Habits - Wake Up With a Win

Wake Up With a Win

There is a super simple trick for initiating that virtuous cycle. To do that, all you have to do is wake up when you said you would. So much of success in life is just maintaining momentum in the right direction. Which is why, it’s so important that you start the day with positive momentum. The easiest way you can do that is by giving yourself an easy win before you even get out of bed in the morning. In that moment when your alarm has just gone off, and you’re groggy, you’re half asleep, and you’re faced with one of the most important decisions of the entire day. Will you do as you said you would, hit the alarm and get up? Or, are you going to break the promise you made to yourself, and hit snooze? This might seem like a small decision. You’re probably thinking, what’s the big deal? Another 5 minutes isn’t really going to change anything. To that, I say, yes, yes it will. It changes the most important thing, which is, are you the type of person who shows up and does what you say or aren’t you? It’s that simple. Only one person in the entire world is even going to know what decision you made in that moment. But it also happens to be the only person whose opinion of you matters. Yourself. Your self-esteem is the reputation you have with yourself. When you break the promises you make to yourself, such as, I’m going to wake up at this time, or I’m going to hit the gym three times this week, or I’m going to make a 100 cold calls today, whatever it is, when you don’t follow through, you subconsciously degrade the opinion you have of yourself. You stop setting as ambitious of goals. You lower your standards. You stop taking the actions which would lead you to success. Because deep down, in your heart of hearts, you don’t believe you have what it takes. Because you couldn’t even get out of bed in the morning when you said you would. To clarify, I’m not saying you need to wake up at 5:00 a.m. or compromise your sleep in any way. The key here is to make a decision the night before about when you’re going to wake up and then follow through with that. If you say, I’m going to wake up at 9:00 AM, great. Get up at 9:00 AM. If that’s 5, then cool, that’s 5. Also, I just want to point out here, if you use the snooze button as part of your process, that’s okay. Just don’t compromise the process. For example, if you know that the alarm is going to go off at 5:30, but you plan to hit the snooze three times and be out of bed by 6, that’s fine. But when 6:00 comes around, you better not hit that snooze button a fourth time or you’re going to be starting your day behind the eight ball with a loss, which is going to make our third habit way harder than it already is.