Yesterday, I wrote 3 new strategies on waking up early which brings to 6 the total number of strategies we can employ to wake up early. Today, I am going to introduce another 3 strategies we can add to our arsenal.

If you read self-help books, you probably know Anthony Robbins. He is the author of best selling books like Unlimited Power and programs (not a software program...) like Personal Power. In his program he said,

If you do something, it’s because you associate a pleasure with it. If you don’t do something, it’s because of pain and fear you link to it.

And he is right. We experience this everyday. Why do you like ice cream? Because it tastes good and you enjoy it. On a hot day, it can even refresh you a bit. How about touching hot kettles? Do you touch hot kettles when boiling water? No you don't! This is because it is painful to do so. Your hand gets burnt and you don't want that.

The same can be said about waking up early. If we associate good things with waking up early and bad thing with not waking up early, it would help us wake up early not as our goal but as a means to our goal. Let me explain further but first let us create our list of good things and bad things. I'll put mine here as an example:

Good Things

1. If I wake up early, I won't be stuck in the morning traffic jam.
2. If I wake up early, I will be able to get to work early and go home early.
3. If I wake up early, I will be able to do more when I get home. I will be able to attend to personal things and take care of family matters.
4. If I wake up early, I will get more self-respect because I am able to reach and do what I set to do.

Bad Things

1. If I don't wake up early, I would have to stand up on the bus as the seats are already taken by those who ride the bus early.
2. If I don't wake up early, I will set a bad example to my subordinates in the office and thus might lose their respect.
3. If I don't wake up early, I won't be able to go home early and won't be able to do the things I need to do at home.
4. If I don't wake up early, things might get ugly at work since I need to play catch-up with the things I should have done earlier.

Above, I listed 4 items each. But it is good to have more. So you see, our goal is not to wake up early but really our goals are the things we have itemized above. Waking up early is just a means to do so. And if we do so, we will reap the benefits and avoid the bad consequences.

Thus in a nutshell, our strategy is:

Associate waking up early with the good and waking up late with the bad.

Once, I was able to sleep for like 2 days straight! I slept in a dark room that time and every time I woke up I thought it was still night. Though this a bit of an extreme case, my point is the intesity of light in a room can affect our sleep. So here is our next strategy:

Place your bed near a window so that when the sun rises, it would wake you up naturally.

Yes this works. It worked for me. Not only is the sun a natural waker (our body recognizes its time to wake up because of the light), but it also heats us up thus prompting us to wake up at once! This is true in tropical countries where the sun really heats you up real fast. It's like sprinkling you with hot water but in this case sunlight.

Now this strategy is a combination of all strategies, literally.

Use all wake up strategies at once to force yourself to wake up.

If you tried the strategies I presented individually and worked then good. But if it did not, then trying doing all of them at once! This is sort of an overkill but I assure you it would work. You might get annoyed but then again it works. Try it.

Right now, all in all we have 9 strategies. If you want to wake up early try them at your own pace. But make sure to try them and not just agree with what I said. If it works, then congratulations!