Hello Mornings

I hate to wake up and get out of my bed no matter what time I go to bed. At the beginning of this year(yes only a few weeks ago) I started waking up an hour before the kids just so I could be more awake and get stuff done but by Friday I was back to waking up at the last minute. And even on the days I got up all I really accomplished was getting on Facebook and having coffee. Not the best use of my time. At the start of every week I felt on top of the world and by the end I felt like I was failing. A big part of this I think is that I expect myself to be able to just go from being a last minute wake up kind of person to one who gets up way before I need to just over night. I put too much on myself and I need to take a step back so that I can one day be at my Ideal Goal. Another reason why I think I start to fail by the end of the week is that I don't have accountability. 

I have chosen to be part of the HelloMornings Challenge! I haven't done it before and to be honest I just found the website today thanks to a blog post by themobsociety. After reading through it over the past few hours and looking into it I think this will be a great thing for me to do. Let me give you some information on it. It will start on January 28th and run 13 weeks with an end  date of April 26th. Anyone (female!) is welcome to join a group, though space is limited. It is partly a challenge to help us wake up and start our days off right with God and also a Bible Study. If you chose to do this you will join a group that fits your needs. The groups are filling up fast so I would get in it now! Go here to start it! 

HelloMornings is giving out 15 tips to work on before this all starts. They have blog posts for every tip so you get more details then what I'm going to give here. So far we are up to 7 tips and I am going to give my answers to the tips here. If you want to read the posts that talked about them look for the links here! 

1) Why?~ Why do I want to do this? I need to make sure I'm getting time in with God and for me the best chance of that happening everyday would be if I got up and did it before my day of taking care of kids and house and everything else I have going on happens. I am also hoping it will bring more peace to our home. Waking up last minute and rushing to get the kids fed and ready for the day just adds stress and once that stress is there it doesn't go away so the whole day is shot.

2) What?~ My Ideal Goal: Time with God; 45 minutes, Planning my day; 10 minutes, Wake up & Make up(make coffee, morning hygiene time, Hair and Make up) 25 minutes. This is a total of 1 hour and 20 minutes! Meaning I would have to be up by 5:40 am. 

OK so that is the Ideal Goal that I would like to get to at some point but I am not going to start out with the ideal goal. Instead for this 13 weeks I will have a Short Term Goal I will work on that will help me in getting to the above Ideal Goal.  So here is the Short Term Goal: Time with God; 30 minutes, Planning my day; 5 minutes, Wake up & Make Up; 10 minutes. This is a total of 45 minutes and that puts the wake up time at 6:15 am. 

3) Baby Steps~ By the end of the 13 weeks I will wake up 45 minutes before my kids get up and do the things I have listed above. My Baby Steps will look like this; Every month I will get up 15 minutes earlier for the next 3 months. 

4) Focus on Bedtime!~ Getting up early shouldn't mean you lose sleep but instead your sleep times need to change. So I will start out making sure I am in bed with lights out by 10:30 pm(Sunday through Thursday). As I get up earlier I will move that time down to 10 pm. 

5) Set an Alarm for Bedtime!~ This is a great idea and one I will be sure to follow! I will be setting 3 alarms so that I have plenty of time to get to bed! The first will be 1 hour before I need to be in bed, the second will be at the 30 minute mark and the last will be 5 minutes before. 

6) Don't Linger!~ Best way to get up and not worry about falling back to sleep is to sit up, place feet on floor, and get walking! I will  be putting my alarm on our TV stand that way I have to get up to turn it off!

7) Tell Others!~ This is where the accountability comes into play. If you keep this to your self you won't be so upset if you stop but if you share it with others you will have more motivation to keep going. This is why I have chosen to make this post and post it on Facebook and share it with my hubby. 

There are the first 7 tips, after the 15th one comes out I will make another post to fill in tips 8-15. I hope some of you will chose to do this with me and if you don't then at least think about it for next time!