You go to bed. You sleep. And then, some designated amount of time later, your alarm goes off.
What do you do?
Is it:
A) get right up and start your day with a smile?
B) Hit the snooze button once and stretch gently before getting up out of bed
C) Hit the snooze button every 5 minutes before eventually dragging yourself out of bed an hour later.
For many of us (including my beloved husband), the answer is C.
Today, I will explain to you why this is the WORST answer and give you some tips to wake up with more energy every day!
The part you already know:
We, as a society, are not getting enough sleep. One result of the social patterns and work norms that dictate our lives is that we often stay up later and wake up earlier than we would if we let our own biological systems dictate or sleeping hours. Often we are too stressed to fall asleep easily and sleep deeply.
This is probably very frustrating for you. I know it is for me. I mean, adulting is hard but I would have thought I’d be able to figure out how to sleep correctly at least.
The part you might not know:
Our bodies have systems built into them to help us wake up each morning. Every morning your body starts the wake-up process gradually about 2 hours before you’re ready to get out of bed. Think of it as a machine that’s slowly coming back online. The engines are heating up, the systems are rebooting. It takes a while.
When it all goes well we wake up feeling refreshed and ready to go, like on a weekend day when you get to sleep in until you awake naturally. (Sorry, parents of young children. You may not remember this one!)
Because we’re not allowing ourselves enough sleep, though, we often set our alarms to go off in the middle of this gradual wake-up process, or often before it’s even started. This is why we wake up so groggy!
If you hit snooze now, not having gotten enough sleep, you’re likely to fall right back asleep and start a new sleep cycle. When the alarm goes off again your sleep cycle has just begun, and, as luck would have it, this is the WORST time for you to wake up.
Waking up during the first few minutes of a sleep cycle can trigger something called “sleep inertia”, which is that fuzzy, groggy feeling that makes you feel like you want to go right back to bed, or lay down on the couch for a while.
That means that hitting your snooze button, for most people, is actually making you MORE TIRED!
What you can do instead:
Set your alarm for the latest possible time you can wake up for the day. If you don’t have time to snooze, you’ll need to wake up when the alarm goes off. You might still feel sleepy if you’re not getting enough sleep in general, but waking up at this same time every day will help your body adjust so that it starts naturally getting tired at the right time every evening. Basically, stop fooling yourself with that snooze button, and just set the alarm later!
If your alarm goes off and you are just not done sleeping, set a new alarm for 20-30 minutes from now instead of hitting snooze. This gives you a longer time in that sleep cycle so that you won’t suffer from sleep inertia when you wake up, instead of waking up 3-5 more times in the next half hour each time your alarm goes back off. This way actually gives you a meaningful amount of extra sleep, about as much as a power nap.
Take an “active snooze” and use that extra ten minutes to kick-start your body’s natural wake-up process. A few minutes of gentle stretching, meditation, or journaling can give you some breathing room and let your body wake up slowly. When your alarm goes off the second time, you won’t have fallen back to sleep and will feel more awake and ready to start your day.
Pick one of these strategies to try this week, and see how your days begin to start with more energy and less brain fog! You’ll have more energy throughout your day, and your body’s sleep cycle will begin to regulate itself to make your sleep better and better over time.
Interested in making more small tweaks that lead to BIG results in your energy levels throughout the week? Click here to set up a free activation call, and we’ll get you started!
