4 Reasons to Get Up Early

FINALS.

Just the word strikes a little bit of fear in my heart. My fellow college students reading this right now know what's up.

But amid the craziness, I've managed to make one lovely change over the semester or so: I'm getting up early. Not early early, but a comfortable seven o'clock. I'm lucky in that my first class is at 8:30am. I know it's not what most students would prefer but I've gotten in a smooth routine of productive mornings. And there's nothing that makes me satisfied quite like productive mornings.

I'm one of those people who just has to share when good things happen--I want you to feel the early morning goodness too! But in case you're just not convinced why the heck you should get up early, let me explain why I do.

+ I get alone time. As an introvert (granted a fairly social one), I loooove spending some quality time with myself. It makes me so happy to read, cross-stitch, doodle or even watch Netflix by myself. However, living with a roommates generally makes this difficult. Especially with our schedules, we find that we're often at home at the same time and even though we don't share bedrooms, there's always the temptation to go out and socialize. Which is great, don't get me wrong--I love my roommates. But sometimes, I just need a little quiet time. By getting up early, I have at least half an hour to work on stuff or get ready before anyone else is up and doing things.

+ I have time to plan out my day. The other day, on a Saturday, I made the mistake of staying in bed until 9:45, which sounds fine, until I realized that I needed an hour to shower and get ready and then 30 minutes to allow to get to campus. And to save you from doing the math, I'll tell you that I was almost late to my 10:40am meeting. When I get up early though, I can easily plan out my morning--and even my whole day! I like to write a list of my classes + to-dos for the day, and then figure out where I can fit tasks in my day. I get so much more done!

+ I feel accomplished. This sound silly, I know. BUT we all know that getting up early is hard. Really hard. But when I get up early, I've already done something awesome. It may just be a simple mind trick, but after getting up early, I feel like the rest of my day will be easy. There's something to be said for doing something challenging first thing every day just to remind yourself who's boss (YOU ARE).

+ I make time to do things that I might not otherwise get around to. I know I don't really, but getting early helps me feel like I have a little more time in the day. When I stay up late, I'm rarely productive. But early in the morning, I'm eager to get stuff done. This means I get to write blog posts, read my Bible, read blogs or listen to music. Other days, these things just don't happen + I'm a little less happy because of it.

Do you get up early? Why or why not?

5 Steps to Your Best Morning Ever

Get to bed early enough the night before! The best mornings start the night before. Try to plan for at least seven hours of sleep per night and plan your bedtime accordingly. I turn off all electronics 30 minutes before I want to be asleep just to allow plenty of time to get relaxed.

Practice getting up with your alarm. I'm reeeeally bad about pressing snooze three or four times before I actually get out of bed which probably annoys my roommate to no end (sorryyy Liv). But I've noticed that if I hop out of bed on the first buzz, I have more energy and motivation for the next couple hours. It definitely takes practice--I know I'm working on it myself!

Eat a healthy, rounded breakfast. Most importantly in my opinion, try to eat a good serving of protein in the form of lean sausage or peanut butter or greek yogurt. 

Do something difficult. This one's kind of crazy, but I'm serious! Researchers at the University of Nottingham found that our willpower is greatest in the morning. Think about what you could accomplish if you put that to good use! 

Start your morning with some stretches! I enjoy doing a couple yoga-inspired stretches in the morning to get my muscles warmed up for a long day. Keep reading for my 10-minute yoga routine to kickstart your day!

First off, make sure you have a high-quality mat. I absolutely love this beautiful mat from Optimistic Elephant. It's super high-quality and really thick. This is really helpful if you ever have wrist pain doing yoga, like I do. Plus, the beautiful design makes me happy and that's always helpful in making my morning better.

1. Start standing with your feet hip-width apart and reach above your head, leaning back.

2. Swoop forward and hold opposite elbows allowing your jaw to slack and your head to hang.

3. Walk your hands out to a plank position, keeping your body as straight as possible.

4. Keeping your elbows as close to your sides as you can, bend at the elbows and come down to the ground, or hover if you can to complete the chaturanga.

5. Swing your body forward into a cobra or upward facing dog pose, with your thighs on or off the ground, looking to the sky.

6. Come back into plank and slide back into child's pose. Feel free to bring arms around to your feet.

7. From plank, lift your hips into the air and come into downward dog, bending the legs one at a time for a stretch. Complete poses 3-7 as many times through as you'd like, flowing through at your own pace.

8. From down dog, lift on leg into the air, keeping a straight line through the body and hips in line.

9. Pull that leg forward and into your chest for a lunge.

10. Step forward with the other leg and stand straight.

Do you practice yoga? What does your morning routine look like?

This post was brought to you by Optimistic Elephant, an etsy store full of inspiring yoga mats and accessories. All opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting brands that support Call Me Sassafras!

How I Formed My Morning Routine

Haiii there friends! Notice anything different around here? I've been practicing digitizing my hand-lettering and I'm working to incorporate it more into my designs. Not to be all egotistical and all, but I think it looks rather smashing. I especially like my new signature (scroll down and see it!).

Anyways, today I want to talk a little bit about morning routines. We all have one, even if it's just rolling out of bed five minutes before you need to be at work. But the interesting thing to me is how I've found that my morning routine--what I do for the first hour or so that I'm awake--shapes my entire day.

On mornings where I sleep late, exhausted after a busy night of work, stumble out of bed at 11 and don't shower for an hour, I find that the rest of my day is similarly unfocused and honestly, wasted. On those days, I never really do anything until I have to get ready for my night at work. But not only am I unproductive, I just feel badly. I know it's been said before that sleeping in late can keep you from being productive, but have you ever noticed the impact of sleeping late on your mood? The way you interact with others? Even the choice of what you wear (and therefore, how you carry and present yourself)? 

In the summers, morning routines are especially hard for me to form. I work nights, until about 11:30 or 12 every night. And I often find that I'm so wound up from talking to customers and being cheerful all night that sometimes it can take me hours to feel "ready" to get to bed. So I've struggled to balance the two sides of my day so that they don't ruin the middle. 

I've found that first, I have to focus on calming my mind so I can sleep as soon as possible at night. In the past, I would start a blog post when I get home, maybe do some cleaning, and before I knew it, it would be three or four in the morning. Now, I choose to quiet my mind, stay away from active technology (meaning no blogging--I just can't say no to my Netflix habit), do some yoga if I need and settle in bed as soon as possible. I like to take my ride home from work as a chance to clear my mind of all things work and transition into planning for sleep.

The other key part is setting an alarm. I know it sounds so terrible not fun, but I'm really a big believer in setting an alarm everyday, even if you set it for noon. I set my alarm to allow me seven and a half hours of sleep, which I have found is my sweet spot of waking up rested but not groggy and lazy. I set a second alarm clock for 30 minutes later. If I wake up with the first alarm and don't feel rested, I'll go back to sleep until the second. But I've found that I don't even use the second alarm most of the time. 

Lastly, I like to make my plan for the day (or at least until lunch) first thing in the morning or right before I go to bed. I like to choose 2-4 big things to get done (weed, write a blog post, exercise, go to the grocery store, etc) and then list a few reminders for smaller things (i.e. reply to a certain email or catch up on my blog feed). I make sure to add at least one item for something I'm looking forward to about my day.

Here's a peek at my morning/night routine:

12:00 am // Get home from work, get ready for bed, watch some Netflix.

1:00 am // Turn off all technology, lights, etc, and go to sleep.

8:30 am // First alarm goes off. Relax in bed or go back to sleep.

9:00 am // Second alarm. Get up. Brush teeth, wash face, etc.

9:15 am // Breakfast. I'm not a huge breakfast person, but even a yogurt reminds me that my day has begun.

9:30 am // Blog or exercise/shower. I mostly alternate days, but some days I get ambitious and do both.

10:30 am // Begin my to-do list.

So even though I don't get up all that early because of working nights, scheduling out my mornings has helped me stay productive all day long.

Now, I want to hear from you! What do your mornings look like? If you want to write your own Morning Diaries post, please leave a link!

Monthly Goals

Helloooo! Happy June! Today's our double day: weekly and monthly wishes! Man, it has been a heck of a week!

I've only talked about it a little bit but I had something big happen this week...I graduated! Yay! Side note: can I just say that graduation caps are officially the ugliest hats ever. Like serioiusly, America, is that the best tradition we can come up with? Other countries have gorgeous tribal or ethnic clothing and meaningful traditions (my family's half-Swedish and I've always loved St. Lucia Day). And while I know the US has other beautiful traditions, wearing flat caps on your head for graduations is pretty embarrassing. 

But aaaaanyways, all the family-and-friends socializing sort of overshadowed my goals this week. But I still didn't do half bad!

Last Week's Goals:

+ Make a to-do list every morning and actually get things done. So I started off great, but come Friday (when graduation festivities started) it was just not happening. My room's a bit of a mess and I've got approximately four thousand and seven thank you notes to write, but whatever. I graduated, homeskillet.

+ Read at least 15 minutes a day. I did great on this...until approximately Wednesday when I forgot I made this goal. Uh, oops. But then I remembered it on Friday and did pretty well the rest of the week so it's all good, guys. Plus, my genetics book = super interesting. I'm a nerd.

This Week's Goals:

+ Have fun in California! I haven't mentioned it in awhile, but my trip to California is this week! I leave tomorrow. As a reminder, in case you've lost your binder full of the details of my life, my family and I are celebrating my graduation by going to CA (I live on the East Coast) and visiting all the National Parks/beaches/aquariums we can fit in 12 days. I'm gonna see big trees. Anyways, this isn't a goal, but more an excuse to talk about my trip. #sorrynotsorry

+ Practice taking pictures! So I officially break the cardinal rule of bloggers: I don't take pictures. I don't even own a camera. Except my phone and a (largely unused) digital camera from approximately 2004. But I'm telling myself that it'll take a lot of skill to screw up pictures of such a gorgeous area. So even if it's on my iPhone, I want to actually take pictures of things for once! Maybe I'll get bold + take out that digital camera ;)

This Month's Goals:

+ Well let's look ahead to what June includes for me. First part of the month, I'll be in California, chilling out with the trees. Then, I'll be in Florida for a few days on some school business. Then (with literally less than 24 hours in between on either end of Florida), I'll head to Michigan for the summer where I work at an ice cream shop and listen to way too much indie pop music on my walks to the beach every afternoon. So it's gonna be crazy in that I have too much vacation planned! Jokes, jokes.

+ Form an actual morning routine. During summer (aka when I don't have 8am classes), I'm terrible at actually forming a good sleep/morning routine. Most days I get up between 8-9, but some days it's 7am and others it's not till 10 (which is actually embarrassing). This month, I'll form a morning routine that will involve a consistent but reasonable waking up time (with an alarm as back up!), exercise at least a few days a week, stretching, being productive, designing, etc. 

+ Work on my super secret project! How annoying is it to you guys when bloggers announce a project, but title is something like 'the super secret project'? Like why am I telling you about it if it's a secret? Mostly because it's not a sure thing + it's my way of knocking on wood. I hope to share more about it with you soon...if I can get enough of it prepared first!

What are your goals for the week + month?!