I Wake Up Early
I get up at 4am on Saturdays and Sundays to get ready to be at the canyon at 5:45am for a sunrise hike. Sometimes, when I’m lucky, my son meets me at the canyon at 5:30am on a week day to hike with me before work. I absolutely never regret getting up at 4am to hike. Not even on the days when my son pushes me to run UP the canyon and yells back at me, “There’ll be plenty of time for walking when we’re done!”
There have been days when I didn’t want to wake up and so I turned off my alarm and kept sleeping. Those are the days I regret not getting up at 4am. Once I get up and start getting ready, I have no desire to get back in bed. When I wake up and am still laying in bed, it is critical that I convince myself right then that getting out of bed at that moment will be the first of many great decisions I make that day. It only takes me a minute or so to transition from, “This bed is so comfortable, I want to keep sleeping,” to “I’d rather get up and go for a hike.”
The choice is always up to me. I can look at breathtaking pictures of sunrises that other people take or I can soak in the sunrises in person and take my own breathtaking pictures of them.
Sunrise on October 13, 2019, 7:39am, Wilacre Park, Studio City, CA
Here is what I do, to prepare myself to get up early each weekend to catch the sunrise:
Mentally prepare myself during the week, to wake up early on the weekend.
Remind myself on Friday and Saturday that I am getting up early on Saturday and Sunday.
Get to bed several hours before midnight on Friday and Saturday.
Set my alarm for 4am on Saturday and Sunday morning.
Place my phone (alarm) away from my bed so that I have to get out of bed to turn it off.
Tell myself that when the alarm goes off at 4am, I have to get out of bed. No excuses.
When the alarm goes off, get up and go to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face and begin getting ready for my hike.