Day 19 of the 5AM Club Book Habit Installation

I’ve definitely hit a wall with my 5AM Club morning routine habit installation journey. Yesterday was a 7:30 wake up time and so was today. I’m really finding it hard to stay committed to be honest. Today is Friday and on Sunday I will be going away for a couple of days. I’ll re-commit myself to the 5AM wake up time when I get back. Actually it may be easier for me to wake up early on my holiday as E is doing the challenge too (and much more successfully than me).

7:30 AM Wake up and Move it: My body was in protest mode today. I managed to squeeze out just 65 push ups and 33 sit ups. I gave up. I just couldn’t push anymore out.

Actually, now that I’m thinking about why I felt like this, I had a stressful afternoon/evening yesterday as I took my cat to the vet to be desexed. We were running late because of traffic, and we had 3 other other cats in the car, all of which were meowing and two pooped in the car, making it almost impossible to breathe! We couldn’t stop though as the vet was closing soon. Oh and I had problems catching my cat. She’s basically a street cat, so she can be a bit unpredictable. I caught her after much hissing and fussing but we were both stressed after the ordeal.

So perhaps this stress took more energy from my body than I realized at the time. So it was like an energetic hangover caused by stress.

7:50 Think and Reflect: I moved onto my daily diary though. My body may have protested but my mind was more compliant. Even if you don’t plan to wake up early I really do recommend starting your day with a journal to vent, confirm, dream, reflect, and plan.

I also worked on a to do list for the day to keep me focused and on track. I knew that it was going to be a struggle today so it would have been easy for me to wander and waste time. Instead I made a concrete plan and stuck to it.

8:10 Read and Learn: I’m still reading the Scott Carney book called “What Doesn’t Kill Us” which looks at body hacking, breathing techniques and using cold water to improve and strengthen us.

I even struggled with the reading today. Up until this point I have really enjoyed the book and read more than the allotted twenty minutes each morning. Today I was continually checking the watch to see if I have read for 20 minutes! I’m sure its me rather than the book though.

19th Day of the 5AM Club Book Creating a Habit

Although it was a struggle today I was still very productive with work. I got a lot of high value things done online that could help with increasing my online income. I really need to focus on increasing it to a level where I can have money to spare at the end of each month, along with enough to invest in income producing assets. I haven’t been able to save or invest any money at all this year.

Exercise: 215 push ups, 33 sit ups, and did weights.
Diet: Mostly good although I did eat some bread and felt slow and bloated after it.

How Could I Improve?

Understand how stress works and have methods for dealing with it. Feel the stress, accept it, understand it, but then deal with it. Consciously let it go and immediately do things to increase your energy.

Things that definitely won’t help to build your energy back up after being stressed are ice cream, alcohol, or watching television. They may be easy to do and you may feel that you deserve it after the stress, but it won’t help.

Instead look at things like a walk in nature, aerobic exercise, meditation, watching a motivational speech online, reading a self improvement book, or writing in your journal.

Conclusion for Day 19 of my 5AM Club Experience

Yes I’ve hit a wall but I believe I will pull out of this spiral. I have’t made the 5AM wake up time in several days now. I’m still waking up early and starting with an empowering hour of focus but even this hour is starting to suffer now.

I need to readjust and recalibrate this week. I’ll be away on Sunday and Monday, coming back Tuesday so this can be time to reevaluate the situation.

Have a look at my previous days on this challenging 5AM club morning routine habit.

Have an amazing weekend!