5am

I wake up around 5am most days. I rarely miss a sunrise, and when I do, I’m disappointed.

When people hear this, they either think I’m nuts, or say something like, “Ugh, I wish I were a morning person…”

This post is for the latter group who wants to get up earlier, but “can’t…”

Listen, I’m not going to claim that chronotypes aren’t real, but I am going to tell you this:

I have not always been a morning person.

In my teens and early 20s, I could probably sleep until 11am when allowed. By my mid-to-late 20s I was in the corporate world with a desk job, where 9am meetings were the standard, and even then I would stay up well past midnight, and my mornings involved constant negotiations with myself, bargaining for just “one hit of more snooze button,” because I could get by without washing my hair one more day, and traffic probably wouldn’t be that bad…” Coffee was always hastily made, chugged from a travel mug in the car, and rarely enjoyed.

Learning to wake up at 5am took practice and a deliberate commitment to change.

I decided I wanted to be the type of person who woke up early, and it didn’t happen overnight (heh). And it took years of relying on a dreaded alarm before my body finally learned and loved the new rhythm.

As to the common argument that you can’t fall asleep early enough to allow you to get up early …

Well, here’s the unpleasant reality to that: You’ve got to be willing to put in a few days/weeks forcing yourself to get up at 5am even though you went to bed at 1am. It means you will be temporarily tired.

But being tired means you will also be excited for bed earlier than you’re used to.

And spoiler alert, the earlier you go to bed, the easier it is to get up early. Being an early riser is as much about your bed time as it is your wake-up time.

I’m not arguing for turning everyone into morning people. If it sounds like hell, don’t.

But for those who do want to join the sunrise club, take it from a former “night owl…”

You can change if you want to.