The Secret to Getting Up in the Morning

Let me guess. You’ve tried it all and keep searching for a solution for getting up in the morning with ease…

• Putting your alarm across the room, but you just get up, turn it off, and go back to sleep.
• Downloading an expensive app that makes you solve math problems, but you just delete the app entirely whenever that alarm goes off.
• Bio-hacks, like early morning light exposure and blue light glasses, but they don’t seem to help your awake brain want to show up to work each morning.

I’ve been there, but I also happen to have a PhD focused on behavior change and mindset, which means I know a secret ingredient those strategies are missing that might be a game changer for your morning experience.

Prefer to learn on video? Watch here:

I’m Dr. Karin Nordin, by the way, former night owl turned 5:00 AM club self-help super fan and CEO here at Body Brain Alliance, where we’ve helped literally hundreds of clients create the morning experience they’ve always dreamed of.

The Truth About Behavior Patterns

The truth of the matter is this: your behavior will always revert back to the same exact patterns it started with unless you actually focus on changing your thoughts. If you’re reading this, you’re familiar with what a habit is… You probably know that it has a cue, a routine, and a reward. When you get in the car, you buckle your seatbelt. It’s automatic and mindless, but did you know that we also have cognitive habits?

Understanding Cognitive Habits

Cognitive habits work very similarly to tangible habits. There’s a cue. Something in our environment pings our attention. Our brain then goes through a routine, but whereas in the typical definition of habit, the routine is a behavior. In a cognitive habit, the routine is a thought.

Let’s apply this to your morning routine.

Your alarm goes off. That’s the cue, and the automatic unconscious thoughts start rolling in. “I’m too tired. I don’t want to get up. I need five more minutes. I’ll just sleep a little longer.” Sound familiar?

The Power of Cognitive Diffusion

If so, congratulations. You just actually took the first step towards fighting those cognitive habits by recognizing that those statements popping up in your head… Well, they’re not necessarily true.

This process is known as cognitive diffusion. Cognitive diffusion happens when we stop treating every thought that runs through our mind as reality, and we start treating them as what they are – thoughts. Or in this case, automatic parroted responses that your brain has learned to squawk every time it hears the alarm.

The Real Purpose of Morning Strategies

Remember those strategies that we talked about in the beginning — the fancy alarms, the put your phone across the room. Those are actually useful tools, but not because they’ll automatically make you get up. They’re useful for one purpose and one purpose only. Giving you time to enter into that cognitive diffusion process. It’s essentially like opening a discussion in your brain.

Implementing the Cognitive Diffusion Strategy

So yes, you should keep your phone plugged in across the room, but on your way across that room to turn it off, you’re going to do a couple of things differently.

• You’re going to listen in to your mental monologue and start identifying exactly what automatic sentences are floating rampant in your brain.
• Then you’re going to question those sentences. Ask yourself, “Is that actually true? Do I really have five more minutes? Will this decision actually make me happy?”
• And finally, you’re going to provide a rebuttal.

Imagine that your sleepy brain is the prosecutor in a courtroom, and you, my friend, are the aggressive defense. Why is the argument that you should go back to sleep false? What arguments are there why you should get up?

The Importance of Mindset in Morning Routines

Let me be direct with you. The majority of morning education courses, books, etc. that exist out there… They don’t take into account your mindset or really any type of change psychology. That’s why they don’t work for you. The tips are fine, but they don’t actually tell you how to manage your mind in a way that helps you implement the tactics they teach.

Introducing the Meaningful Mornings Mini Course

That’s why I created our Meaningful Mornings Mini Course. This is a super cheap $29 course that takes you through five psychology-based lessons to create the motivated morning experience you’ve always dreamed of.

Whether you’re a BBA super fan, and you’ve watched every single video, or read every single blog… OR if this is the first one you’ve actually stumbled across, I highly recommend checking this course out. Click here to learn more about Meaningful Mornings.

Your Action Plan for Tonight

In the meantime, here’s exactly what you’re going to do tonight:

• You’re going to leave a comment right now telling me what time you’re committing to getting up.
• Tonight, you’re going to set an alarm for that time and place it all the way across the room.
• Before you go to bed, you’re going to make a list of the habitual thoughts your brain usually throws your way, and you’re going to write a rebuttal for every single one of them.

Boom. There you have it.

Let me know in the comments if you’re going to try this out, and if you need more free morning education, make sure you check out this blog on how to wake up early, where I talk more about the behavioral and tangible side of getting your butt out of bed.

Good luck and I can’t wait to hear how it goes.