I am not an early riser. Rather, that is, I used to not be an early riser. I love sleep. Usually, I’d be in bed by 11:00pm (+/- 1 hour) and sleep through until 8:00am or 9:00am …. sometimes 10:00am. Yes, sleep through until that time. I rarely wake up, even to pee. I had a really difficult time in high school. Having to meet the bus at 7:05am was an extremely difficult challenge. I quite often failed this challenge and had to get a ride to school.

Fortunately, being self employed I have had complete control over my work schedule for the past few years. Knowing that I am really not functional in the early morning, I take my first client at 10:00am. This works pretty well considering that most people are looking for late afternoon / early evening appointments anyway. But, when I go off to assist or take a class, I like to be at the venue by 8:30am. If I am staying nearby, that’s not a problem; I can get up around 7:00am. But, when the class is in Hartford (like the class I was at last week) I commute from home every day. This means leaving by around 7:30am in case there’s traffic … and there’s almost always traffic near Hartford.

So, beginning last Thursday I needed to wake up at 6:30am to give me about an hour to wake up, shower, get dressed, have some tea, eat, read and respond to e-mail, and in general: ‘get going’. I had to do this for four days. Normally, getting up this early would be a very difficult process and I would probably ’snooze’ for 10-15 minutes, then be all frantic trying to get up and out of the house in 45 minutes with so much to do before I left. (Yes for some 45 minutes is a llloooonnnggg time to get ready in the morning. But I really need to ease into my day.)

Surprisingly, it was a really smooth weekend. I was up and out of bed at 6:30 every day! I think that I had really mentally prepared myself for what I needed to do. A few weeks ago I found this article about ‘How to Become an Early Riser’.    I thought to myself, I think I would like to become an early riser. I’d like to have time to do a bit more during the day. Maybe I should give this a shot. So, I took a bunch of Steve’s advice and put it into practice.

Mainly, for a few days before the class started I would spend a minute or two several times a day visualizing myself setting the alarm for 6:30am, having a great night’s sleep, and immediately getting out of bed when the alarm went off. I believe it worked. Not only did I get right up when the alarm went off, but I found myself waking up 10-15 minutes before 6:30. Almost like my body was giving me the ’snooze’ time that I loved so much. This really blew my mind.

The other interesting thing that I noticed was that I was not tired during the day (without any increase in caffeine) and that I was not asleep on the couch by 9:00pm. I had a sustained energy throughout the entire day and became tired around my ‘normal’ time of 10:30pm/11:00pm.

Wow. Maybe I was sleeping too much. Maybe there is something to being an early riser. I’m not 100% sure … but I am going to find out.

I have decided to maintain my 6:30 wake up time. Steve talks about the power of a 30-day trial. I have always believed this to be true. (Although I always thought of 40 days.) I believe that you can make permanent change in your life if you are consistent with your change for 40 days.  Of course, it should be positive change and something you’d like to continue after the 30/40 days. It really wouldn’t make sense for me to go through this process only to have set in my mind that I am only doing this for 30/40 days; and after that time I would stop getting up at 6:30am. It is change I want to make. It is change that I believe will better my life by giving me more personal time each and every day. Time that I can use to exercise, meditate, read, get bodywork …  whatever I want. But, the key is I do want it.

So, here I am on the 10th day of the process. Even though it is a Saturday, I got right out of bed at 6:30. No problem. I’ll keep you posted on my progress. But I am curious:

Are you an early riser? Have you always been that way? And have any of you made a 30/40 day change?