You are doomed unless you master the mental toughness game.
How come, you cannot do the simplest thing in the world? It is obviously simple and easy because millions of people wake up on time every day and go about their activities.
Waking Up on Time is a Mental Toughness Game
How come the average Joe succeeds at getting up on time but not you?
Go figure!
Guess what that implies! It implies that you are below average.
Yes, I said it. I dare you to face the truth. As far as waking up on time is concerned, you are below average. Shame on you! The source of your shame is self-betrayal. The source of your shame is the failure to live up to your standards. The damage to your self-esteem is not the only price you pay for this lack of self-discipline. Your productivity is also falling short of the results which, you are capable of achieving.
Face the Truth – Mental Toughness
The Power of Habits – Mental Toughness
You want to consistently wake up, when your alarm goes off.
That is your goal!
How do you achieve this goal?
Form habits! The key is to make waking up on time a habit. But how can you form the habit of waking on time? Before you learn the right way of forming this habit, let’s go through the wrong ways.
Form the Right Habits – Mental Toughness
You have probably tried a few of these tactics already.
The most obvious one is increasing the volume of your alarm clock. You quickly discovered that it wasn’t of much help.
Have you tried installing your alarm at the other end of the room? The rational is that, you’ll have to get up and walk across the room to turn it off. And you hoped that, you will become fully awake by the time, you walked across the room to turn off the alarm. Yes, you did become fully awake but that didn’t stop you, from slipping right back into your seductively warm bed.
Did you take the game to a whole new level with a flying alarm clock? Perhaps you tried one of those alarms, which eject its key. Every morning the key flies off to an unpredictable part of your room. You cannot turn off the alarm unless you find that key. Every morning, you are forced to switch on the lights to find the key.
Again, the same rational applies. By the time you solved the puzzle or found the key, you would have become fully awaken. And hopefully, you would not return to bed.
It worked! Didn’t it? But only for a few days or weeks. Then you regressed right back to the old you. You found a way around it: like pulling the plug out of the socket, sleeping through the alarm or mechanically going through all the motions of turning off the alarm, then going right back to bed.
How many other techniques have you tried? Have you tried sleeping with your curtains open? The rational here is that, the rays of sunlight spilling through your window will force you to wake up.
Have you tried biological technology? Biological technology consists of drinking a glass of water, before going to bed. And hope that, you will feel an urge to take a leak, at about the same time; you are supposed to wake up. This technique also builds on the erroneous assumption that, you will not return to bed after taking the leak.
How about keeping lemon fruit by the alarm clock? The big idea is sucking some lemon juice and having the sharp taste startle you into full wakefulness.
Come on, now!
Stop that!
If you keep going, there is no end to these ideas. One of these days, you are going to purchase electro-shocks and try to shock yourself awake.
Self-disciplines is All You Need – Mental Toughness
The Right Way to Form the Habit of Consistently Waking Up on Time: Mental Toughness
Let’s start with the axiomatic.
You are not superman!
That sounds obvious. But believe me, when I tell you that I didn’t know that. I thought I was superman. When I first started building my business, I attempted to operate on 3hours of sleep. To make a long story short, you cannot expect to wake up on time every day; unless, you are having adequate sleep. The definition of adequate sleep is at least 6hours a day.
When I was in the Special Forces, we used to operate for weeks on 3hours of sleep and heavy doses of coffee and guarana confectionaries. My activities in the army were mostly physical. When I started my business, I somehow missed the fact that, the difference between physical and mental work is as wide as the diameter of the universe.
Try waking up consistently on less than 5hours of sleep every day and you are doomed. The first rule is to sleep long enough. To be safe, sleep for at least 6hours a day.
Pre-commitment Technique
Pre-commitment is the gateway to self-discipline. Pre-commitment is a mental toughness war game. Your mind is the battlefield.
No hi-tech gadget can win the war in your mind. Win the war in your mind and waking up will become as easy as breathing. What could be more natural than a cycle of sleeping and waking up? What could be more natural than the cycle of inhalation and exhalation?
Breathing is so natural that, you do not give it a second thought. That is how simple and natural waking up will become to you. But first, you must undergo 30days of pain. 30days is the length of time to form a new habit.
You have got two selves. There is the present-you (now-you), who set the alarm clock and there is the future-you, who must decide to wake up or to procrastinate.
The first step of pre-commitment is to recognize that, future-you is a pleasure-loving creature, who cannot be trusted.
When the alarm goes off, future-you is going to face two basic choices: either suffer fleeting pain or indulge in momentary pleasure.
You are consistent. Your intentions and actions are in synchrony. You do, what you say, you will do. When the alarm goes off, you first instinct is to be true to yourself i.e. to be consistent.
Use Pre-commitment to Lock Future-you in a Righteous Path
In an instant, your powerful mind will generate half a dozen seductively brilliant rationalizations; why, you must snooze. Your mind will present you with cunningly clever reasons; why, you must return to sleep. If you pay close attention, you will be shocked with amazement at this spark of creative genius. Your most creative imaginations, when you are fully awake, are pale in comparison to the glow of pure, undiluted genius.
Your only chance is to recognize the reasons, which your mind presents you, for what, they truly are: rationalizations. And you must recognize these rationalizations in advance. That is the now-you must make this recognition.
The now-you must also resolve to feel the pain of waking up.
Mental Toughness
Yes, it is painful and you must pre-commitment to feel this pain.
Your only consolation is that, the pain of discipline lasts for only 30days. Once waking up becomes a habit as natural as breathing, you will cease to feel the pain of self-discipline.