You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.
—GEORGE LORIMER
Your first ritual that you do during the day is the highest leveraged ritual, by far, because it has the effect of setting your mind, and setting the context, for the rest of your day.
—EBEN PAGAN
Why did you bother getting out of bed this morning? Think about that for a second... Why do you wake up most mornings? Why do you leave the comfort of your warm, cozy bed? Is it because you want to? Or do you delay waking up until you absolutely have to?
If you’re like most people, you wake up to the incessant beeping of an alarm clock each morning and reluctantly drag yourself out of bed because you have to be somewhere, do something, answer to—or take care of—someone else. Given the choice (do you have a choice?) most people would continue sleeping.
So naturally, we rebel. We hit the snooze button and resist the inevitable act of waking up, unaware that our resistance is sending a message to the universe that we’d rather lie there in our beds—unconscious—than consciously and actively live and create the lives we say that we want. Most of us have resigned ourselves to a certain level of mediocrity and unfulfilled potential. We don’t like it. We don’t feel good about it. We know that there is absolutely another level of success, achievement and fulfillment that’s possible for us, but we feel stuck, and we don’t know what to do to get ourselves unstuck.
The old saying, “You Snooze, You Lose” may have a much deeper meaning than any of us realized. When you delay waking up until you have to—meaning you wait until the last possible moment to get out of bed and start your day—consider that what you’re actually doing is resisting your life. Every time you hit the snooze button, you’re in a state of resistance to your day, to your life, and to waking up and creating the life you say you want. Think about the kind of negative energy that surrounds you when you begin your day with resistance, when you respond to the sound of the alarm clock with internal dialogue along the lines of, “Oh no, it’s time already. I have to wake up. I don’t want to wake up.” It’s as if you’re saying, “I don’t want to live my life, at least not to the fullest.”
Many people who suffer from depression report that the morning time is the most difficult. They wake up with dread. Sometimes it is because of a job they feel obligated to go to, or due to a relationship that is failing. Some people feel this way simply due to the nature of depression and its ability to weigh on a person’s mind, emotions, and heart without needing a specific reason. The tone of our morning has a powerful impact on the tone of the rest of our day. It becomes a cycle: waking up with despair, spending the day continuing to feel that way, going to sleep feeling anxious or depressed, then repeat the cycle of melancholy the next day.
Not only are people missing out on the abundance of clarity, energy, motivation, and personal power that comes from waking up each day on purpose, but their resistance to this inevitable daily act is a defiant statement to the universe that they would rather lie in bed, unconscious, than to create and live the life they desire.
On the other hand, when you wake up each day with passion and purpose, you join the small percentage of high achievers who are living their dreams. Most importantly, you will be happy. By simply changing your approach to waking up in the morning, you will literally change everything. But don’t take my word for it—trust these famous early risers: Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins, Bill Gates, Howard Schultz, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Aristotle, and far too many more to list here.
No one ever taught us that by learning how to consciously set our intention to wake up each morning with a genuine desire—even enthusiasm—to do so, we can change our entire lives.
If you’re just snoozing every day until the last possible moment you have to head off to work, show up for school, or take care of your family, and then coming home and zoning out in front of the television until you go to bed (this used to be my daily routine), I’ve got to ask you: When are you going to develop yourself into the person you need to be to create the levels of health, wealth, happiness, success, and freedom that you truly want and deserve? When are you going to actually live your life instead of numbly going through the motions looking for every possible distraction to escape reality? What if your reality—your life—could finally be something that you can’t wait to be conscious for?
There is no better day than today for us to give up who we’ve been for who we can become, and upgrade the life we’ve been living for the one we really want. There is no better book than the one you are holding in your hands to show you how to become the person you need to be who is capable of quickly attracting, creating and sustaining the life you have always wanted.
The first thing experts will tell you about how many hours of sleep we need is that there is no “magic number.” The amount of sleep that is ideal varies for every individual, and is influenced by factors such as age, genetics, overall health, how much exercise a person gets, and many others. While you may be at your absolute best sleeping seven hours a night, someone else may clearly need nine hours to have a happy, productive life.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, some research has found that long sleep durations (nine hours or more) are also associated with increased morbidity (illness, accidents) and even mortality (death.) This research also found that variables such as depression were significantly associated with long sleep.
Since there is such a wide variety of opposing evidence from countless studies and experts, and since the amount of sleep needed varies from person to person, I’m not going to attempt to make a case that there is one right approach to sleep. Instead, I’ll share my own real-world results, from personal experience and experimentation, and from studying the sleep habits of some of the greatest minds in history. I’ll warn you, some of this may be somewhat controversial.
Through experimenting with various sleep durations—as well as learing those of many other Miracle Morning practitioners, who have tested this theory—I’ve found that how our sleep affects our biology is largely affected by our own personal belief about how much sleep we need. In other words, how we feel when we wake up in the morning—and this is a very important distinction—is not solely based on how many hours of sleep we got, but significantly impacted by how we told ourselves we were going to feel when we woke up.
For example, if you believe that you need eight hours of sleep to feel rested, but you’re getting into bed at midnight and have to wake up at 6:00 a.m., you’re likely to tell yourself, “Geez, I’m only going to get six hours of sleep tonight, but I need eight. I’m going to feel exhausted in the morning.” Then, what happens as soon as your alarm clock goes off and you open your eyes and you realize it’s time to wake up? What’s the first thought that you think? It’s the same thought you had before bed! “Geez, I only got six hours of sleep. I feel exhausted.” It’s a self-fulfilling, self-sabotaging prophecy. If you tell yourself you’re going to feel tired in the morning, then you are absolutely going to feel tired. If you believe that you need 8 hours to feel rested, then you’re not going to feel rested on anything less. But what if you changed your beliefs?
The mind-body connection is a powerful thing, and I believe we must take responsibility for every aspect of our lives, including the power to wake up every day feeling energized, regardless of how many hours of sleep we get.
I’ve experimented with various durations of sleep—from as little as four hours to as many as nine. The other variable in my experimentation was actively telling myself how I was going to feel in the morning, based on the amount of hours I slept. First, I tried each duration of sleep, telling myself before bed that I was not getting enough sleep, and that I was going to feel exhausted in the morning.
On four hours of sleep, I woke up feeling exhausted.
On five hours of sleep, I woke up feeling exhausted.
On six hours of sleep, you guessed it—exhausted.
Seven hours.... Eight hours... Nine hours... The hours of sleep I got didn’t change how I felt when the alarm clock went off in the morning. As long as I told myself before bed that I wasn’t getting enough sleep, and that I was going to feel tired in the morning, that’s exactly how I felt.
Then, I again experimented with each duration—from nine hours to four hours—this time reciting a bedtime affirmation and telling myself that I was going to wake up feeling energized in the morning: “Thank you for giving me these five hours of sleep tonight. Five hours is exactly what I need to feel rested and energized in the morning. My body is capable of miraculous things, the least of which is generating an abundance of energy from five restful hours of sleep. I believe that I create my experience of reality, and I choose to create waking up tomorrow feeling energized and excited to take on my day, and I’m grateful for that.”
What I found was that whether I got nine, eight, seven, six, five, or even just four hours of sleep, as long as I consciously decided, before bed, that I was getting the perfect amount of sleep—that the hours were going to energize my body to feel wonderful in the morning—I consistently woke feeling better than I ever had before. However, don’t take my word for it. I encourage you to experiment with this yourself.
So, how many hours of sleep do you really need? You tell me. Now, if you really struggle with falling or staying asleep, and it is a concern for you, I highly recommend getting a copy of Shawn Stevenson’s book, Sleep Smarter: 21 Proven Tips to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success. It’s one of the best, most well researched books that I’ve seen on the topic of sleep.
Think back to a time in your life when you were genuinely excited to wake up in the morning. Maybe it was to catch an early flight for a vacation that you had been anticipating for months. Maybe it was your first day at a new job, or your first day of school. Maybe it was your wedding day, or your last birthday. Personally, I can’t think of any time in my life when I was more excited to wake up in the morning—regardless of how much sleep I got—than when I was a kid, every year on Christmas morning. Maybe you can relate?
Whatever the occasions have been that have had you excited to wake up in the morning, how did you feel when those mornings arrived? Did you have to drag yourself out of bed? Doubtful. On mornings like these, we can’t wait to wake up! We do so feeling energized and genuinely excited. We quickly heave the covers off and spring to our feet, ready to take on the day! Imagine if this is what every day of your life was like. Shouldn’t it be? It can.
The Miracle Morning is largely about recreating that experience of waking up feeling energized and excited, and doing it every-single-day of your life—for the rest of your life! It’s about getting out of bed with purpose—not because you have to, but because you genuinely want to—and dedicating time each day to developing yourself into the person you need to be to create the most extraordinary, fulfilling, and abundant life you can imagine. The Miracle Morning is already doing just that for thousands of people around the world. People just like you.