I had pretty much abandoned the true use of my alarm clock and it had stopped from waking me up. My abuse of the snooze button was seemingly making getting out of bed an impossible task. That was until I recently realised what I had been doing and decided to retrain my brain to never use the snooze button again. I am now snooze button free. My abuse has stopped.
Back before we lived in nice warm houses, in cosy bedrooms with a comfortable bed, back when we were living outside in the wild, there were alarm clocks too. If we had decided to ignore them back then it would most probably lead to death, as the alarm clocks were the natural sounds of predators and other dangers. Their sounds would ALARM us so we woke up and became alert and ready.
So humans are naturally wired to wake up when alarming sounds are being heard. Nowadays though, we have created machines to imitate alarm in one way or another. Most alarm clocks seem to have the traditional beep-beep alarm which works fine for me.
I developed a major snooze button habit though, and I know I'm not the only one to have done that. My alarm was never set for when I wanted to be out of bed, but for about 30 minutes before I got out of bed so I could press the snooze button 3 or 4 times before getting up. I had associated the sound of my alarm with the desire to have more sleep. When the alarm would go off, my thought pattern would be;
Then 20 minutes of snooze abuse later
This thought pattern would continue some days for a couple of hours if I wasn't careful. It was not healthy to be snoozing so long so I decided to do something about it.
It was not a question of willpower though, I had to change the negative association that I had with the sound of my alarm clock into an association which would lead me to get straight out of bed every morning. Willpower might work once every now and again if you have something really important happening that you need to be up for or for some other reason but willpower alone cannot be relied on that early in the morning because the brain is only just waking up and will trick itself in order to stay in that bed at any opportunity.
The solution to this problem seems a little crazy but it works. My brain now doesn't think about anything when my alarm clock goes on, it just goes into auto pilot mode and I get up straight away before it can convince me to go back to bed.
You need to re-associate the sound of the alarm with getting straight out of bed, but you cannot do this while your brain is in waking up mode. This should be done during the day when your brain is awake and you can train it how you wish.
If you follow the following steps then I promise that it won't take long at all for you to have reprogrammed your brain to treat the alarm clock as a trigger to get up.
Repeat these steps for about an hour, or as much spare time as you can give it. With most people this will have already retrained your brain and when you next hear you alarm in the morning you will wake up follow the new routine that you have just tried to program into your brain.
Even if this works the first morning you try it, I would still recommend going through the steps again the next day to deeply ingrain this routine so that it replaces the snooze button routine totally.
If you don't believe that it can be that easy, I challenge you to give it a go for yourself.
I feel so much better in myself in the mornings now that I dont have to rush around like a madman trying to get ready in time. I also feel better because I haven't tortured myself in the morning and started my day with a negative thought pattern.
Nothing bad at all can come from trying this out, if you decide after trying that you preferred using the snooze button then you can easily retrain your brain again, although I'm not sure why anyone would ever go back to abusing the snooze.
Back before we lived in nice warm houses, in cosy bedrooms with a comfortable bed, back when we were living outside in the wild, there were alarm clocks too. If we had decided to ignore them back then it would most probably lead to death, as the alarm clocks were the natural sounds of predators and other dangers. Their sounds would ALARM us so we woke up and became alert and ready.
So humans are naturally wired to wake up when alarming sounds are being heard. Nowadays though, we have created machines to imitate alarm in one way or another. Most alarm clocks seem to have the traditional beep-beep alarm which works fine for me.
I developed a major snooze button habit though, and I know I'm not the only one to have done that. My alarm was never set for when I wanted to be out of bed, but for about 30 minutes before I got out of bed so I could press the snooze button 3 or 4 times before getting up. I had associated the sound of my alarm with the desire to have more sleep. When the alarm would go off, my thought pattern would be;
"Do I have to get up now, one more snooze wont hurt, I will just move a bit faster getting ready"
Then 20 minutes of snooze abuse later
"If I sleep another half an hour then I can just get the next train, I'll get up a bit later today. I deserve some extra sleep, I really don't want to get up"
This thought pattern would continue some days for a couple of hours if I wasn't careful. It was not healthy to be snoozing so long so I decided to do something about it.
It was not a question of willpower though, I had to change the negative association that I had with the sound of my alarm clock into an association which would lead me to get straight out of bed every morning. Willpower might work once every now and again if you have something really important happening that you need to be up for or for some other reason but willpower alone cannot be relied on that early in the morning because the brain is only just waking up and will trick itself in order to stay in that bed at any opportunity.
The solution to this problem seems a little crazy but it works. My brain now doesn't think about anything when my alarm clock goes on, it just goes into auto pilot mode and I get up straight away before it can convince me to go back to bed.
You need to re-associate the sound of the alarm with getting straight out of bed, but you cannot do this while your brain is in waking up mode. This should be done during the day when your brain is awake and you can train it how you wish.
If you follow the following steps then I promise that it won't take long at all for you to have reprogrammed your brain to treat the alarm clock as a trigger to get up.
Step 1.
Close your bedroom curtains and put on your pajamas or whatever you normally wear to bed. Make it as much like normal bedtime as possible.
Step2.
Set your alarm to go off in two minutes time and get into bed, close your eyes and pretend to be asleep.
Step 3.
When the alarm goes off, get out of bed straight away, put some clothes on, or do the first thing you would normally do when you get out of bed in the morning.
Step 4.
Walk out of the bedroom.
Close your bedroom curtains and put on your pajamas or whatever you normally wear to bed. Make it as much like normal bedtime as possible.
Step2.
Set your alarm to go off in two minutes time and get into bed, close your eyes and pretend to be asleep.
Step 3.
When the alarm goes off, get out of bed straight away, put some clothes on, or do the first thing you would normally do when you get out of bed in the morning.
Step 4.
Walk out of the bedroom.
Repeat these steps for about an hour, or as much spare time as you can give it. With most people this will have already retrained your brain and when you next hear you alarm in the morning you will wake up follow the new routine that you have just tried to program into your brain.
Even if this works the first morning you try it, I would still recommend going through the steps again the next day to deeply ingrain this routine so that it replaces the snooze button routine totally.
If you don't believe that it can be that easy, I challenge you to give it a go for yourself.
I feel so much better in myself in the mornings now that I dont have to rush around like a madman trying to get ready in time. I also feel better because I haven't tortured myself in the morning and started my day with a negative thought pattern.
Nothing bad at all can come from trying this out, if you decide after trying that you preferred using the snooze button then you can easily retrain your brain again, although I'm not sure why anyone would ever go back to abusing the snooze.
