Get Up Early

Get Up Early: Getting up early is a gift you give to yourself. Few disciplines have the power to transform your life as does the habit of early rising. There is something very special  about the first few hours of the morning. Time seems to slow down and a deep sense of peace fills the air. Joining the “Five o’Clock Club” will allow you to start controlling your day rather than letting your day control you. Winning the “Battle of the Bed” and putting “mind over mattress” by rising early will provide you with at least one quiet hour for yourself during the most crucial part of your day: the beginning. If spent wisely, the rest of your day will unfold in a wonderful way. I can safely say that this is one success principle that is really worth integrating into your life. In doing so, you will join the ranks of many of the most influential people of our time ranging from Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Edison and Nelson Mandela to Ted Turner and Mary Kay Ash. So while your family (and the world around you) sleeps, you start getting up first at 6 A.M., then at 5:30 A.M. and finally at 5 A.M. Listening carefully to classical music, writing letters, reading the classics and walking were just some of the activities that can be used to rekindle your spirit and reconnect with a part of yourself you think you had lost. To cultivate the habit of getting up earlier, the first thing to remember is that it is the quality rather than the quantity of sleep that matters most. It is better to have six hours of uninterrupted sleep than ten hours of restless, broken sleep. Here are four tips to help you sleep more deeply:  -Don’t rehearse the activities of your day while you are lying in bed trying to get to sleep. -Don’t eat after 8 PM. (If you have to eat something, have soup.) -Don’t watch the news before you go to sleep. -Don’t read in bed.  Give yourself a few weeks for this new habit to take hold. Saying that you tried to get up early but gave up after seven days because it was just too hard is like saying you tried taking French lessons for a week but gave up because you could not speak the language by then. Life change takes time, effort and patience. But the results  you will receive make the initial stress you experience more than worth it.