Add Years to Life – Wake up One Hour Early

Waking up one hour early is the most certain way to live a long life which is healthy, wealthy and happy. How? Let’s do some simple mathematics.

We have 24 hours in a day, out of these we spend 8 hours in sleep, 8 hours at work, and the rest 8 hours doing our daily routine tasks. If we live, say for instance, 75 years than one third of this time goes in sleep that is 25 years with closed eyes!!

How to Add Years to Life?

The most certain way to live a long life is in fact very simple – just wake up one hour early than you normally do.

Waking up 1 hour early will add 365 hours into your life yearly, i.e. equivalent to 15 days per year!

If you keep this practice for next 24 years, you will be able to add 1 full year to your life!! Isn’t that great? You got one full year to live on this beautiful planet with your loved ones and doing what you love!

This is as simple as that. Yes, I know the simplest things are not always the easiest things to do. However, for a determined mind no difficulty really matters. And when it comes to waking up one hour early, it’s all about mind over mattress!

Before I offer some tips on how to help yourself waking up one hour early, I want to make one thing clear that if you’re a night owl and can stay awake late than it’s perfectly fine, and don’t force yourself to be a morning bird, or don’t feel bad if you can’t wake up one hour early. The purpose is changing our routine either by waking up one hour early or staying awake late by one hour to ensure the addition of one active hour in our daily life. However, if you want to change your habit and want to be a morning bird, you will experience a different energy level in your body for sure. Personally, I would rather prefer adding one fresh and energetic morning hour in my day than one exhausted late night hour. But again this is just a matter of personal choice.

Below are few tips that will be helpful inculcating this important habit. And remember you always give yourself 30 days of time to form a new habit and to make it completely effortless.

Begin with Weekend:

Try waking up early on Saturday morning so that you don’t have to disturb your weekday routine. By the time next week begins on Monday, you will already have practiced and experienced of waking up early for two days and have seen the benefits of extra hour activities.

Start Small:

There is absolutely no need to jump start waking up one hour early right from the day one. Start small and build up gradually. Begin with waking up 30 minutes early and follow the same routine for the next week, and then increase another 30 minutes the following week and practice it for the next two week.

Use Two Alarms:

Use your mobile phone alarm with soft music so that you don’t disturb the other person sleeping next to you. Also keep mobile alarm at distance so that you have to get up from the bed when alarm goes off and you don’t snooze it in sleep.

Also keep one more alarm in another room that has really loud and annoying sound and set it to go off 5 minutes later than your phone alarm. This will make it compulsory for you to get up and walk down to the room to turn that noisy alarm off before it goes off.

By the time you reach to your second alarm, you are already out of your bed up and awake.

Force Yourself to Stay Awake:

The real challenge is to stay awake after you get up. Now comes mind over mattress, your mind will, most likely tell you ten appealing things to go back to bed, but don’t listen to it. Tell him who the master is. Force yourself to stay awake. Go to washroom and use cold water to wash your face and eyes, this will help you awake fully.

Give Energy to Your Body and Mind:

Drink a full glass of warm water mixed with lemon and ginger extract and two spoons of honey. The tangy lemon taste will make all your taste bud awake and honey sugar will give your mind and body an instant energy to stay fully awake. This drink also helps for weight loss. You can also make this drink night before to get a ready-made help.

Still Sleepy?

Walk briskly 5 rounds around your living room or climb up and down the staircase for three times.

You also can do Sun Salutation – a complete yoga exercise for stretching the whole body from toe to head. Here is the link to see the video with instructions.

More on Sun Salutation, later.

That’s it. Good morning, your day has begun and congratulations for giving yourself one more hour to live today.

There are many things that you can do in early hours, let it be exercise to keep yourself fit or doing something that you wanted since long or just giving time for your hobbies or pursuing a dream business idea. Benefits of waking up one hour early are countless; here are some that are most obvious.

Benefits of Waking up Early

Better Control of the Day:

Having one extra hour in the morning enables you to plan for the day proactively and productively. Go over your to-do list for the day and you will notice that you can not only rush for the urgent tasks of the day, but also can allocate some time for the tasks that are important for you. In a way it gives you an opportunity to own your day rather your day owns you.

Finding Time to Do Things You Love:

You have been thinking of doing exercise but couldn’t do so far because of lack of time.

You always wanted to have healthy breakfast in the morning, but still have to eat bagel and bread again and over and over again because no time to make breakfast in the morning.

Remember how you wished to taste those green smoothies when you see them in pictures? However, while rushing for the work always put this thought of smoothies on side and you’re just gulping down your morning tea or coffee may be while driving to work?

You have read about the numerous benefits about yoga and learned some yoga and meditation techniques too; however due to lack of time you’re never be able to practice them regularly.

You wanted to read and learn on various important topics of life such as personal finance, passive income, or wanted to enhance better investment knowledge, or just wanted to sit and thought about a side business idea, however where’s the time?

Well here is your 25th hour of the day. Go and utilize it now as per your own wish.

Try to do few things from above list daily or one thing at a time, or simply do your favourite 7 different things during a week and then another 7 favourite next week, whatever makes it interesting and whichever way it works for you, just do it. Just feel free to do random things initially, later on you can come up with your own system or set of activities to do in this extra one hour. Enjoy your freedom to choose for this hour. And you will see how many things you are able to accomplish over the period of time. You will feel that you own this life. This will bring sweet smile back on your face :)

Increased Mindfulness:

If there is nothing much for you to do in the morning, just be with your own company and observe your breath, emotions and thought pattern. Contemplate on how you have been spending this life so far, and how you can live a better life with a purpose for coming years. If need be take a help of paper and pencils when you’re contemplating. Try to note down various important thoughts that come in your mind. Try to understand a picture of your life in your mind about where you’re going right now and where you would like to see yourself 5 years down the line, and find the current gap in between these two points, and find out what you can do to fill up that gap. You will notice a shift happening in your thought patterns and change in emotions. Your energy level will go up and you will be more aware of your body, mind and soul with this increased level of awareness. You will re-unite with your old friend – that is Yourself. Your priorities will definitely change after this small encounter with your own true self.

Appreciating the Nature:

How many times in last few years you gave yourself an opportunity to watch sun rise and morning colors in the sky? If not much, then this is the time you can spend in the play of nature. Just sit in your balcony or backyard with a hot cup of coffee or tea and take a sip by sip being one with the nature with full gratitude. What is this life if full of cares and we have no time to stand and stare?

Want to know my routine?

• I go to sleep by 10:00 pm and wake up 5:00 am for last 20 years (yes I am living 2 hours more daily), thanks to my mom (she still wakes up at 4:00 am at the age of 65).
• After I am ready I do 45 minutes of meditation and yoga. This is such a blissful time with my own company.
• After meditation, sitting on my yoga mat itself, I read 5 pages of any new book of my interest. This gives an exposure of new thoughts to my peaceful and clear mind in the morning. Remember 50000 thoughts per day research? This is how I make sure to choose few good thoughts consciously and selectively everyday.
• Now that I have started this blog, I make sure to invest some 15-20 minutes to write on some topic daily.
• I spend some time doing my favourite activities it can either be going for a walk, doing some quick 15 minutes cardio, making myself fresh fruit and vegetable juice, or exploring new ideas or hobbies.
• I plan my day ahead and go over my to-do list one more time to get better clarity and then I check my personal e-mails and make my inbox zero.
• I feel more controlled, more clear, more focused and more confident to welcome the day ahead.

And while doing all these I make sure to play some soft and smooth instrumental music which is very soothing and pleasant not only to ears but to my mind and soul too!

I want all AYA readers to take this important action of waking up one hour early. AYA is all about taking actions whenever you come across with an appealing thought or idea, because never forget that only actions create results. Don’t give up if initially you face any difficulty in getting up early. Have a burning desire to achieve this action and with little persistent effort you will overcome all the obstacles.

Wake up one hour early and add years to life to add life to years!

Have fun!
Bharat Jhala

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