I’m Taking The 5:30 A.M Challenge Here’s Why…

This week’s blog post has spawned from my undertaking of the #530AM challenge, which I will begin Monday the 6th of November and keep up until Wednesday the 6th of December. It’s pretty obvious what the aim of the challenge is but for anyone who still isn’t sure of the premise basically I’m going to wake up at 5:30 AM every day for one whole month. It sounds like a very outlandish challenge I know, but the hint is in the name. It’s a challenge. Boy, do I like a challenge. Not you’re typical cinnamon challenge or salt and ice challenge no. This is a healthy and relatively simple challenge that I believe everyone should try at some time or another in their lives. But I’ve decided that I’m going to try this challenge even if it kills me.

Here’s why…

So to give you guys a little context here the aim of the challenge isn’t to wake up at 5:30 and fall back asleep. It’s more about being productive and starting you’re day off with a healthy dose of productivity. I’m going to share exactly what I’ll be doing at this time of the morning in a second but I want to talk a little more about the reasoning behind this undertaking.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, Michelle Obama, Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey, Virgin Group founder and chairman Richard Branson, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and motivational speaker Tony Robbins.

What is the common denominator that is shared by all of these insanely successful public figures?

They all get up early.

Tim Cook get’s up at 3:45 a.m to get ahead on emails. Howard Schultz is at the office no later then 6:00 a.m. Michelle Obama is working out by at least 4:30 a.m

I’m not saying that to be successful you have to get up really early. But it does appear to be a thread becoming even more popular amongst noticeably prosperous people. That being said I don’t want anyone to think of it as a trend I’m trying to follow to be cool. This challenge is being taken up by normal folk all around the world. Just take a listen to this TED talk by Filipe Castro Matos, a Portuguese entrepreneur.

By getting up earlier I’m giving myself the chance to focus on things that I normally wouldn’t get doing of a normal day that I find always seem to find myself too busy on. And even if I’m not busy I just don’t have the motivation to do. So instead I find myself binge watching online television shows like The Wire and TMNT 2012 (you’re never too old to be a turtles fan). Getting up at 5:30 requires discipline in itself so what will happen as a result of making myself do this is hopefully that discipline will carry through to other aspects of my life.

Ultimately I want to become a better person than I am at the moment. I’ve been hibernating in the realms of comfort for the last month or so and I feel disappointed in myself because of it. I know I need to take better care of my personal health, especially at this moment in time because I need to be strong for people around me. As the proverb goes, ‘if you can’t take care of yourself, how can you expect to take care of someone else?’. Getting up early is going to allow me to the best me I possibly can.

So what am I going to be doing at this incredibly early hour in the morning and what’s the point in getting up at that time ?

Self-care.

I know I’ve talked about self-care before on this blog for a fact. One of my earliest post’s on here was about it.  “The Wonder of Self Care” is a sort of comedic piece detailing a day of self-care I took out a few months ago. I really just wanted to open the floor up with it and talk about the topic of well being and how important it is to look after you’re personal health.

It’s the same idea with this challenge.

So in the mornings what I’m going to do is get up, meditate, exercise, write, play some piano, chill and make breakfast.

That schedule will probably vary a bit to save me getting bored doing the same thing every day.

That is essentially what I look forward to doing with this time-gap I’m going to create. I want to create a better version of me then the one that exists at present. That may sound very self-loathing but I really feel like I’m not reaching my full potential at the moment. This challenge is going to hopefully change that.

For the record I’ve actually already taken this challenge before and completed it. But it’s been almost 2 years and I feel like I need to do it again.

If I was to be completely honest that was a time in my life when I felt at my personal best and peak performance, mentally and physically. I’m not going to lie over the course of thirty-one plus days I managed to develop a somewhat recognisable six pack that I was pretty proud of at the time. Fast forward almost 2 years later and that six pack has unsurprisingly become slightly less noticeable due to a complete period of inactivity muscle work-out wise for the last 7-8 months.

Because I was seriously working with the Calm app and making an attempt to be mindful I found that it actually started to pay off. I was more focused in class, I was disciplined in everything I was doing, etc. It was just a really good time for me and I think I just need that little boost right now to pick me up out of the rut I appear to be stuck in at the moment.

If you’re wondering why this time of year it’s because I know for a fact that that #NewYearNewMe bullshit does not work. I want to better myself now and I honestly don’t feel like waiting around for another reason to. I know what need’s to be done and I’m going to do it. If that sounds like point blank determination then I’m sure you get an idea of what this means to me: I’ve set a target so now I’m going to achieve it or die trying.

I’m going to logging my progress on this blog each day in the ‘Mobile‘ section of it. Just a little update every day, one hundred words or less. Literally how I’m feeling (which is probably going to be ‘tired’ for the first week or so), what I’ve done, etc. It’ll help me keep track of my progress. So for example if I up my meditation time by five minutes, am able to do more exercises consecutively like pushups or churned out more words writing  than the day before.

I’m really excited to take this challenge. I’ll be probably write a blog post about the experience when I finish it. If anyone is interested in doing it with me you can hit me up on Twitter @kidmentalist with a daily update on you’re progress and how you’re finding it. Or maybe if you want to be discreet about it you can e-mail me: kidmentalist@gmail.com

Thanks for sticking round until the end. I hope you enjoyed that piece of writing.

You can follow my blog Kid Mentalist and check out some of the other content on here.

As well as that you can leave a comment under this blog post with your thoughts if you’d like.

I’m also now on Periscope if you want to check me out on there. All you have to do is search Kid Mentalist and it’ll come right up.  Drop me a follow and you’ll get a notification whenever I decide to go live.

You can check out ‘Mobile’ which is a page I created on here that contains little tweet like bursts of thoughts. 

Finally you can also check out my new YOUTUBE channel! I can’t wait to make more videos for it. I’ve got big plans in the future that I know you’re going to enjoy.

SHAMELESS PLUGS FINISHED!

Until next time,

Stay posted.

K.M