Why I Start My Day at 4 am

My 4 am wake up has more to do with my recent perspective shift than being a morning person. Are you looking to make a major lifestyle change? Then a radical schedule change might be just the tool you  need.

Monday through Friday, my alarm dings at 4 am – dark even during summer’s early hours. I make my way to our living room in the dark to avoid waking my husband and am greeted by my bullmastiff’s snores. It’s too early even for canine excitement. These days, I grab a water bottle and sit down with my laptop at my kitchen table. I can fit in about two hours of work before my 6 year old comes down the stairs thanks to his scary consistent internal clock. Usually, these two hours are taken up with crafting social media posts for one of my social media channels or writing blog posts or freelance articles.  By the time my son is ready for breakfast and some before school Mama time, I’m ready for a break.

Although I’ve always been a morning person, 4 am is not a naturally productive time for me. In a perfect world, I’d drift awake around 6:30 before taking a half hour to stretch, take a walk, play fetch with the pups, cuddle with my munchkin and drink some hot tea before getting work.

But my world is not perfect. It is fulfilling, jam packed, frustrating, and constantly adjusting. My top priorities of family, my wellness and professional growth are often competing.

Perspective Shift

While my husband was deployed to Afghanistan in 2014,  I got into the habit of working in the evenings after my son went to bed. I hated sitting around by myself watching tv and found it harder to go to bed early. Unfortunately, that meant that I lost much of my work time when he came home and expected evenings to be for family!

Around the same time, I was wrestling with my own excuses and fear of failure. Let’s be honest, when it comes to weight loss, chasing professional dreams, or anything else that is extremely important to you – the fear of failure can be intense. It doesn’t matter if I am the only one putting that pressure on myself. The voice inside my head that says “I can’t….” is loud and constant.

I slowly, painfully slowly, came around to the realization that I was making myself so busy and tired that I honestly didn’t have enough time or energy to workout like I needed, prepare healthy foods or finish the blogging course I’d been working on. That made a handy excuse as to why they weren’t getting done. It was the critic inside my head winning.

A New Habit

This summer, I knew that if I wanted to things to change I needed to change something drastically. I needed to create new habits, new thoughts that empowered and built momentum forward to drown out that negative voice inside my head. For consistency’s sake, it needed to be something I could control – and with a soldier husband and busy 6 year old plus work, my schedule is generally at the whim of everything else that needs to get done.

Except for those hours before everyone gets up.

Choosing to get up at 4 am every morning is a daily affirmation that I am worth the effort it takes to get where I want to be even if it is uncomfortable. It is the shove I need every morning to decide that yes, I’m going to put on work out clothes. It is the reminder to grab the clean, prepped breakfast instead of a chicken biscuit from Chick fil a. That energy slump I feel at 10 am (because I’ve already been up and at’em for 6 hours!) prompts me to fuel my body like an athlete would and get some fresh air with a run or PiYo to stretch out my back.

Sitting in my sleeping home at the kitchen table with the dog snoring a few feet away is my declaration that my goals are worth the hard work. And, at least most days, it lets me chase my goals in a way that respects my priorities. Most days, I sit down and eat breakfast with my 6 year old before taking him to school. Most days, I pick him up from school and sit with him to do his homework or play soccer on an exceptionally warm Autumn afternoon. Most days, I have enough energy to put a healthy, home cooked meal on the table for dinner for all of us to sit down to.

When Texas gives you a sunny, upper 70s afternoon, you play soccer + fetch. At the same time. #WAHM #thankful

A photo posted by Kristen (@ifthesaddlefits) on Oct 27, 2015 at 2:30pm PDT

The dishes don’t always get done because I’m out of steam at 7 pm. I haven’t consistently watched TV in months. There are days I don’t brush my hair because it goes up at 4 am and stays there until I take a shower at 8 pm. But all of those things? Not nearly as important as being almost ready to launch BloggingInBalance.com, a project I’ve been turning over in my head for more than two years as way to give back to the blogging community that has meant so much to me. Not nearly as important as being able to run a family 5k with my son and not feel like I’m dying. Not nearly as important as crossing some HUGE goals off my 101 in 1001 like crocheting a blanket, showing in a recognized show and qualifying for Regionals.

I get up at 4 am not because I’m a morning person, but because I’m using the morning to become the person I want to be.

Lifestyle changes are hard. What hard change have you made or are thinking about making?