Let me be quite clear from the beginning. I am not a morning person. During college, I never scheduled myself for an 8:30 a.m. class, and I was consistently late to my 9:30 a.m. classes. In more recent years, my love for sleep and pressing the snooze button on my alarm has remained a constant in my life. I once had a boss that I loved dearly, but that he was unusually perky first thing in the morning always made me regard him with a hint of suspicion. To me, a person who is alert and happy before noon is probably demented at best or has been unwittingly transformed into a cyborg at worst.
Despite my deep and abiding love for the comfort of my bed, I have found myself throughout my adult life in various time-related predicaments that have required me to wake before dawn. I’ve had periods of time in which I have braved the early morning hours in order to read, write in a journal, and pray before going to work. When my husband and I first married, I dutifully set my alarm for 4:00 a.m. three times a week to lift weights in our garage. For the last few months, though, my early wake-ups have gone to the next level.
As I’ve spent the last several months training for a half-iron distance triathlon race (70.3 miles of swimming, biking, and running), I’ve had to set my alarm for 4:00 a.m. 6 or 7 days per week. I’ve woken up before sunrise so consistently that my internal alarm clock wakes me up by 5:00 a.m., even on rest days.
While I don’t spring out of bed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I will tell you that I have grown to love the magic of the early morning. Here’s what I’ve come to discover about rising before the sun:
- I have seen more sunrises in 2017 than in the rest of my life combined, and every single one is spectacular. I never grow tired of watching the sky go through its daily transformation of colors from black, to purple, to orange and pink, to light blue. It is truly a sight to behold. You will never regret watching a sunrise, but you may regret sleeping late.
- If you have anything to do outdoors during the summer, the early morning hours are the only way to beat the heat.
- There is solace in the pre-dawn hours that cannot be found at other times of the day. Everyone I know is sleeping. My house is quiet. Traffic on the roads is scarce. As a mom, most of my day is spent meeting the needs of other people, but the early morning hours are just for me. I treasure the solitude.
- Whether it be meditating, praying, exercising, or journaling, if there’s a behavior that you want to become a habit, consistency is the key. In order to have consistency, you have to have a time that is not susceptible to being taken by other obligations. The beauty of early morning hours is that your child’s teacher will never ask you for a conference 4:30 a.m. Your spouse will probably be asleep and, therefore, unable to protest your absence. You won’t miss your favorite television show at this hour. Early morning hours are the best hours to use when consistency is desired.
- Last, but certainly not least, starting your day having accomplished something for yourself sets a positive tone for the rest of day. While it seems counterintuitive that waking early in the morning will provide you with more energy, I definitely feel invigorated by my morning exercise and feel more ready to conquer the day than when I hit snooze ten times before rolling out of bed.
In the spirit of full disclosure, waking at 4:00 a.m. is not without its pitfalls. When you’re the first person to hit the sidewalk in the morning, you might return home looking as though you’ve participated in a spiders’ ticker tape parade. The first person outside is also the person who breaks through all the spider webs that have been constructed during the night. I’m sure many passersby have wondered what kind of spasms I was having while running down the road trying to pull cobwebs off my body.
