Waking up early decides your life - just how important is sticking to it?

By: DaDa

How long has it been since you woke up early? How long has it been since you saw the morning sunlight? Or rather, how long has it been since you ate breakfast? Thinking about it carefully, if not for having classes, it has been a very long time.

These past few days I noticed a trending topic on Weibo: staying up the latest nights while applying the most expensive face cream. Staying up until twelve no longer counts as "staying up late"; one or two in the morning has become the norm, and the standard for what counts as staying up late keeps getting pushed back. As a result, staying up late leads to difficulty getting out of bed - in other words, becoming a "hard case for early rising."

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Successful people differ in their habits for how they arrange their early morning time, but their motivation is the same: as successful people, when they need to handle top-priority urgent matters or the things they want to do in life, the early morning hours happen to be the period in their schedule that is easiest to control themselves. The morning hours need to be put to good use - making plans, having a perfect breakfast, having a good mood... The morning hours largely determine the efficiency of the whole day.

One truth: never make decisions at night。Every week has 168 hours, yet not every hour is equally suited to doing anything. Take fitness training, for example - I suggest scheduling it in the morning, because the work itself is very intense, and all kinds of unexpected situations often arise. As work project deadlines approach, people often have to work overtime until very late, and pre-planned fitness activities can never be fulfilled. Therefore, people who truly value fitness will move physical exercise to the morning. The early morning hours are also scientifically the best time for fitness or work.

A research finding on "willpower" shows that in the morning, people more easily complete the things that require personal self-discipline to achieve. Because in the morning, we have enjoyed a full night of good sleep, our willpower is quite abundant, and emotionally we are also more optimistic, making it easier to deal with things that drain our energy. In the evening, by contrast, people more easily lose self-control and make bad decisions - this seems to have become an all-too-common phenomenon. The rules of dieting are not broken in the morning, but in the evening. The study also found that people with strong self-discipline often do not apply this ability when engaging in many activities that require self-discipline (such as doing homework, or getting to school or work on time).

Because for successful people, doing those things is no longer a choice, but a habit. To turn something into a habit, at first it takes a portion of willpower to achieve, but over time, if you keep at it, it will become like a conditioned reflex, something that can be done without consuming willpower. Take brushing your teeth - most people do not agonize over brushing their teeth in the morning, do not weigh whether it is worth walking over to the sink, and do not consider whether the feeling of the toothbrush massaging inside their mouth is comfortable. Because brushing teeth is merely a habit. In the process of cultivating a habit, you will make progress step by step, thereby laying a solid foundation for your happiness, health and wealth.

One day, self-control will let your body and mind relax. It eliminates your stress and helps you accumulate willpower to meet those important challenges.

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Everyone can cultivate any habit according to their own preferences. The most ideal morning habits are those that, through regular and appropriate practice alone, can produce long-term benefits.

After morning exercise, it is easier to "fall asleep the moment your head hits the pillow." Most of the executives surveyed by James Citrin were in the habit of engaging in some physical exercise in the morning hours. They are all exceptionally busy people, and if they are all willing to carve out time for morning exercise, then there must be something to it.

A survey study by Appalachian State University found that compared with those who work out at other times, people who exercise right after getting up in the morning more easily "fall asleep the moment their head hits the pillow" at night, and can sleep through until dawn. A fairly reasonable explanation is that when we get up, the body begins to release stress hormones, and morning fitness just offsets the effects of these hormones.

If you choose to exercise at a later time period, you give these hormones a longer time to act. People who exercise in the morning more easily stick with it, very likely due to the willpower mentioned earlier as well as the reasonableness of the logical arrangement.

You should know that the effect of running once is negligible, but if you stick to running 5 times a week for a lifetime, it will completely change your health.

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Everyone can cultivate any habit according to their own preferences. The most ideal morning habits are those that, through

By studying people's various morning habits, I found that to make good use of this time, four major steps are indispensable.

Record your time schedule the way you would for weight loss。If you want to make better use of time, then first you have to know how you are currently using it. For example, if you go to lose weight, the nutritionist will tell you to keep a food diary, which can prevent you from eating carelessly, and the same principle applies to our time management. When you are seriously pondering how to arrange your morning time, you might as well try tracking and recording a week of your time - do it whenever you get the chance, and the more detailed the better, because the answer to solving the dilemma of morning time arrangement is often hidden in other time periods of the day.

Set a plan that suits you. Once you have figured out how your time is being used, please ask yourself another question: for you, what should a perfect morning look like?

Say goodbye to staying up late. The vision of a beautiful morning must be integrated with your current actual life. Please schedule the most important matters for the morning, and push out those things that are actually not urgent. Figure out clearly what time you sleep and what time you get up. People who are used to staying up late may find that, starting from the hour you originally wanted to get up and counting backward 8 hours, the result generally will not be an overly early bedtime either.

In fact, you can use various ways to calm your emotions and avoid tossing and turning in bed after lying down. Within one hour before sleep, do not watch TV, and do not check email either - there is evidence that the light emitted by screens affects our sleep state.

The few hours before breakfast are extremely precious, and you need to put in the effort to figure out what is most meaningful to you. When you better cultivate your own morning habits, it is enough to transform your entire life.

Alright, that is the end of today's sharing.