1) Structure

I want to wake up around 4.30 and 5. I know many people will get very tired of hearing this. Especially if you feel you are a night owl.  I understand as someone who kept telling myself I prefer to work at night. And well sometimes I do. But if I have to do creative things and/or concentrate on myself once in a while I do like to do it in the morning. 

1. When you wake up early you balance out your hormones. You can read more about this here: 4 Sneaky Benefits to Waking Up at 5 AM but science states that because waking up early requires going to sleep early you balance out your hormones. The best sleep time for being the healthiest happens between 10 PM and 2 AM. That is the reason you might now wake up tired even if you wake up super early. 
2. Waking up this early would also give me more structure. Especially if I have days I go to work later or if I don’t have work/ school at all. 
3. Waking up at 4.30 or 5 requires some decipline. If you succeed in that it means you start your day right away with saying yes to the hard things.  

2) Going to sleep early 

This probably should have been the first goal for me, because this is what ensures that I actually have the energy to wake up. But we will roll with it. I actually don’t have an issue to go to sleep early. But I don’t have a routine set for the night and that can cause some issues…especially after a long work day when my brain runs around like a hamster in a wheel. “Gonna be late, gonna be late… for what? I dunno, just gonna be late” 

3) Use my phone less…

 We already established earlier on in the blog post about phone addiction that I use my phone too much (and that you probably do as well…). I mean 5+ hours a day… that is WAY too much. Even if I use my phone a lot for work.  The phone distracts me from work, studying and from going to sleep. I usually do end up putting it away by 22 or very least 23 PM but, that doesn’t mean I get good quality sleep. And 5 hours from the day is like one third of my whole day…. so that is very scary. 

4) Read for 30 min- 1h a day

Yes, this is very much possible. Instead of being on youtube for 3 hours… I could read for that time. And since I know that I won’t be able to do it for that long right away I will start slow with  30 minutes  to an hour. Obviously I can do more, but to start of slow and steady. I really can’t use the excuse of not having time to read when I literally kill it by scrolling on my phone… 

5) Gratitude/Meditation 

So this is something that many people kind of want to brush off as a bit of whoo whoo. But well, first of all, I am a bit whoo whoo and second science actually backs this up. Soooo…. let’s get to the point. Gratitude makes you stop that hamster wheel and makes you be happy right now. Instead of always thinking about the day you get/achieve something and “Then I will be happy” … nope, you won’t be, because there is always another shinier goal you have to get. So be thankful now.

The other part of it is meditation (or you could do a thankfulness meditation and that way kill two birds with one stone). Meditation has been shown to change the way your brain is wired and if you do it in nature it is even better. Meditation clears out the clutter in your brain, making it easier for you to do what you set out to do. This is why I really need this goal in my life. Because I always have 50 things on my to-do list. But then I just feel like my brain explodes because I can’t concentrate on the one thing I am doing.

In conclusion 

This year has been about changing my life for the better. It has been about executing more and thinking less. Planning less and just doing it. And I have achieved a lot of that …. but not as much as I want. So with these habits. Which I hope to actually make constant before 2019 … I hope I will step up my game.  

 Thanks for reading…. tell me what are your goals for before 2019?