It's Time to Wake Up!

3.33 AM – This is my wake-up Time! Yes, You read it right ?? ?If you think it's crazy and insane to wake up at this odd time I have a pre-story. Please go ahead and read through the flashback…

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Scene 1- Dad’s Little Princess

I was never an early riser in my childhood. My dad was an army personnel who used to get up around 5 am. All he wanted with me was to follow his footprint and to get up early like him.

He was never too harsh on me to get things so he tried many subtle gimmicks to make it happen. A few of them were;

1.????Playing a devotional song at a high volume

2.????We used to have hand pumps for water those days and he used to purposefully hit it so hard creating a hell of a noise in the morning

3.????Kept walking past me thudding the floor so hard and so on

Every attempt of his failed and I never woke up early. I was so sincere in sleeping for long hours ?like a Kumbhakarna( A mythological character from Ramayana famous for his ?sleep pattern which extends for ?great lengths of time)

?All I could do was wake up around 7 am and then in a hurry burry get ready to ensure I reach school on time.

Scene 2- The Marriage Phase

This happened in 2012, the year I got married, and my spouse was also an early riser (about 6 am), which he inherited from my in-laws who had a ?routine of waking up at 4 am. He can never sleep beyond 6 am and after marriage, it was a shocker for him to see me and my Mom (By the way my mom was my partner in crime in sleeping, she being my fathers another failed attempt in making an early riser in the family ) Initially my husband tried explaining me to get up early, it didn’t work. Then he used to just come and sit in the hall for 1-2 hrs till I get up. By now there was an extension in my sleeping hours, lucky me ?? school days are gone! He got frustrated after some time as he was not able to sit long hours doing nothing waiting for his tea.

It used to be chaos in the morning after I woke up as it would have been too late for everything, starting from drinking tea, preparing food, waking up the kid, packing him to school, and rushing to our respective offices. It was tension in the air every day as we were late for everything and many a time ended up in an argument - all boiling down to just one question from him- ?Why did you wake up late? This mood had a cascade effect the entire day in our lives.

After many such failed attempts my husband found his solution to keep himself calm- ?he joined my club ?? With great difficulty he was able to extend his sleep for an hour or so breaking his habit which, he had built over years.

Though this activity didn’t bring any change in how things got delayed in our life, he got peace of mind with reduced arguments at home!?

Scene 3- The Awakening

Now, Fast forward 6 years later in 2018, this was a period when I was going through a personal transformational journey & self-realization. I had to face a few tough questions raised by myself to me like ” What’s my life purpose? Why am I here? Am I doing justice to myself and the world around me by being the current version of myself and continuing to do what I do? I’m sure some time or another other everyone goes through the phase ??

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Now comes the interesting part when I started listening to a lot of motivational speeches. I had a long list of favorite speakers with whom I started developing an affinity, like Oprah Winfrey , Robin Sharma , Simon Sinek Wayne W. Dyer, Tony Robbins , Mel Robbins , Gabrielle Bernstein , Marie Forleo , Vishen Lakhiani , Jay Shetty , Jim Kwik , R. Madhavan ( The Tamil actor ?? I like his talks as well )Mahātria Rā, Jaggi Vasudev, Deepak Chopra MD (official) , BK Shivani, Dolores Cannon all topping my list. I can just keep hearing to their lectures for hours together without getting bored at all for even a minute.

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During one such lecture is when I stumbled upon listening to one of the podcasts by Robin Sharma. There was a dialogue that sounded something similar to this: “ If you do not take charge of life by waking up early, you give power to the life to take charge of you!

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It was like a slap on the face and I felt it was my moment of self-realization. In fact, I had listened to the same podcast twice or thrice in the past and surprisingly never felt it coming so hard on me as it was this time. Maybe there is a perfect timing thing to happen as well!

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Now started the mission in my life of changing something which my near and dear ones have attempted several times in the past and failed- Waking me up early!

The Alarrrmmmm…

I thought waking up early should be quite simple.

Set an alarm -> to rise up to the ring the next day morning -> ?and just move on

Trust me this was one of the most difficult tasks in my life I had faced, tougher than writing a board exam or going through 4 years of engineering life, or even getting a job!

I used to set an alarm for 5 am as I became a fan of the word coined by Robin Sharma- The 5 am club! In fact, I initially browsed the internet thinking it was a physical club where people will be like a support group helping each other to get up early ?? It took me a few days to realize that no one was coming to save me and it was just me to do the magic!

Initial days I set a permanent alarm of 5 am and the next day when the alarm goes off I used to shut it down immediately and roll back to sleep. The reason was very simple, the devil’s side of the brain always gave me a hundred reasons not to get up. The moment the alarm goes on, the voice in my head used to give me so many cooked-up reasons like…

1.????You slept too late yesterday, So Goback and SLEEP

2.??You just read the article which said you need minimum of 8 hours of sleep and this is far lesser than this, So Goback and SLEEP

3.??You will face health issues if you don’t sleep properly, So Goback and SLEEP

4.????Today you have an important meeting and its necessary to get a good rest, So Goback and SLEEP

5.??You will start developing undereye dark circles, So Goback and SLEEP

6.??Looks like you have a mild headache, So Goback and SLEEP

7. It's raining, So Goback and SLEEP

8. It's quite hot & sweating, So Goback and SLEEP

9.?What will you do waking up so early, So Goback and SLEEP

So on and so forth….. I was surprised to see how the brain acted to avoid the change in the behavior providing so many reasons to convince myself to sleep

The pattern of me switching off the alarm post convincing myself that I need to sleep continued for days and months. Later I felt this is not done and so changed my approach, instead of shutting off the alarm I started snoozing the alarm rather than shutting it down ( This is the improvised version of me ??)

There had been days I had kept snoozing the alarm every 5 mins for almost 2 hours tirelessly but wouldn’t get up. Every day after waking up I used to feel so powerless and would literally scold myself looking at the mirror for being such a Jerk. This again continued for days and months together. One good thing, I didn’t lose hope and never removed the alarm.

The Rescue

Then came my Rescue ranger in action. Most of the days would pass by just browsing the net on the concept of waking up early. During one such attempt is when I stumbled upon an alarm clock app called The Devils Alarm- Alarmy was its name. So what is so different about this app? It had a set of missions to complete before the alarm was shut and you can choose how you want the mission to be. To quote a few of the missions were like taking 50 steps( the numbers could be altered as per your needs) or taking 20 squats ( God only knows how it recognizes that it’s a squat) or shaking the phone 50 times or doing a math problem( the difficulty can again be altered by you, I always chose an easy version like 7+5, etc :-)

A few of the above-mentioned like the squats, steps, etc were part of the paid version. I was never a fan of buying an app at some price so just used the basic version.

Missions Tried:

I have tried missions like solving math equations, shaking the phone, etc and I was still failing. I used to do those tasks by rolling on the bed and then used to sleep. Something was not working and I found what it was after trying a mission called “ Picture alignment” This is a mission where you have to take a picture of anything like a wall hanging, TV, etc, and when the alarm goes off you have to show the camera in the app and click the picture and it has to match exactly what you have taken as a ?prototype.

This was working as I could relate this to the 5 Second rule of Mel Robbins

5-4-3-2-1 like the rocket launch counting you jump off into action to do a task and this helps you in fulfilling the task

While the concept of jumping off the bed was doing the magic, however, it became very frustrating when the picture never matches I used to keep clicking for minutes together and the ones at home were getting jittery as the alarm keeps barring high till the mission is complete. In the morning while feeling so sleepy the picture never came correctly saying the angle was long, distance mismatch, etc.

The Final Attempt

That’s when I changed to the next mission “Bar code” reader. This one was part of the free version again (thankfully )You can scan a bar code of any object and when the alarm goes on you will have to scan it to stop the alarm. I tried the bar code of an oil bottle kept far away from the bedroom. So every day when the alarm rang I jump off and run to scan the object. This did help as it made me move and the task was also doable as the scanner worked pretty well. However, there were still gaps, and was falling asleep post doing this activity. The reason being after I switched off the alarm though I was quite awake I made the mistake of entering the “ danger zone” ?? the bedroom of course. At that hour when the bedroom was at the perfect temperature with AC on, the bed was looking like a gateway to heaven.

I used to think, “what's the harm in just lying down a few mins to enjoy the cozy atmosphere?” ?and within a few mins would have fallen asleep. So, I course-corrected after a few days of this practice. I never entered the bedroom a few mins after I woke up. I just lock the house and jump off to walk ?There were a few disadvantages as well of walking at 3.33 am ( will explain the context of picking up at this ?slot of the hour)

I faced weird/funny comments ?due to the odd hour of walking

1.????My apartment watchmen asked me if I had any sleep disorder (I wondered if he thought I was sleepwalking)

2.????One of the people in my contact list asked me on WhatsApp if I was on night shift seeing me online at this time

3.????Few of my flatmates got scared/ startled seeing me at that early hour for a minute and then regained the fact that I was on my Morning walk practice

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4.????On a lighter note my Mentor used to say I should better start demanding a part-time salary from my apartment association as I was guarding them during those odds when the watchman is in deep sleep ???

How did I end up picking up the ??3.33 am slot??

As I mentioned earlier it all started with the 5 am club concept and the alarm was initially set at 5 am. If you had noticed my favorite list of speakers I did have a few spiritual leaders on the list as well. During one such podcast where I heard the concept of Brahma Muhurta time (Ita s a specific time in the early hours of the Hindu religion-If we consider the night as the period from sunset to sunrise, then the last quarter of the night is the Brahma Muhurta time – anywhere between 3:30 a.m. to 5:30 am based on the sunrise timing of that day)

To make adjustments to the sunrise timing and to be on the safer side I picked up 4 am as a slot and changed my alarm.

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After a few days, I stumbled upon another video by Sadguru who spoke about the phenomenal magic hour at 3.30 - 3.40 am. I just thought anyways I’m getting up at 4 am so what’s the harm in getting up a little earlier to see what’s the magic happening at that time?

I somehow like the repetitive numbers like 111,222 etc. So that’s how I ended up setting the alarm at 3.33 am!

Sleep Window

Now comes the Million-dollar question - When do I go to sleep? I have tried every single window of sleep starting from 12 hours to 4 hours. I finally found that sleeping for 4hr30mins helped me to stay absolutely stay awake the next day - Not less, not more. So I sleep from around 10.30 PM to 11 PM and I set up the alarm every single night before I go to sleep. This is another important reason for getting up, as it helped in setting up an intention every single night for getting up the next day. It became a practice that before winding off I set the alarm.

I could hear you screaming that sleep is important, and one needs a minimum of 8 hrs of sleep, etc. However, this is the pattern that I’m comfortable with. You may have to find yours!

I have found that sleeping for 8-12 hours or lesser than 4 ? hrs both created the same hangover effect for me. So I ensure the alarm clock shows the time left as 4 ? hrs and if it does not I adjust the alarm time slightly here and there to get in the window based on the sleeping time.

When someone asks me how I sacrifice the sleep hours, the only thought I get is almost more than half of my life( If at all I consider 60 years an average lifetime;-)) has gone in sleeping long hours and I do not want to do this anymore

Besides, I believe more than the quantity of sleep it’s the quality of sleep that makes the difference.

Final Thoughts

So after almost 4 years of various trial and error, I could proudly say I have joined the early riser troop. Now if you ask me “ Do you get up every single day at this time?

The answer is “No”.There are days when I sleep late at night for reasons like watching a movie for a night show or having a night out with friends, having Birthday bashes, Traveling, etc. There had been days when I go to sleep at 3 am in the morning due to these reasons. I don’t kill myself during those days to keep the streak on. These are my cheat days. However, I ensure I don’t break the chain for more than 2-3 days. Trust me it becomes really difficult to get back on track after that. In fact, on normal days I follow the pattern on Saturdays & Sundays as well to keep up the practice.

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And I have really enjoyed the magical hours I have reaped so many good things because of this habit, wanted to just end this with Rumi's quote:

“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you

Don't go back to sleep!

If you are someone who wants to get into the early riser club, it's difficult but possible. Just an additional push, consistency, and persistence will do the magic!