Greatly Improving Your Life with Better Sleep: A Dream Worth Waking up For (Part 4/4)

Sleep Secret to Success

This is something you’ve probably heard over and over again: successful people wake up early.

There is truth to this, but there’s much more to it as well.

Successful people have great reasons to wake up early. Many of them wake up easily and energetically because they are following and building their dreams.

If you want to wake up early and energized but are struggling to do so, there’s a good chance that you are unsure about your direction in life, you haven’t found something worth waking up for, or you’re not living your best life.

The good news is that the very act of waking up earlier can greatly aid you.
Regretfully, many believe that waking up early in the morning will not magically make you more successful.

While it does not guarantee success, it dramatically increases your chance of finding it. Waking up early in the morning might actually be one of the secret ingredients to success.

It all comes down to discipline and time.

Discipline

In the end, it’s not entirely due to the act itself; it actually involves mental fortitude, time management skills, and consistent improvement. Understandably, all those qualities are integral to success. And they all require discipline.

Waking up energized is hard. Not hitting the snooze button is hard. Not desperately reaching for that cup of coffee is hard. Learning to love Mondays is hard.

Overall, having great discipline is hard. That’s why simply achieving your objective (waking up early in the morning) is in and of itself a tremendous feat in the right direction—toward your dreams.

Time

As for time—it is the most important component of success because it is measurable. Time is the metric by which success is derived.

This is a fact: without adequate time, there can be no success. If you have more time, then you have more time to pursue your dreams and goals. If you have more time to pursue your dreams and goals, then you are more likely to be successful.

The value of time is clearly understood when it comes to investments (such as stocks). More time allows your investments to increase in value. And in this case, you are investing in yourself.

A plethora of benefits opens up to you simply if you have more time. Early mornings are conducive to minimal time drain and maximum productivity (as explained in Part 2 and Part 3), thereby giving you more time.

Simply put, with more time, you will be able to chase your ambitions or at least figure out the general direction of your life.

Sure, you might not know what the hell you want to do to be successful, but you’re definitely setting yourself up for success by giving yourself more time to figure it out. It all starts with waking up early in the morning because the early morning is literally the start of your day.

As for me, thoughts about my ambitions help me easily get up every morning. I wake up with the hope that things will get better. I wake up knowing that I can improve. I wake up thinking about the dreams worth waking up for.

Sometimes, you just don’t know how your life will turn out, so you just give yourself the most amount of time possible so life can figure it all out. And If you can visualize yourself in a better place and believe that you can get yourself there, then you’ll be excited to wake up every morning.

Jet Lag Leverage

The easiest way to set your circadian rhythm to an earlier time is simply to completely mess it up. Yes, mess it up completely and start from scratch—just like your love life.

I discovered this accidentally while traveling to Europe. Traveling across the ocean to another time zone will throw your circadian rhythm completely off as you adjust to your new time zone.

The main benefit is evident during the trip back home to the United States. While trips from the United States tend to take off later in the day, the trips back to the United States tend to be in the morning. This has been, by far, the easiest way to reset the circadian rhythm.

Using a personal example, my return flight took off at 11:10 am in London—heading toward San Francisco.

These types of flights usually take 16 hours including layovers. The total time was 16 hours and 25 minutes.

When I arrived, it was 7:35 pm in California.

Since I already had a tiring day of flying, it was easy to go straight to bed at 9 pm. This way, the circadian rhythm is set pretty much perfectly. I slept at 9 pm and woke up at 5 am.

I kept this up for the next week and it became my new circadian rhythm. That’s the best way to do it, and you also get a sweet vacation as well.

Here’s the wonderful part: the rhythm only changed once (i.e. adjusting to the London time zone). On the return trip, I essentially kept the same rhythm I had in London. Sleeping at 9 pm in California is equivalent to sleeping at 5 am in London (the equivalent of a wild night out). Only the time zone change.

I’ve been able to reset my circadian rhythm multiple times via this method. The latest reset occured after my trip to Iceland.

For this trip, my flight took off at 5 pm in Iceland and landed at 5:55 pm in San Francisco. Once more, I easily fell asleep at 9 pm and woke up at 5 am. Iceland also shares the same time zone as London.

More importantly, flying anywhere far enough will throw the circadian off. The math need not be precise. Once disrupted, the rhythm is extremely malleable, and you can adjust as necessary.

But I do understand that it can be slightly tricky—finding the time and resources to travel to a faraway country. Therefore, if you are unable to attempt this quick strategy, feel free to follow the easy-to-implement actionable steps in Part 1 to help you get started.

And if you think it’s simply to difficult to improve your sleep and better your life, just remember: I’ve failed at this for most of my life, but I still figured it out.

You got this.