Volume 3, Number 22: Becoming Friends With Your Alarm Clock

The Health Racquet
Volume 3
Number 22

It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
- Aristotle

Becoming Friends with Your Alarm Clock
By Allegra Tschappler

Did you know that getting up early is good for you? Yes, all you night people, it’s true! However, it is extremely difficult for lots of us. We want to stay curled up in bed until the end of the world, and getting up just isn’t an option (we think). However, I’ve found that when I sleep in, I tend to feel guilty. There is so little time in our lives, and we tend to squander it. When you sleep in, that’s just one more way to waste time.

As kids, we are trained to get up before 8 am because that’s when school starts. However, we are still left with an option to be lazy. We can either sleep in until 7:45 when we jump into the shower (provided a sibling doesn’t decide to sleep in as well and get up one minute before you, beating you to the shower), or we can get up at 6 or so. When I get up at six, I find that I can get my mind focused on God, and I’m willing to try nutty stuff like running around the property at top speed for half an hour or so. Plus, I don’t have any competition for the shower.

I’m sure that the Tschappler kids aren’t the only ones that have the option to get up early or sleep in either. Even when you grow up, you still have the option to not go to work for the day (well, kind of—if you want to keep your job you should go in). As a stay-at-home parent, you can sleep in because your kids are most likely to be willing to sleep in as well. However, the choice is ours. If we choose to get up early, we are establishing good patterns that will last our entire life.

Okay, now wait a minute! If your body likes sleep and you can still get away with sleeping in until the very last minute, why should you get up early? I mean, that’s really only for weirdoes who like to do sun-dances to bring up the sun, right? Right?

Sorry, man. You’re wrong this time. Getting up early is the best way to get a start on your day. If you get up an hour before everyone else does, you can spend your time going around the house cleaning up a little bit (hey, even guys can do this!), reading your Bible in your room, catching up on a few sewing projects, making breakfast for the rest of the family, or exercising.

The main goal of getting up early is to get yourself fully awake and ready to honor God, raring to go and do something productive. If you feel like you’ve already gotten something accomplished for the day (yes, getting up early does make you feel that way), you will be willing to go on to other more formidable tasks such as cleaning the toilet or running around for half an hour or more.

So set that highly annoying alarm clock, and don’t ignore it. Maybe you can even put it across the room so that you aren’t tempted to roll over, turn it off and go back to bed. As Proverbs says in Chapter 24:33-34, “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.”