Become a Morning Person in 4 Quick Steps

If you're not a morning person, there are some things you can do to make it easier to rise and shine in the morning.

I will freely admit that I am so not a morning person. After I wake up, it takes me a good hour before I feel like I am even functioning. For me, there is nothing more annoying than a cheery morning person. But, there have been times that I needed to become a morning person in order to be at work on time. This can be especially true if you have kept a more relaxed morning schedule while looking for a job, and have to transition to a job that gets started bright and early.

When you are trying to change your built in sleep cycle, it can be a challenge. For me, I feel more energetic late at night and, if left to my own devices, I would wake up somewhere around 10 am. Still, there have been times in my life when my normal awake/asleep schedule just doesn't work. If you want to change into a morning person, either for a job or simply because you want to take advantage of the morning hours, here are four things you can do to make the transition easier:

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  Get prepared the night before – Until you get into the swing of things, prepare for your morning the night before. This means lay out what you want to wear, pack up the things you need to take with you and do whatever you can to make the morning a little easier and less hectic. You might even want to get a to-do list together to stick on the bathroom mirror or the back of the front door, so you'll be sure to have everything you need before you leave in the morning.
  
  
  
  


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  Find a reason to wake up – This one works really well for me. When I need to change my schedule, I try to plan something exciting for the morning. This can be as simple as having a box of my favorite breakfast cereal, a new bag of gourmet coffee or an outfit I am excited about. Whatever it is, it just has to be something that will give you are reason to not hit the snooze button and instead get up and get motivated. Once you get adjusted, you can get away with only doing this on days when it is especially hard to get up, like Mondays.
  
  
  
  


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  Set a bedtime – This one is trickier. The natural thought here would be to set an early bedtime and try to stick with it. That might work for some people, but it never works for me. Even though you might be pretty tired for the first couple of days, it is easier to try to go to sleep when you first get tired. Your natural rhythms will make you get tired a little earlier each day until you find the time that works best for you. If you don't work with your own body's cycle, the odds are good that you'll be spending a lot of time in bed, trying hard to get to sleep and not being able to.
  
  
  
  


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  Get some fresh air – Make going outside, (weather permitting) part of your morning routine. Take a morning walk, go for a jog or just take your morning coffee outside. There is something about the morning air that can wake you up and make you feel motivated. Once you get into the habit, you might even decided to keep doing it long after you have gotten adjusted.

Are you a morning person? What do you do to cope? Let me know in the comments.

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By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for HealthcareJobsiteBlog. Along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.