3385: [Part 2] How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off by Steve Pavlina on Better Morning Routines

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[00:01:00] This is Optimal Health Daily. How to get up right away when your alarm goes off. Part 2 by Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com. And I'm Dr. Neal Malik, your very own personal narrator. Hey there and welcome back to Optimal Health Daily where I simply read to you from the best health and fitness blogs for free. I cover fitness, nutrition, stress management, weight management, and lots more. This is kind of like an audiobook. But with articles from a bunch of different authors.

[00:01:29] And always with permission from the sites. And always with a bit of my commentary at the end. Now, before we get to it. Today's post is part 2 from yesterday. So if you're new here or skipping around, I'd recommend listening to yesterday's episode first. But if you're all caught up, let's jump right in and hear part 2 and continue optimizing your life. How to get up right away when your alarm goes off.

[00:01:58] Part 2 by Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com. 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? The same way you learned any other repeatable skill. You practice until it becomes rote. Eventually, your subconscious will take over and run the script on autopilot.

[00:02:27] This is going to sound really stupid, but it works. Practice getting up as soon as your alarm goes off. That's right. Practice. But don't do it in the morning. Do it during the day when you're wide awake. Go to your bedroom and set the room conditions to match your desired wake-up time as best you can. Darken the room or practice in the evening just after sunset so it's already dark. If you sleep in pajamas, put on your pajamas.

[00:02:54] If you brush your teeth before bed, then brush your teeth. If you take off your glasses or contacts when you sleep, then take those off too. Set your alarm for a few minutes ahead. Lie down in bed just like you would if you were sleeping and close your eyes. Get into your favorite sleep position. Imagine it's early in the morning, a few minutes before your desired wake-up time. Pretend you're actually asleep. Visualize a dream location or just zone out as best you can.

[00:03:25] Now, when your alarm goes off, turn it off as fast as you can. Then, take a deep breath to fully inflate your lungs and stretch your limbs out in all directions for a couple of seconds, like you're stretching during a yawn. Then sit up, plant your feet on the floor, and stand up. Smile a big smile. Then, proceed to do the very next action you'd like to do upon waking. For me, it's getting dressed. Now, shake yourself off,

[00:03:54] restore the pre-waking conditions, return to bed, reset your alarm, and repeat. Do this over and over and over until it becomes so automatic that you run through the whole ritual without thinking about it. If you have to sub-vocalize any of the steps, that's to say, if you hear a mental voice coaching you on what to do, you're not there yet. Feel free to devote several sessions over a period of days to this practice. Think of it like doing sets and repetitions at the gym.

[00:04:24] Do one or two sets per day at different times, and perhaps three to ten repetitions each time. Yes, it will take some time to do this, but that time is nothing compared to how much time you'll save in the long run. A few hours of practice today can save you hundreds of hours each year. With enough practice, I can't give you an accurate estimate of how long it will take because it will be different for everyone, you'll condition a new physiological response to the sound of your alarm.

[00:04:54] When your alarm goes off, you'll get up automatically without even thinking about it. The more you run the pattern, the stronger it will become. Eventually, it will be uncomfortable not to get up when your alarm goes off. It will feel like putting on your pants with the opposite leg first. You can also practice mentally if you're good at visualizing. Mental practice is faster, but I think it's best to run through the whole thing physically. There are subtle details you might miss if you only rehearse mentally,

[00:05:24] and you want your subconscious to capture the real flavor of the experience. So, if you do use mental practice, at least do it physically the first few times. The more you practice your wake-up ritual, the deeper you'll ingrain this habit into your subconscious. Alarm goes off. Get up immediately. Alarm goes off. Get up immediately. Alarm goes off. Get up immediately. Once this becomes a habit, you won't have to worry about daytime practice.

[00:05:54] This type of habit is self-reinforcing. You only have to go through the conditioning period once. Then, you're basically set for life until you decide to change it. Even if you fall out of the habit for some reason, like you take an extended vacation in a different time zone, you'll be able to return to it more easily. Think of it like muscle memory. Once you've grooved in the pattern, it will still be there, even if you let some weeds grow over it. Any behavior pattern you experience when your alarm goes off

[00:06:23] will become self-reinforcing if you repeat it enough times. Chances are that you already have a well-established wake-up ritual, but it may not be the one you want. The more you repeat your existing pattern, the more you condition it into your subconscious. Every time you fail to get up when your alarm goes off, that becomes ever more your default physiological response. If you want to change that behavior, you'll need to undertake a conscious reconditioning program, such as the one I described earlier.

[00:06:54] Beating yourself up about your bad wake-up habits will not work. In fact, you'll just condition these mental beatings as part of the very routine you're trying to change. Not only will you not get up when your alarm goes off, but you'll also automatically beat yourself up about it. How lame is that? Do you really want to keep running that dumb pattern for the rest of your life? That's exactly what will happen if you don't condition a more empowering pattern. For good or not, your habits will make or break you.

[00:07:23] Once you establish your desired wake-up ritual, I recommend you stick with it every single day. Seven days a week, 365 days a year. And for the first 30 days, set your alarm for the same time every day. Once the habit is established, then you can vary your wake-up times or occasionally go without the alarm if you want to sleep in. But until then, it's best to keep the pattern very tight. That way, it will become your default behavior and you'll be able

[00:07:53] to stray from time to time without serious risk of deconditioning it. I'm confident that once you establish this habit, you'll absolutely love it. I consider this to be one of my most productive habits. It saves me hundreds of hours a year and it keeps paying dividends day after day. I also found this habit extremely valuable during my polyphasic sleep experiment. Think about it. If you oversleep just 30 minutes a day, that's at least 180 hours a year. And if you oversleep

[00:08:22] 60 minutes a day, that's 365 hours a year, the equivalent of 9 40-hour weeks. That's a lot of time. Now, I don't know about you, but I can think of more creative things to do with that time than lying in bed longer than I need to. I encourage you to give this method a try. I know it seems silly to practice getting out of bed, but hey, what if it works? What if you knew with total certainty that if you set your alarm for a certain time, you would absolutely get up at that time no matter what?

[00:08:52] There's no reason you can't create that for yourself over the next few days. Practice makes permanent. You just listened to part 2 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.

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[00:10:52] Dr. Neal Malik here with my commentary. Researchers have actually found that this type of practice, the type of practice Steve was describing in today's article, is the way to go when you're trying to build habits. You have to constantly repeat the behavior so that it feels like it's automatic when the time comes. Now, I am not a morning person. As I mentioned in my commentary yesterday, I was the type who will hit snooze on my alarm and fall right back to sleep. And if I didn't fall back asleep,

[00:11:22] I would just lay there and take my time getting out of bed. Now, something that I found really helpful, but something that Steve didn't quite mention, but said you wouldn't have to do, is putting my alarm all the way across the room. So, if you're not able to make practice perfect, just as Steve described in these last two posts, something that you might try is putting your phone all the way across the room, if your phone is your alarm, of course. So, if that means

[00:11:52] I'm using my phone as my alarm, I don't use it right before I go to bed, and instead, I place it somewhere else in the room, somewhere I'll be forced to get out of bed to shut it off. Once I'm up and out of bed, it's very unlikely I'll get back into bed and get under the covers. Instead, once I'm up, I'm heading right to the sink to wash my face and brush my teeth. Plus, the added advantage of putting my phone all the way across the room is that I'm not staring at it before bed. Remember, the light from our cell phones

[00:12:21] can trick our brains into thinking it's still daytime and make it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep. So, the ideal would be to follow Steve's advice. Incorporate some of that perfect practice, just like he described. If that's a bit difficult for you right now, try and keep your alarm and your cell phone across the room before going to bed and see if that helps get your body moving in the morning. All right, that'll do it for today. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening every day. I hope you have

[00:12:50] a great rest of your day and of course, I'll see you back here tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.