Gone are all my lovely posts on my resolutions and goals for the year, but I’m not dwelling on that now. Honest.
What I am dwelling on is the novel idea that my plan (which is working, by the way) to cut out caffeine will most likely also be the best plan to get my daily wake-up time to be 5 am instead of 6:30 am.
It’s stepping down, slowly but surely, to change the habit. While others may work best going cold turkey (and I must admit I like that idea much better myself), slowly stepping back from the problem is actually working much better for me.
As evidence to that fact, I am now in week two of my diet soda phase in my cut out caffeine resolution/goal/thing. I stepped down gradually from serious energy drinks to highly caffeinated soda, to where I am now, and the next steps will be canned green tea and then flavored water and water.
I don’t feel deprived. I’m not even frustrated that I can’t have the energy drinks I used to down (sometimes) twice daily. I’m not saying it’s going to b easy once I get to the non-caffeinated days, but it will certainly be easier to deal with after already given up so many other forms.
So why not make this process work with other things?
Like waking up earlier so I have dedicated time for writing. Currently I wake up after my husband is done in the shower, at 6:30. At this point he has to take off immediately, and while I have more time than I used to have to get ready for work, I don’t have a ton of time. Certainly not quiet time without the kids to actually try to be creative.
I’ve tried to make the direct switch to 5:00 before, but that alarm goes off and I just hit that snooze, and that’s the end of it. But 15 minutes…I could force myself to get out of bed, or at least be awake, 15 minutes earlier for a week or so. Definitely. And then waking up when DH needs to get in the shower, maybe for another week.
And so on and so forth.
I will definitely post notes on my progress, in case anyone is either interested or wants inspiration to tackle this themselves.
Good luck to us both!
