5 AM Wake Up - Overcoming Wake Up Issues

You’re a strugglin’ to make this 5 AM wake up thing a reality for one reason or another. Maybe you saw my other video “How to Wake Up at 5 AM” and you’ve run into some hiccups as you’re trying to build this new habit?

In this blog, I’m going to share my 5 common issues that were derailing me from successfully waking up at 5 AM and more importantly, how to fix them!

If you’re new to my site, thank you for being here. If you like these posts - please let me know in the comments! I empower busy moms to achieve the life they desire through the art of mindset, productivity and effective time management. 

Now, back to the reason why you’re here - waking up early is problematic. We’re going to cover the 5 main issues I personally have found, as well as feedback from other Mama’s who are trying to establish this habit.

Hurdle #1: What to do if you wake up WAY before your alarm and can’t go back to sleep? 

If you’re waking up between let’s say 3 AM and before your alarm… I have found personally that it is usually due to a lifestyle or choice from the day(s) before. Did you have coffee later in the day? Did you drink more than normal? Were you up on your phone/computer/tablet later into the night? Did you have dinner/snack right before bed? Second to that is typically stress related - did you have a stressful day/situation where relaxing into your nighttime rhythm didn’t happen? Mainly because you’re replaying the problem over and over in your head (guilty!).

The ultimate solution is to try to get back into the night time wind down for the day that you’re entering, but since there’s nothing you can do about the day before - Here’s my solution - do box breathing. Breath in 4 counts, pause, breath out 4 breaths, pause. Place a hand on your abdomen and try to push your hand out as you breathe in - this triggers your parasympathetic nervous system. Which is the opposite of fight-or-flight mode, helping the body return to a rested state

If doing this for a few minutes doesn’t seem to be prompting drowsiness, I just get up. No one wants to hear that, but I just start my day extra early and try to block off a short nap later in the day and make sure to really set-up my bedtime routine and practice good sleep hygiene to get back into my normal circadian rhythm. 

Hurdle #2: What to do if you’re just not into it? 

You’ve done all the things to set yourself up for AM success. Your alarm goes off, you get up to turn it off and you are just NOT feeling it. Welp, I advise you follow the James Clear (Author of Atomic Habits) 2 Min Rule. To overcome procrastination, or in the case of when you just don’t feel like actually getting up early… Stay awake for 2 minutes - breathe, do some light stretching, get a glass of water, brush your hair, brush your teeth. Do something that will take up roughly 2 minutes and if that doesn’t get you to overcome your barrier of staying awake, then go back to bed. You achieved waking up early for 2 minutes and the goal from there would be to keep extending the minutes til your body adjusts and you overcome the early morning drowsiness. 

Hurdle #3: What to do if your littles start waking up early/earlier too? 

Ok, this is assuming you have kids in the picture, but let’s say the new morning noises and lights creeping in from under their doors is enough to wake them up. My house is single story and although the kitchen is on the other side of the house from the kids room - the hallway echo’s and light spills into their room. This takes a little creativity based on your own home layout, but here’s a few things that have helped keeping kids asleep.

1) A noise machine in their room
2) rolling a towel and putting it on the floor up against their door to help dampen sound and eliminate light coming in through the space between the door and floor.
3) Adding a runner in our hallway to eat up some of the sound.
4) Depending on the age of your kids - an OK to wake clock. If you don’t know what this is, just google it. 

I found with some adjustments, that my kids started getting used to my morning noises and with these other assists, my kids went back to their normal wake times within a week or so. 

Hurdle #4: What to do if your body starts waking up early naturally before your alarm, including weekends?

First and foremost - yay, it’s working! But, let’s say you’re like me and you really like having nothing planned/scheduled and want a few days each week where you are free to do as you please. That includes not waking up early if you don’t want to… BUT, your body has gotten used to your early wake schedule. I am an advocate of having a weekend routine that is different from your weekly routine. I like to lie in bed and read a book, journal. I sometimes get up and get ahead of tidying around the house. I like to go through mail and take care of various admin aspects of life. This is another good time slot to plan your week… I tend to use this time to just ease into the weekend without having a real need to execute anything in particular. 

Hurdle #5: What to do if you’re sick/traveling/out of your normal time zone? 

This is where I’m going to say - give yourself grace and listen to your body. What do you need? Do you need the extra sleep? Do you need to ease back your wake up time? This isn’t a cop out, and this isn’t a hard line, but it’s more of a middle of the road approach - like anything, it’s okay that it doesn’t happen 100% of the time due to unforeseen circumstances, but the goal is to take the time that you need and then rekindle your ‘why’ you want to wake up early and get back into the habit.

As I’ve said before - Any habit takes practice to integrate, so don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t happen overnight (because it won’t), or every day that you plan on waking up early. Life happens and sometimes we have to forgo our best laid plans to deal with the unexpected.

Ok, I want to hear from you! What are the obstacles, barriers of struggles that you have to just waking up early?

Until next time - Bye mama!