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Struggle with waking up in the morning? Read tips on how to get motivated in the morning!

Your mornings are the most important time of each day. Developing the habit of waking up with motivation is key to maximizing daily productivity. Hence, waking up with motivation should be one of your key habits to develop. How to motivate yourself to wake up early? there are motivation tips to wake up early.

There is a saying:

How you start your day is how you’re going to live your day. And how you live your day is the way you live life.Louise Hay

And this is why every one of us wants to start strong. Nobody wants to wake up in a sleepy and tired manner. We all want to wake up full of energy and motivation.

We want to go through a brand new day with a great morning.

As human beings, every one of us goes through days when we feel motivated and days when we feel slumpy.

There are mornings when we feel tired and lazy to get up. And there are also days when we feel so highly pumped that we can’t wait to jump out of the bed and get going.

Successful people do what they need to do, whether they feel like it or not.

I like how Haruki Murakami puts it during an interview. Being a successful writer, Murakami has developed the habit of taking action no matter what happens. This is what he said:

“When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m.

I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”Haruki Murakami

If you want to produce extraordinary results in what you do, you must learn to maintain your motivation each day.

More importantly, you must master yourself so that you can wake up with the motivation to work on your goals, day-in and day-out.

Also, this was what Ernest Hemingway used to say:

Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.

It is normal that motivation comes and goes. But to be successful, you must master your motivation so that you can go through each day feeling inspired, motivated, and driven.

And here are 10 great tips on how you can wake up with motivation and start your day strong, every day.

Table of Contents

• 1. Give yourself an exciting reason to wake up
• 2. Use an outrageous alarm tone
• 3. Use the 5-Second Rule
• 4. Make your most exciting dreams and goals visible to you
• 5. Drink a glass of water
• 6. Exercise and move your body
• 7. Condition yourself for a great start
• 8. Include one thing you love doing in your morning routine
• 9. Create an uplifting environment
• 10. Get to bed early the day before
• Conclusion

1. Give yourself an exciting reason to wake up

If you want to wake up with motivation each morning, you must give yourself an exciting reason to do so.

• Why do you want to wake up in the morning?
• What makes your life exciting?
• What makes you want to jump out of bed and start doing?
• What are you looking forward to doing or accomplishing?

Make your reasons so exciting that you can’t wait but jump out of bed with excitement.

If your only reason to wake up each day is that you need to go to work, I bet that each morning you will have a hard time waking up.

You need a more exciting reason to get up, my friend.

Think about all the successful people in the world, especially those who inspired you. Learn from their purpose and why they do what they do.

Read: How to Find Your Purpose in Life

If you have always wanted to visit Korea and suddenly you get a chance to do so, I believe that you will feel the excitement when the day comes to travel there. You’ll jump out of your bed when the alarm rings in the morning. Perhaps, you feel so excited that you can’t even fall asleep the night before.

When you have something exciting to look forward to, like enjoying a great breakfast with your lover, it is easier to wake up.

Thus, you need to find a passionate reason to get up each morning, my friend.

2. Use an outrageous alarm tone

Most of us wake up with the alarm clock. So it is the first thing that triggers us to get up.

Hence, make your alarm tone exciting. If you are using your phone as an alarm, get the app called The Rock Clock.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson wakes up at 4 AM almost every day and kick-start his morning workout session while most of us still sleeping.

Dwayne then created this motivational app to help you wake up early to tackle your goals.

It is a free app for anyone to use. Well, for your information, Dwayne is not a fan of the snooze button, hence, this app doesn’t come with the snooze function.

Besides using The Rock Clock, you can also use a motivational song such as the Rocky Theme or any other song or music as your alarm tone.

I like the music from Two Steps From Hell. Some movies’ themes are great too, like The Avengers’ Theme. Check them out on YouTube.

By the way, do you know that I also shared personal development videos on YouTube? I create most of my videos using this amazing tool called Veed.io. You should check it out.

By the way, do you know that you can turn your own voice recording into your alarm tone?

Just be creative. The key is to choose an alarm tone that motivates you and is able to remind you of your dreams and goals.

3. Use the 5-Second Rule

I found that the 5-Second Rule from Mel Robbins works well.

Each morning, after my alarm rings, I use the 5-Second Rule and countdown to zero.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then I wake up, switch off my alarm, and walk straight to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

The 5-Second Rule works because it stops our brains from making decisions based on our feelings.

When you just wake up, you FEEL lazy and you FEEL that it is more comfortable to continue to sleep.

And thus, your brain FEELS your feelings and decided to continue to sleep rather than wake up.

Things change when you do the countdown. You have a 5 seconds window to listen more consciously to what you really want. And this is how it helps you make a better decision.

Of course, if you want to know how the 5-Second Rule works, read the book, The 5-Second Rule.

However, you don’t have to understand how it works in order to apply the rule.

Starting from tomorrow onward, countdown from 5 to 0 after your alarm fires. When you reach zero, get up, off the alarm, and start your morning routine.

4. Make your most exciting dreams and goals visible to you

Waking up with motivation requires a lot of mental work, and one of the techniques you can use is to create a trigger to remind yourself of your goals and dreams.

First, your goals and dreams must be able to inspire and motivate you.

Once you fulfilled the first condition, you can create a trigger and make your goals and dreams visible to you the first thing you open your eyes.

Jack Canfield, the worldwide best-selling author shared his experience and how he used his vision boards to motivate him to get up. Here’s what he said on his blog:

“I’ve been using vision boards in one form or another since the 1970s. My first ‘vision board’ was a $100,000 bill that I made myself.

I taped it to the ceiling above my bed so that I would see it every day when I woke up. I set the goal for myself that I wanted to make $100,000 in one year. At that point, I was making $8,000 a year so this was more than 12 times my annual income.

Every morning when I would wake up, I would visualize that. I would close my eyes and visualize my $100,000 lifestyle.

What it would be like…
Where I would live…
The Navajo rugs I was going to buy I put on my walls…
The little lake house I would have…
The car I would own…
And everything else I could think of.

Guess what happened? Within about 30 days, I started having hundred thousand dollar ideas for the first time in my life.

Within a year I had earned $92,000. It was an amazing breakthrough.

At the end of that year, my wife asked me, “Do you think it’ll work for a million dollars?” I said, “I don’t know, It worked for $100,000. So, let’s do it.”

We made a million dollar bill and put that on the ceiling. And within a few years, I received my first $1,000,000 check for a book royalty for the first Chicken Soup For The Soul.”

I strongly suggest you read the entire article to get inspired by Jack’s words himself.

As you can see, you need to remind yourself of your dreams and your goals each day. Preferably, every morning right after you open your eyes, like what Jack did.

Therefore, create a vision board or put your goals or any material that can motivate you next to your bed.

You can do like what Jack did and put your vision board on the ceiling too!

Read: Vision Boards – The Ultimate Guide to Creating and Living Your Dream Life

5. Drink a glass of water

Drinking a glass of water upon rising is one of the best things you can do to get fully awake.

You have gone through long hours of dehydration during your sleep. And when you wake up, it is time to hydrate your body so that your body can function properly.

Studies have discovered that there are many benefits to drinking a glass of water upon waking up.

The benefits include improving your metabolism rate, helping your body rid the toxins, reinforcing healthy weight loss, promoting skin radiance, strengthening your immune system, and of course, making you more alert and awake.

It is a simple yet very beneficial way to make yourself motivated in the morning.

This article from Business Insider said:

“Drinking lemon water as soon as you wake up spikes your energy levels physically and mentally,” Bradberry wrote. “By improving nutrient absorption in your stomach, it gives you a steady, natural energy buzz that lasts the length of the day.”

If highly successful people believe that drinking a glass of water can make their day more productive and drive them forward, don’t you think you should do the same?

6. Exercise and move your body

Do I need to explain more on this one? I guess not.

We all already know that exercise and living an active lifestyle is good for our health, but what is more important is that when you move your body in the morning as part of your routine, you prepare yourself mentally and physically for what’s coming.

You have to understand one thing, our emotions are affected by our motions.

Whenever you feel sleepy, tired, and lack energy and motivation, try to move your body.

Sit straight, stand up, and jump a few times. You will see that your mood instantly changes.

Motions create emotions, my friend.

This is why a lot of highly successful people choose to exercise in the morning as part of their morning habits.

You should do the same.

When you wake up feeling lazy and have no motivation, move your body. Exercise and workout.

After the workout session, you will feel much better. You will that you are ready to take on the world and your mood gets better.

Read this book, What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast and you will understand that exercise is a crucial habit that extraordinary people practice.

7. Condition yourself for a great start

Motivation may not come to you automatically. You have to do something to make yourself driven.

And this is why you have to condition yourself for a great start. This is what successful people do, too, as they condition themselves with better mood with exercise.

If you want to wake up with motivation, you just need to do something that will drive up your mood.

Here are some good suggestions you can consider:

Meditation – Meditation is hot now and it has slowly become mainstream where more and more people are accepting meditation and credit it for their success.

People such as Oprah Winfrey, Arianna Huffington, Jeff Weiner, Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Dalio, Bob Stiller, Russell Simmons, Steve Jobs, and more, are examples of extraordinary people who practice meditation on a regular basis.

Vision boards and visualization – This is another great way how you can condition yourself for success and motivation in the morning.

Just like the example I shared with you above where Jack Canfield put his vision board on the ceiling of his bed so that every morning when he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is his vision board.

You can do the same by conditioning yourself using vision boards. More importantly, you must give yourself at least a couple of minutes to visualize and see yourself achieving what you want.

Visualization is a powerful tool that you can use to boost your level of motivation and prepare yourself for what’s coming.

Affirmations – Affirmations work just like visualization, but instead of envisioning yourself, you repeat the sayings to condition yourself subconsciously to believe in what you say.

We all know that self-talk is important. We become what we say to ourselves most of the time. And thus, if you practice affirmations every morning after you wake up, you can condition yourself for success and get yourself ready for a great day.

Read: 5 Simple Rules How To Make Your Affirmations Work

Read books – Yes, reading helps. You should read motivational books in the morning to make yourself feel driven so that you can start your day strong.

If you want to know what books to read, check out my success books recommendation.

Journaling – Another great way to start your day with motivation is to journal and write down your thoughts. There are many things you can record down.

For instance, you can write down your goals. Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, said that before he became famous and successful as a cartoonist, he would practice writing down his affirmation (his goal) 15 times a day.

No matter whether you choose meditation, visualization, journaling, or motivating yourself through affirmations, you must do it passionately.

Don’t do it for the sake of doing it.

If you want to seriously elevate your mood and make yourself motivated to start your day, do it with passion.

8. Include one thing you love doing in your morning routine

If you don’t like what you do each day, you won’t have the motivation and the drive to wake up.

Common sense, right? Thus, include one thing that you love doing in your morning routine to help you get up easier.

For example, if you love to play with your cat, you can do so in the morning as part of your routine. It makes your day and is able to drive you to wake up because your cat is waiting for you.

Tony Robbins says it well:

“There are 2 different kinds of motivation: Push requires willpower, and willpower never lasts. What will last is pull – having something so exciting, so attractive, something you desire so much that you have a hard time going to sleep at night, you get up so early in the morning and take it to the next level.”

So use the “pull” motivation to inspire, excites, and get you up in the morning.

I love and enjoy having a cup of coffee while reading. Thus, each morning, I will make coffee and read for about 15 minutes. This is what I love doing, and I’m willing to get up early to do it.

What about you? What do you love doing? Include it as part of your morning routine so that you will have no problem getting up early with motivation.

9. Create an uplifting environment

Your surroundings and the environment you are in are extremely important. It is one of the most underrated factors that can greatly impact our lives.

If you want to know how your environment can impact our lives, read this article:

• 10 Tips How to Change Your Environment for Greater Motivation

Take a look at this picture below and tell me how does it make you feel?

Do feel that waking up in the morning is bliss? Or it makes you feel misery?

From the picture above, the right environment, such as the window that allows the morning sunshine to come in plays an important role.

This is why you must make your environment work for you, not against you.

Waking up with the morning sun and getting the fresh morning breeze is one of the best moments that can impact your mood.

Suddenly, you will feel that your stress is gone and you are ready to take on the world again because it is a fresh beginning.

So change and alter your surroundings so that you feel motivated to wake up in the morning.

Take a look at this picture below. Compare it to the picture above and let me know which one you think is a better environment that helps you wake up.

I bet you know the answer.

Therefore, build an inspirational and supportive environment. Turn your environment into your friend, not foe.

Read: 10 Tips How to Build a Positive Work Environment for Solopreneur

10. Get to bed early the day before

If you want to get up in the morning with motivation, just go to bed early and get enough sleep.

How can you have the motivation and energy if you don’t have enough sleep?

This is a fundamental problem that most people neglected. They want to wake up early with greatness, but they don’t want to get enough sleep.

It is like you want more fire but you don’t want to put in more woods.

And then you decide to use caffeine to boost your alertness, which is the same as pouring gasoline into the woods to get more fire.

Get more sleep, my friend.

Don’t sacrifice your health for the sake of getting up early. Many people have the wrong perception by thinking that if they sleep less, they are more productive because they have more hours to work.

However, this is not the case at all.

In fact, having not enough sleep makes you less productive. You want productive hours, not long hours.

There is no point to produce mediocre work because you feel so sleepy and can’t concentrate on your work.

It is better to get enough sleep, and then be able to focus and produce quality work.

What you want is quality, not quantity, my friend.

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute published a great article on the effect of sleep deprivation and deficiency that I think you should check out.

Here’s what the article says:

“The way you feel while you’re awake depends in part on what happens while you’re sleeping. During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and maintain your physical health. In children and teens, sleep also helps support growth and development.

The damage from sleep deficiency can occur in an instant (such as a car crash), or it can harm you over time. For example, ongoing sleep deficiency can raise your risk for some chronic health problems. It also can affect how well you think, react, work, learn, and get along with others.”

So do not look down on the importance of getting enough sleep.

If you want to wake up with motivation and productivity, the first thing you need to do is to get enough sleep.

Conclusion

We may not be able to maintain our motivation every day, but we can do something to make sure that we stay motivated.

Follow the 10 tips above to wake up with motivation and start your day strong.

So what are going to do tomorrow to wake up early and still have the motivation to go through the day?

Do share your opinion with me in the comment section below. Cheers.

Let’s face it, we all want to start our day strong and keep our productivity high throughout the day. We wish that we can accomplish more and make progress toward our goals and reach our dreams. Guess what, we can do this if we learn how to build motivation to start the day.

How you start the day matters. Just like what this article on HuffingtonPost.com says:

“We only have a certain amount of energy and willpower when we wake up each morning, and it slowly gets drained away with decisions. This is especially true if you’re making hundreds of small decisions in the morning that mean nothing yet will affect how you make decisions for the remainder of the day. Try to have the first hour of your day vary as little as possible with a routine.”

And I totally agree. Our energy, willpower, and motivation will fade when we make decisions and take actions. We used up our mental power like our phone’s battery.

This is why highly successful people like Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, try to wear the same T-shirt and jeans every day. He doesn’t want to waste too much energy into thinking about what to wear and how to dress.

The same goes for ex-President of the United States, Barrack Obama. You’ll never see him wear a different color suit when he’s at work.

And if you want to have a great day, you need to have a great start, which is why your morning is absolutely important.

Remember, your morning sets the tone of your day. If you start your morning weak, it may affect your entire day.

Imagine when you oversleep and wake up late. You wake up in a hurry, you don’t take bath, you skip your breakfast, and you quickly rush to the door.

According to Murphy’s Law, whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, and hence, you stuck in traffic congestion. You’re late for your office and the meeting has started. You get into the meeting and you have to apologize because you’re late.

After the meeting, you remember that you forgot that you haven’t taken your breakfast and you’re hungry. You can’t concentrate on your work and the entire day feels like a waste.

Do you want to go through an unproductive day like this?

I’m pretty sure all of us have gone through some bad days before. And most of the time, when we did not manage our mornings well, we end up in the bad-day-loop.

This is what this guide is meant for – to build motivation so that you can start your morning with the right rhythm.

Now that you understand why it is crucial to have a great morning, let’s talk about ways how you build motivation to start the day…

1. Start early to prepare yourself for the day

One of the keys to having a great and high-energy morning is to start early. Wake up early so that you have enough time to prepare and anticipate for what’s coming.

It’s subjective to answer the question of what time should you wake up. This is because everyone’s work time is different.

For me, I start my work between 8:30 AM to 9 AM. And luckily that I work from home, hence, I don’t have to commute and factor in the traffic condition.

If you have to get out of home and drive to work at 8 AM, I suggest you wake up at around 6 AM. This is because we need at least an hour or two to prepare ourselves before we get to work.

And if you have more time, you can practice the 20/20/20 Formula as suggested by Robin Sharma.

• 20 Minutes to exercise and sweat your body.
• 20 Minutes to plan and schedule your day.
• 20 Minutes to read and learn to boost your mental energy.

2. Build your physical energy through exercise

Another key to staying motivated and keeping your energy high is to build your physical energy.

When it comes to motivation, the first thing that comes to most people’s mind is about creating the fired up feelings. Most people never have the thought that one big contribution to motivation is energy, and energy comes from our body movements.

This is why exercise is extremely important.

If you want to stay motivated and keep your motivation going, you must exercise regularly.

For me, I choose to do some simple stretching and exercise for just about 15 minutes each morning before I take my bath.

There are days when I feel like a slump and there are many days where I want to procrastinate on exercise, but every time after I exercised, I feel great and fresh.

So, you just have to start. Just do it. I know that it sounds a little challenging to wake up in a sleepy state and jump straight into exercising your body, but it is a great way to kick-start your day.

When you move your body, you become more awake and alert. You feel the energy surging in your body and you feel totally pumped up.

Remember this: START SMALL. Just jump around and do a few push-ups to warm up your body. When the motivation comes, you will have the drive to exercise more intensely.

3. Build your mental energy

I like this part the most. Each morning, I spend about 30 minutes reading. Just like this morning, I read a chapter of The $100 Startup, a New York Times best-selling book from Chris Guillebeau.

Of course, I understand that you may feel sleepy when you read, especially when you just wake up. This is why you can schedule your reading after exercise.

Plus, reading motivational books that will give you energy and inspiration. You don’t want to read a textbook that will turn you off. Read something motivational and inspirational.

There are many ways you can learn in the morning hours. Some people listen to podcasts and some prefer to read. Try not to watch motivational or learn from watching YouTube videos in the morning, you may get distracted and lose all your time there.

Instead, choose to learn from sources that you can concentrate on and focus on, like reading a physical book.

If you want to know what books to read, check out my top 10 success books here.

4. Review your goals and dreams

Now, this is crucial, but unfortunately, this is what most people never do. You must remind yourself of your targets, your goals, your aims, and your dreams.

Most people set goals, but they never review their goals and they never remind themselves of their goals at all. They do it once and then totally forget about it.

This is why a lot of people fail to reach their goals. You must constantly review your goals, preferably, once a day.

Whatever that is out of your sight will be out of your mind. This why it is important to have visual representations of your goals, like having a vision board. Learn to create a vision board here.

When you remind yourself of your goals and dreams, you keep them alive in your mind. You then realize what you need to do to get there and you can proactively take action and make a conscious effort to achieve them.

On the other hand, if you don’t remind yourself of your goals and what you want to achieve in life, you will eventually forget about them. We get distracted so often in life, so it is easy to forget about your goals.

Thus, look at your goals each morning. Understand what you need to do, and then take active measures and make progress to achieve them.

Read: The Importance of Daily Goal Setting and How to Do It Right

5. Schedule and plan your day

Do you schedule and plan your day? If you choose to do it the night before, great. Go through your plan and to-do list again in the morning.

If you did not do so the night before, this is what you must do in the morning. You cannot afford to go through your day without having a plan or a clear aim of what needs to be done.

A lot of people never plan their day. And this is why they are living a reactive life rather than a proactive one.

It is true that things may not go according to your plan, but somehow, having a plan is much better than having no plan at all.

I love how Tony Robbins explains in his book, Awaken the Giant Within, about having a clear plan in life. He says that life is like a raging river and without a plan, you will go wherever the streams bring you.

I believe that life is like a river, and that most people jump on the river of life without ever really deciding where they want to end up. So, in a short period of time, they get caught up in the current: current events, current fears, current challenges.

When they come to forks in the river, they don’t consciously decide where they want to go, or which is the right direction for them. They merely ‘go with the flow’. They become a part of the mass of people who are directed by the environment instead of by their own values. As a result, they feel out of control.

They remain in this unconscious state until one day the sound of the raging water awakens them, and they discover that they’re five feet from Niagara Falls in a boat with no oars. At this point, they say, ‘Oh shoot!’. But by then it’s too late. They’re going to take a fall.

Sometimes it’s an emotional fall.
Sometimes it’s a physical fall.
Sometimes it’s a financial fall.

It’s likely that whatever challenges you have in your life currently could have been avoided by making some better decisions upstream.Tony Robbins

So, plan and schedule your day, my friend. It’s important!

Read: 10 Tips How to Plan Your Day and Live a More Successful Life

6. Take a cold shower

Well, this is just a suggestion. I do take a cold shower every morning before I start my day.

According to this article from MedicalDaily, there are plenty of benefits from cold shower:

1. Increases your alertness
2. Refines your hair and skin
3. Improves your immunity and blood circulation
4. Stimulates weight loss
5. Speeds up muscle soreness and recovery
6. Eases stress
7. Relieves depression

You don’t really have to do so if you don’t want to, but I find that every time after the cold shower in the morning, I feel so much more energetic and awake.

In fact, I don’t really jump into cold shower straight. I do switch on my heater and take a warm bath, but towards the end, I switch off the heater and enjoy the cold shower. And I love it.

7. Look forward to something amazing

Another key to building a strong motivation to start your day is to have something to look forward to.

What do you look forward to doing or accomplishing today?

It can be anything that inspires and drives you. For instance, when there’s something you look forward to doing, it inspires and motivates you to perform better.

According to this study from Harvard Business Review, taking more vacation results in greater success at work as well as lower stress and more happiness at work and home.

This is because most people associate pleasure with vacation and they are looking forward to it.

And when you have something to look forward to, you feel excited and your mood improves. That means you’re more motivated to get things done so that you can do what you love after that.

In my case, sometimes it is a book that I just bought and I’m looking forward to reading it. It can also be a great article I’m looking forward to writing. Sometimes it is an exciting challenge that I throw at myself.

The thing is that you must have something that you look forward to. If you don’t, you may lose interest for it because there’s nothing more to do and everything is boring.

No matter what it is, whether it is having dinner in a Japanese restaurant or enjoying your favorite coffee while reading in Starbucks, have something to look forward to.

It motivates you to keep going. It makes you feel good. It motivates you to keep going.

8. Get a good breakfast

It is difficult to have energy when you are hungry. Do you know that hunger can be a huge distraction?

When I’m writing articles and if I’m hungry, it distracts me to want to look for something to eat.

Not just that, after going through a long night sleep, we need to consume healthy food to energize our body and to allow our organs to function properly.

This is why it is called a ‘break-fast’, to break the fasting.

If you miss your breakfast, your motivation and productivity can suffer. Not only that, you may overeat later in the day, which can make you feel sleepy after the big meal.

Some people say that having a healthy breakfast does not only supply them with tons of energy, but it is also one of the factors that motivate them to wake up early and to start their day strong.

Read: 11 Things To Eat For Breakfast That Can Boost Productivity

9. Start your day with a cup of coffee

Again, this is my personal favorite. I always start my day with a cup of coffee.

Before I sit on my desk, face my laptop, and start typing, I make a cup of coffee and then just enjoy it while writing articles. Even right now, when I’m typing this article, I just finished my coffee.

Some may say that coffee is bad and some say that coffee is good. In my opinion, coffee can be good as long as you don’t overdrink it. Moderation is key, my friend.

A cup or two a day will be just right. Usually, I only drink a cup. There will be some days that I take two cups of coffee, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, but that is a rare occasion.

Another thing you have to know is that coffee by itself is beneficial to our health. It is going to be bad for our health only when we add in too much sugar and other stuff into it.

If you still hesitate that coffee is beneficial to our health, read this article from Barista Del Caffé.

Coffee is my personal favorite because it gives me energy and makes me alert so that I can have the motivation to start the day strong.

How do you think I’m able to write long articles on this blog? A big thanks to coffee.

Do you know that one of the most successful writers, J. K. Rowling, wrote her best-selling books, Harry Potter from a local café?

You can disagree with me. And if you don’t prefer coffee, don’t worry, there are many other methods you can use to build your motivation in the morning.

10. Hydrate your body

Coffee is not the first drink I put in my body. Every morning after I get up from my bed, the first thing I do after brushing my teeth is to drink a lot of water.

I feel more awake after I hydrate my body.

After a long night’s sleep, your body needs water to rehydrate and to ensure it functions properly. So drink a big glass of water upon waking.

Studies have discovered that water fires up our metabolism and while hydrates us. Besides, water also flushes out toxins and allow us to maintain a healthy body.

Read this article from USA Today to learn more:

Why You Should Drink Water First Thing Every Day

11. What’s your #1 goal of the day?

If you seriously want to start your day with motivation, ask yourself this question:

“What is the #1 goal that I must accomplish today?”

Knowing what you need to accomplish and then do it is one of the keys to achieving real success in life.

Like what I have mentioned above, a lot of people go through their day without knowing what they need to get done. As a result, they become reactive and respond to whatever comes to them.

If you want to get more done and become more productive, you must find out your priority, and then do it.

Stop living a reactive life, instead, be proactive and start living your life with purpose.

You must find out what is the most important thing that you need to do each day and then do it.

This is why finding out your #1 goal of the day is crucial. You don’t want to waste time doing things that are less or not important. You want to focus and ensure that you are doing something that will get you closer to your goals.

Therefore, start each day by finding out what’s the most important task you need to do. Once you have identified the task, do it first thing in the morning.

I strongly recommend you take my course: Goal Setting Formula. You will learn how to find out what you want to achieve, take charge of your life, and achieve real success through setting empowering goals.

12. Celebrate your progress

Building motivation is all about having the pleasurable feelings. And you can feel great by celebrating your progress.

Practice the Reverse Gap by thinking about all the progress that you have made.

A lot of people think about how far they are from their goals, and if it is too far away, they feel dejected and quickly lose their motivation because their goals seem out of reach.

Plus, they set a condition by telling themselves that they will feel successful and happy only when they achieved their goals.

Which, you don’t really have to.

Count your blessings and measure your progress. Instead of thinking about how far you are from your goals, think of how far you have come. This is the concept of Reverse Gap thinking.

You don’t have to set the condition to feel successful only when you achieve your goals.

You can feel like a winner and happy at this instant, just see how far you have come and how much you have progressed.

Maybe you fail to achieve your goal of writing the 10,000 words eBook, but don’t forget that you have poured in the effort to write 5,597 words, so you should feel good about it.

In other words, count your blessings. Measure how far you have come and celebrate your progress.

You don’t have to wait until you achieved a certain results only to feel happy about it, the truth is you should feel happy right now so that you can achieve more.

Always remember this meaningful quote from Oprah:

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.Oprah Winfrey

Read: 13 Ways How to Celebrate Small Victories and Make Progress

13. Allow fresh air and natural light to flow in

One thing that I always do in the morning is to open my house’s windows and curtains to allow natural lights and winds to flow in.

It feels absolutely refreshing when the early morning sunshine is brimming into your house.

When you are in the office, try to allow as much natural light as possible. Check out this image below from Eco-Business.com:

And this is what the article says:

“One neuroscience study found that people who sit by the window slept for 46 minutes longer a night on average compared with those who didn’t.

Other studies have found that well-illuminated spaces with natural elements such as daylight and greenery can improve creativity and learning.

These findings put scientific rigor behind our intuitive desire for daylight. The business case is clear: daylight promotes human health and potential. Workers around the world are catching on, with many starting to question how this valuable natural element should be shared between staff.”

Hence, make sure you expose yourself to natural light, especially in the morning.

Not only that it refreshes your body, mind, and soul, it also realigns your body’s function telling you that it is now morning, and it’s time to get motivated to start a great day.

14. Dress for productivity and success

Another important tip to building motivation to start the day is by dressing casually and comfortably.

If you are working from the comfort of your home, you may be tempted to work in your pajamas. While there is nothing wrong with it, but wearing pajamas can decrease your motivation and productivity.

This happened to me in the first few months when I started to work from home. I felt no motivation at all and I found that it is extremely difficult to focus on my work.

Today, I dress up casually, make my hair, and put on my contact lens before I start my work. It makes me feel more driven to work.

After all, when you are in your pajamas, you are telling yourself subconsciously that you are not ready for work.

You don’t have to dress professionally, but at least, make yourself feel like you are working.

This is why experts suggest that if you find it difficult to have the motivation to work at home, try to dress more properly like you are going to work.

Here’s what BrainFodder.org says about how your clothes change the way you think:

“Science says that the clothes we wear affect our behavior, attitudes, personality, mood, confidence, and even the way we interact with others.”

The way you dress can change your mood. Of course, it can alter your level of motivation as well.

15. Get a good night’s sleep

Finally, starting your day with motivation requires a lot of energy, and one of the easiest ways to do so is to get a good night’s sleep.

It is easy to understand, if you want to wake up with energy and feeling motivated to work, you must make sure you get enough sleep.

Read: Do You Really Need Motivation to Succeed?

This is common sense, but most people refuse to sleep more. They want to get more done by sleeping LESS.

How can you do more when you always feel sleepy? You can’t concentrate and it greatly lowers your productivity.

Quality matters over quantity, my friend.

If getting 7 hours of sleep a day can make you productive and keep your motivation to work for 10 hours a day, it is much better than sleeping for just 4 hours, and then you can’t focus, feel sleepy, and lack motivation, where at the end of the day, you only get 5 hours of work done.

It is not easy to discipline yourself to sleep early.

You see, many gurus out there suggest we wake up early, but most of them don’t tell you to get more sleep.

We often feel like we don’t have enough personal time and we just wanted to have more time for ourselves at night. That is why we choose to sleep late. We want to watch another episode of the drama, play more games, or surf YouTube or check Facebook mindlessly.

But the truth is that these are unproductive activities that are not contributing to achieving the success that we desire.

If you are serious about getting a high level of motivation to start the day, you must make sure you get enough sleep so that you will have the energy to tackle what’s coming next.

You can learn more about how sleep can affect your level of productivity and motivation, read this article from Zapier.com.

Conclusion

These are the 15 tips on how you can start your day with motivation. I hope some of the tips here are going to be helpful to you.

Let’s recap on what we have covered so far:

1. Start early so you can get fully prepared for your day
2. Build your physical energy through exercise
3. Build your mental energy
4. Review your goals and dreams
5. Schedule and plan your day
6. Take a cold shower
7. Look forward to something amazing
8. Get a good and healthy breakfast
9. Start your day with a cup of coffee
10. Hydrate your body
11. Ask yourself: “What’s my #1 goal today?”
12. Celebrate your progress
13. Allow fresh air and natural light to flow in
14. Dress for productivity and motivation
15. Get a good night’s sleep