You wake up to the sound of your alarm clock, still sluggish and wanting an extra 5 more minutes.. which can turn into 30 minutes to an hour. It is even worse, when you spend the night before, tossing and turning, trying to find sleep, you end up looking at the clock when it’s past 12am…trying to calculate how much sleep you’d get and realizing sadly it won’t be enough…you’d be cranky the next day.. Waking up to the sound of the alarm clock, still sluggish and wanting an extra 5 minutes…which can turn into 30 minutes to an hour…That happened yesterday too, and had been happening for a while..

If you have ever experienced one of these episodes, You’d know how it feels to be groggy, energized, and feeling unproductive all through the day. 

The root cause of the problem is SLEEP. If you sleep better, You’d wake up energized and alert. 

That said, These 7 tips would help you sleep better and wake up energized. 

7 Actionable Tips to help you get better Sleep

1. Have a schedule and stick to it: When do you go to bed? Do you have a time you do? When you have a set time for going to bed and a set time to wake up, your body gets used to the routine and it is easier to sleep and wake up when you want to…but it takes awhile to get used to a set routine and the first few days might be hard. If you stick to a set time for bed, you are going to be getting enough sleep and your mornings would be much better. Pro Tip: Try getting at least 7 hours a day. I.e if you sleep, 11pm, you’d set a “wake up” time of 6am.

2. Watch what goes into your body: What you eat affects you, what you eat before bed can also be the difference between a goodnights rest or tossing and turning till 1am. Sugar and anything caffeinated before bed  should be avoided. Also eating anything later than 8pm should be avoided because your body needs time to digest your food before you sleep. Have dinner early and eat something light. On caffeine and carbonated drinks, A 2013 study says you should avoid both  6 hours before bed

3. Reduce the amount of blue light before bed: Watching Tv, scrolling through social media and any form of blue light is not good for you just before bed. You should have a set time where you avoid blue lights from your Tvs, laptops and smartphones before bed. Want to get entertained before bed? An audio book or a a good old fashioned paperback book or novel should get you ready to bed. Rule of thumb.. If you have an early day, stay away from all forms of blue light after 9pm or one hour before bed. Blue lights happens to have a more severe effect on your sleep cycle as opposed to light omitted from a light bulb just in case you’re wondering if you can turn the lights on when going to the bathroom. 

4. Do your exercises early enough: When you exercise, you raise your core body temperature, and you place a mild amount of stress on your central nervous system. This means, you are hyper active for a while. Try to get your exercise in the morning and not later in the day. But if you have to work-out later in the day,a walk in the evening or stretches are good. But if you are going to do something heavy.. Make sure it is at least 5-6 hours before bed

5. Update your sleep environment:  Let’s assume you get on 7 hours of sleep a night. When you multiply that by 7 days a week, you spend at least 49 hours a week in one spot. Now, multiple that by 52 weeks a year… You see where I am going with this right? That’s a lot of time you spend in your sleep environment i.e your bed. You should make it tidy, healthy and comfortable. Another tip is not to do anything where you sleep. Don’t work on your bed, dont eat on your bed. The only thing you should do on your bed is sleep… or cuddle your pillow.

6. Meditate or Journal: While meditation is not for everyone, journaling is a fun and stress free activity you can carry out before bed. Both help you look at your thoughts and go through your day in retrospect(if you have to do this, look for things that you should be thankful for during the day). You know those thoughts that keep you up, Write them down…you don’t have to make sense, just jotting them down would give you some peace and quiet just before you fall asleep.

7. Stop checking the time: If you are like me, You want to know how much sleep you are getting before bed, Especially if you are ruled by an alarm clock that you set. When you are constantly checking the time, it could be causing you to get anxious about how many more hours you have left before you have to get out of bed – that anxiety keeps you up and now you are checking the time again, and getting anxious.. You see where i am going with this..Exactly!

The ultimate tip to getting up energised is having a good nights rest. We hope you can do just that with these healthy tips.