Who Will Cry When You Die\?: Life Lessons From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari pdfdrive com

18.
Get Up Early
Getting up early is a gift you give to yourself. Few disciplines have the power to
transform your life as does the habit of early rising. There is something very
special about the first few hours of the morning. Time seems to slow down and a
deep sense of peace fills the air. Joining the “Five o’Clock Club” will allow you
to start controlling your day rather than letting your day control you. Winning
the “Battle of the Bed” and putting “mind over mattress” by rising early will
provide you with at least one quiet hour for yourself during the most crucial part
of your day: the beginning. If spent wisely, the rest of your day will unfold in a
wonderful way.
In 
The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
, I challenged readers to “get up with the
sun” and offered a number of ideas to help them cultivate this new life
discipline. From the many letters, e-mails and faxes I have received from people
who have improved the quality of their lives by getting up at 5 
A.M.,
I can safely
say that this is one success principle that is really worth integrating into your
life. In doing so, you will join the ranks of many of the most influential people of
our time ranging from Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Edison and Nelson Mandela to
Ted Turner and Mary Kay Ash.
One reader of 
The Monk
, a marketing executive, wrote that her stress level
fell so dramatically once she started rising early that her team at the office
presented her with a paperweight bearing the following inscription: “To our MIP
(Most Improved Player). Whatever you are doing, keep doing it. You are an
inspiration to us all.” A consummate late riser, she vowed to stop sleeping in and
spending her days making up for time lost while under the blanket. So while her
family (and the world around her) slept, she began to get up first at 6 
A.M.,
then at
5:30 
A.M.
and finally at 5 
A.M.
During the free time that she found she had
created, she would do all the things she loved to do but had somehow never
found time for. Listening carefully to classical music, writing letters, reading the
classics and walking were just some of the activities that she used to rekindle her
spirit and reconnect with a part of herself she thought she had lost. By getting up
early, she began to care for herself again. And by doing so, she became a much
better parent, spouse and professional.
To cultivate the habit of getting up earlier, the first thing to remember is

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that it is the 
quality
rather than the quantity of sleep that matters most. It is better
to have six hours of uninterrupted sleep than ten hours of restless, broken sleep.
Here are four tips to help you sleep more deeply:
Don’t rehearse the activities of your day while you are lying in bed trying to
get to sleep.
Don’t eat after 8 
P.M.
(If you have to eat something, have soup.)
Don’t watch the news before you go to sleep.
Don’t read in bed.
Give yourself a few weeks for this new habit to take hold. Saying that you
tried to get up early but gave up after seven days because it was just too hard is
like saying you tried taking French lessons for a week but gave up because you
could not speak the language by then. Life change takes time, effort and
patience. But the results you will receive make the initial stress you experience
more than worth it.

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