Year’s resolutions, but you’re different.

Challenge yourself, I dare you!

How The Power of Focus Can Lead You To Success

How do you wake up in the morning?

Do you jump out of bed and look forward to starting the day?

Do you wake up in the morning and you did not want to get out of bed, hear the alarm clock ring and you press the snooze button over and over again until you are forced to get up and go to the bathroom?

Or wake up even more tired?

With the busy life style that we lead today, most of the time human beings are operating on autopilot, seldom do we stop and ask ourselves essential questions.

In addition we are being constantly bombarded with information (breaking news, whatsapp messages, tweets, emails…) and we are reacting to the situations, that our lives are being controlled by external environment that we have forgotten simple concepts of life.

What do you think about when you wake up?

Do you think about all the things you need to do, the list is endless and you feel overwhelmed before you get out of bed.

Or

You wake up in the morning, thinking about all the challenges that you are facing in your life, think about all the critics that people have given you, even the areas where you have not succeeded. Then you feel discouraged and de-motivated.

Or

Think about what is missing in our lives not enough money, no big title (Director, CEO) after your name or you do not have a flashy car and so on.

When faced with a problem what do you do?

Spend time discussing and analyzing the problem in great depth and then defining it in unsolvable terms?

Or do you find out who is to blame?

Our thoughts

Human beings think between 50,000- 70,000 thoughts a day (mental chatter, images or movies playing in our head) 95% of these thoughts are repetitive of previous days and 80% of the habitual thoughts are negative.

In order to achieve success we need to learn how to focus these thoughts on what we want.

Story

One day the Zen master wanted to show his students a new technique of shooting an arrow. He told his students to cover his eyes with a cloth and then he shot his arrow. When he opened his eyes, he saw the target with no arrow in it and when he looked at his students, they looked embarrassed because their teacher had missed.

The Zen master asked them, “What lesson do you think I intend to teach you all today?” They answered, “We thought you would show us how to shoot at the target without looking.” The Zen master said, “No, I taught you that if you want to be successful in life, don’t forget the target. You have to keep an eye on the target, otherwise you may miss a good opportunity in life.” They looked at each other, impressed with the lesson.

The moral of the story is we need to consistently focus on what we want and we need to realize that :

• What thoughts we focus on we FEEL, therefore our thoughts have a direct effect on our emotions
• What we focus on and feel we attract in our lives. Our destiny is consistently shaped by our thoughts.

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” - Joshua J. Marine

Tips: How to control the FOCUS of your thoughts

When faced with a challenge or a problem spend 5% of your time discussing the problem, 95% of your time finding innovative and creative solutions. Remember “The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude to the problem”

Ensure that you do the following on a daily basis:

Learn something new on a daily basis. Learning does not end when you obtain your degree or leave university. The journey of life is a learning process, successful people converted their failures into stepping stones by learning from it and moving on. When you try something and it does not work out, do not despair, all you have to do is find a better way to do it.

Enjoy – Ensure that on a daily basis that you are able to enjoy and have fun. You have the ability to create memorable moments on a daily basis. Remember

“life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but how many moments that take our breath away”

Appreciate – As soon as we develop a sense of appreciation (gratitude), we are shifting our focus of thoughts on what we have and what we have been able to achieve.

Reflect on your life. “An unexamined life is not worth living” Socrates. Reflection allows for self assessment, checking that you are on the right track. Reflection gives you time to monitor your thoughts and actions, to check whether they are in alignment with your purpose in life.

Negative thoughts have a way of coming when you least expect it to. People spend too much time thinking about what happen to them in the past or the possibility of negative things happening to them in the future.

To get rid of these negative thoughts ask yourself one QUESTION “If this was my LAST day alive, what would I Love to do..” then go and do it.

Do not postpone living.