Breaking the Cycle: How to Stop Waking Up Tired

We often hear our community say: Why is it so hard for me to get up in the morning? This might sound a bit obvious, but if you wake up tired, it’s probably because you ARE tired. Simple, yet true. What you believe to be sufficient time for a restful sleep just might not be enough for you. 

You might be having unsettled sleep for many reasons, such as work stress or anxiety, hormones, or relationship challenges; let’s face it: the list is usually quite long. When you aren’t sleeping well, this can add more stress or anxiety during the day, which can be tiring both mentally and physically. This can lead to more worries over sleep and cause you to develop more stress around sleep, which will act as a barrier to sleep. It can become a bit of a vicious cycle.

Our body’s master clock, which is located in the brain, regulates our circadian rhythms, and this determines our sleep patterns over the course of a day. Our body takes in signals and a change in daylight can change our circadian rhythms. It’s a super clever and intuitive system, but basically, when light hits the optic nerves in our eyes, a message is passed to the brain and at night time, our inner clock tells the brain to make more melatonin – the sleepy hormone.  So when your rhythm is off, so to speak, you might experience more tiredness in the morning, where you feel groggy and find it harder to wake up easily. 

Waking up tired can then have a knock-on effect on other areas of our lives, too. It can impact our health, mental health, irritability, stress levels, and ability to cope with the day-to-day. Maybe you’ve noticed you feel hungrier when you’re tired, too? As Matthew Walker says in his international best-selling book, Why we Sleep, “Too little sleep swells concentrations of a hormone that makes you feel hungry while suppressing a companion hormone that otherwise signals food satisfaction. Despite being full, you still want to eat more”.

However, there are ways you can recalibrate your system and wake up feeling refreshed. One factor is trying to train your body to go to sleep and wake at a similar time each day—this includes the weekend. If you want to wake up refreshed, some simple environmental changes and tweaks to your sleep hygiene could ensure you wake up easily.

How to wake up feeling a bit more YES and less MEH

So, how can you wake up and remove the brain fog quickly? Firstly, before you get up in the morning, notice how you feel as you wake. Is it a feeling of joy in your belly or uncertainty in your throat? Check in with your body and notice your feelings, you might like to write in your dream journal at this point, if you keep one. 

Mindset

Next, notice what you are thinking. This is a good time of day to tell yourself positive affirmations or mantras and any other ways of being you are trying to instill. Avoid checking your emails and social media until you’re dressed and ready for the day ahead. Otherwise, this will add extra stimulus in the morning and prevent you from waking up in the right frame of mind if you’re racing through messages and other distractions. 

We are also big fans of setting intentions and planning for the day ahead rather than just free-wheeling into the day with no set intentions for how you want to feel and what you need to get done as a priority.

Light

Exposure to white light in the morning can really help to boost your alertness. So, season-dependent, pull open those curtains and let the light in. Getting enough light during the day helps to regulate your circadian rhythm, which leads to better sleep. Try to work near a window or do some outdoor exercise. These days, there are also lots of wonderful lamps, lights, or light boxes you can buy that provide light therapy to help improve your mood. They produce very bright lights to recreate the morning sunlight that you miss during the winter months. We are big fans of Lumie lights so do check them out (this is not an AD btw, we genuinely love them).

Caffeine

Although it’s tempting to turn to caffeine, if you can, it’s best to limit your intake. Caffeine can help you to wake up quicker but remember there’s always a crash, and actually, it’s important not to mask your tiredness; it can be more beneficial to work on the root of your tiredness. However, sometimes we need that coffee to wake up. That’s OK, right. Just bear in mind that a cup of coffee late in the afternoon might make it hard for you to sleep at night.

Exercise & Health

One way to have a slower morning, if you can manage it, is to get some early exercise, which can help you start the day with more energy and focus, and positive feelings. After morning exercise, we are more likely to eat healthier food and also remain active throughout the day. Plus, in addition to helping us wake up and start the day in a positive mindset, it can also impact the quality of sleep we receive that night too. So, use your morning to set the mood for your day ahead.

Food

Many nutritionists agree that a good breakfast, especially a healthy one, will give you more energy and allow your blood sugar levels to stabilise. Our body needs blood sugar for our brain and muscles to work, and breakfast can help replenish it. If you don’t get that fuel from food, you may feel zapped of energy, plus you might be tempted to overeat later in the day.

Sleep Schedules

Try to manage your circadian rhythm, keeping your bedtime and wake-up time as consistent as you can. Of course, it won’t be possible to do this every single day, but bear this in mind, try to keep to a pattern when you can, and aim to wake up within the same 15-minute window every day. If you drift back to sleep, you might wake in a new sleep cycle, and if you wake during deep sleep, that can leave you feeling groggy.

How can Clementine help with waking up 

Specific sessions from Clementine that will help

All our Morning Wake Up sessions (see below) using butterfly tapping are amazing to get your day started. We have so many of these on different themes, so depending on how you feel when you wake up, and what you have planned for the day ahead, you can choose what’s best for you.

• My Day, My Way (4 mins): To prepare for the best possible day simply by visualising what you want out of it.

• My Life is One-of-a-Kind (4 mins): For when you need a day free of the stress and bitterness of comparing yourself to others.

• I Got This Sh*t (4 mins): For when you want a boost to be ready for the day and remember just how f*cking brilliant you are! Made even more punchy with the power of swearing.

• Today is Mine to Own (3 mins): For when you want to get your head in the game, ready to be confident and in control of your emotions for the day ahead.

We also have Affirmations that you can opt into. Think of these like your own little alarm that will give you the best motivational message to start your day. You can also add in your own Affirmations for your day ahead or literally head to the Affirmations section and opt-in for when you’d like to receive a notification – you can even add a birdsong to chirp you sweet-nothings at your chosen time. Affirmations are also a FREE feature on our app, even if you haven’t purchased full access through a premium subscription.

Plus, our Travelling to Work sessions, such as our Visualise Your Work Day (19 mins), which you can listen to on your walk to work or while on the bus or train, are brilliant for setting up the morning. Because let’s face it, it’s not just our sleep routine and ritual that is important. We should treat the mornings with the same care and attention too, because this actually helps us have a healthier day, which ends up helping us sleep better. It’s a small investment that will pay off when you go to bed, and ultimately, one that will improve your overall health and wellbeing too

But we hear what you’re thinking. How do I find time to use Clementine and/or introduce some of these new things into my morning? Well, motivation and intention is key. How important is your sleep and well-being? Pretty important, right? Tap into this feeling of intention and use it to help you make gradual small changes. That’s exactly why we suggest making small changes every few days until a few of them stick, and it becomes a habit and you have a new, beneficial pattern on your hands. It helps that many of our sessions are only three or four minutes long, and can be bolted onto your routine very easily. This is effectively what is called habit stacking. 

Habit stacking is about clustering the habits you want to develop and keep. Because we stand a better chance of remembering them by associating them with a related task. It’s a way to make lots of small changes count. Our sessions are already ‘habit stacked’ for you – we’ve tried to weave small sessions throughout the fabric of your day, making them easy to incorporate, and so you begin to associate your commute, tea breaks, loo breaks, before bed etc – all these different times of day each have their own corresponding session.

And if you feel like you need more of a helping hand we highly recommend investing in our daily mindset & productivity planner as it will help you to make really intentional decisions everyday about how you look after yourself.

You’re welcome.