3384: [Part 1] How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off by Steve Pavlina on Better Morning Routines

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[00:00:30] This is Optimal Health Daily. How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off. Part 1 by Steve Pavlina of StevePavlina.com. And I'm Dr. Neal, your very own personal narrator. Hey there, happy Monday and welcome to another edition of OHD, where I read some of the best articles covering health and fitness, just like an audiobook. And always with a bit of my commentary at the end. Now don't forget, we have a bunch of shows where we read to you blogs for free.

[00:00:59] Just search for Optimal Living Daily to find all of them. Now, before I get to it, a quick reminder. Today's post is a bit longer than what I typically narrate. So whenever that happens, I'll read the first half today and finish it up for you tomorrow. So with that, let's get right to the first half as we optimize your life.

[00:01:22] How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off. Part 1 by Steve Pavlina of StevePavlina.com. When your alarm wakes you up in the morning, is it hard for you to get up right away? Do you find yourself hitting the snooze button and going right back to sleep? That used to be part of my daily awakening ritual too. When my alarm would blare its infernal noise, I'd turn the thing off right away.

[00:01:47] Then, under the cloak of that early morning brain fog, I'd slowly ponder whether or not I should actually get up. It's nice and warm under the covers. If I get up, it's going to be cold. That won't be too pleasant. Ah, I really should get up now. Come on, legs. Move. Go, legs, go. Hmm. That isn't how I move my legs, is it? They don't seem to be listening to me. I should go to the gym. Yeah. Hmm. I don't really feel like working out right now though.

[00:02:17] I haven't even had breakfast. Maybe I should have a muffin first. Banana nut. Now that's a good muffin. Maybe I'm trying to get myself up too early. I'm still sleepy, aren't I? Maybe getting up with an alarm is unnatural. Won't I function better with more sleep? I don't have to get up right this minute, do I? Surely I can relax another five minutes or so. The world isn't going to end if I don't get up right now. I'll bet my wife is toasty warm right now.

[00:02:45] She told me she hates it when I try to snuggle her at 6am. But so what? She loves me enough to forgive me, right? I know. I'll start massaging her back and shoulders first. She can't resist a good massage. Even so early in the morning. Then I'll transition to a head scratching. Yeah, that'll do it. And then slide right into the spoon position. Won't that be a pleasant way to start the day? I scoot my body over closer to my wife and sound asleep.

[00:03:14] Two hours later, me. What time is it? I don't even remember the alarm going off. That was a good snuggle though. Oh well, guess I'll have to skip exercise today. My wife. Why do you keep setting your alarm if you aren't going to get up when it goes off? Me. Oh, did you think that was my wake-up alarm? It's actually my snuggle alarm. Okay, so I wasn't really intending for it to be a snuggle alarm. I had intended to get up when it went off.

[00:03:42] But my foggy brain kept negotiating me right back to sleep. Fast forward to present day. My alarm goes off sometime between 4 and 5 a.m. Never later than 5 a.m. Even on weekends and holidays. I turn off the alarm within a few seconds. My lungs inflate with a deep breath of air. And I stretch my limbs out in all directions for about 2 seconds. Soon, my feet hit the floor. And I find myself getting dressed while my wife snoozes on.

[00:04:10] I go downstairs to grab a piece of fruit, pop into my home office to catch up on some emails, and then it's off to the gym at 5.15. But this time, there's no voice inside my head debating what I should do. It's not even a positive voice this time. It's just not there. The whole thing happens on autopilot, even before I feel fully awake mentally. I can't say it requires any self-discipline to do this every morning, because it's a totally conditioned response.

[00:04:38] It's like my conscious mind is just along for the ride, while my subconscious controls my body. When my alarm goes off each morning, I respond just like Pavlov's dogs. It would actually be harder for me to not get up when my alarm goes off. So how do you go from scenario 1 to scenario 2? First, let's consider the way most people tackle this problem, what I consider the wrong way. The wrong way is to try using your conscious willpower

[00:05:07] to get yourself out of bed each morning. That might work every once in a while, but let's face it, you're not always going to be thinking straight the moment your alarm goes off. You may experience what I call the fog of brain. The decisions you make in that state won't necessarily be the ones you'd make when you're fully conscious and alert. You can't really trust yourself, nor should you. If you use this approach, you're likely to fall into a trap. You decide to get up at a certain time in advance,

[00:05:36] but then you undo that decision when the alarm goes off. At 10pm, you decide it would be a good idea to get up at 5am, but at 5am, you decide it would be a better idea to get up at 8am. But let's face it, you know the 10pm decision is the one you really want implemented. If only you could get your 5am self to go along with it. Now some people, upon encountering this conundrum, will conclude that they simply need more discipline.

[00:06:04] And that's actually somewhat true, but not in the way you'd expect. If you want to get up at 5am, you don't need more discipline at 5am. You don't need better self-talk. You don't need two or three alarm clocks scattered around the room. And you don't need an advanced alarm that includes technology from NASA's astronauts' toilets. You actually need more discipline when you're fully awake and conscious. The discipline to know that you can't trust yourself to make intelligent, conscious decisions

[00:06:34] the moment you first wake up. You need the discipline to accept that you're not going to make the right call at 5am. Your 5am coach is no good, so you need to fire him. What's the real solution then? The solution is to delegate the problem. Turn the whole thing over to your subconscious mind. Cut your conscious mind out of the loop. Now, how do you do this? Hear that on tomorrow's episode.

[00:07:05] You just listened to part 1 of the post titled How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off by Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com and I'll be right back with my commentary. If you've been optimizing your diet, your protein intake, your sleep, you're already ahead of most people. But here's one thing most of us completely miss. The quality of the water we're drinking every single day. That's why I started using CovePure at home. It's a water purifier that sits right on your counter and plugs straight in.

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[00:09:33] do I jump immediately out of bed as soon as the alarm clock wakes me up. I'm definitely part of Steve's scenario number one. So what I would often do, switch the alarm off, lay in bed with my eyes closed for a few minutes trying not to fall back asleep but unable to get my body out of bed. Well, let me be honest, I would often fall back asleep and wake up 20 minutes later in a panic because now I'm running late. Now that was me in the past.

[00:10:02] I have found a technique that works pretty well for me and today's author, Steve Pavlina, is going to discuss some tips that both he and scientific studies have found to be helpful. Like, removing the conscious mind out of this whole equation. So, to make sure I don't step on Steve Pavlina's toes and give away what's going to be talked about tomorrow in part two of the post, I better stop my commentary right here and say that'll do it for another episode of Optimal Health Daily.

[00:10:32] Thank you so much for listening every day and sharing this show with others. Of course, I'll be back here tomorrow to finish up this post so I'll see you there where your optimal life awaits. You're welcome. in a minute. You're welcome. Thank you.