By: Kendall Hadfield and Savannah Sousa
On Monday morning most of us will be trudging to school, regretfully, at 8 am. To help you adjust to the new schedule here are a few tips. You can do this!
Get to sleep by a reasonable time. Sleep is an important necessity to help you live a happy and healthy life. Getting a great amount of sleep can help you improve your attitude throughout the day. Getting 7-9 hours of sleep is ideal for having a brighter day. With more sleep, your brain becomes more active and you feel ready to accomplish everything in the day.
Turn off your electronics. This is a very simple task that can help you focus on getting a good night’s rest. Thus, can make more time for sleeping and relaxing. You won’t have distractions and can focus on relaxing and calming your brain in bed. Think positive thoughts and reflect on your day instead of constantly checking social media.
Do your homework on the weekend. Getting ahead makes the week go by a lot smoother. Staying up late and crunching homework in last minute is never a good idea. Multiple high school students lose lots of sleep due to homework. Whether you’re in multiple AP or honors classes, spreading out the workload can make things simpler.
Eat foods that help you sleep. Studies show that eating healthy can improve your sleeping methods. It provides the brain with the nutrients it needs in order to function properly and maintain a proper sleeping pattern. Shifting our eating habits can affect our metabolism, cycles into whether you are hungry in the morning or not. If you wake up hungry, you are better off eating a healthy breakfast to get ready for the long day ahead.
Have a friend give you a wake-up call. Some people can get up earlier than others and if one of your best friends are a morning person, have them call you and help wake you up. It also helps to hear your best friend in the morning too help start your day and waking up in a better mood.
Set more than one alarm. Sometimes one alarm isn’t enough to wake you up because you just continue to hit snooze. I suggest setting an alarm every 15 minutes. You can think about it like every time I snooze I get 15 minutes less to get ready.
Have something to look forward to in the morning. Most of the time we don’t want to wake up in the morning because we would rather sleep. Plan something in the morning so that you want to get out of bed. Something like making pancakes, playing with your dog, or wearing a new shirt.
Take a cold shower or splash water on your face. If you like to take morning showers make the water cold to help you wake up. If you like to take night showers maybe think about changing to morning showers so that you are forced to wake up early plus they help you feel refreshed. If taking a shower in the morning is definitely not an option for you try splashing some cold water on your face it should have the same effect.
Put your phone/alarm far away so you have to get out of bed. Most of us like to keep our phone close by when we sleep. This can be a huge distraction when you are trying to fall asleep. Moving your phone far away forces you to get out of bed and shut your alarm off. Once out of bed it is easier to wake up and start getting ready for the day.
Use an app to help you wake up. There are some great apps formulated to help you wake up earlier or to get a good night’s sleep. Simply go to your app store and search “sleep apps”.
Some of my favorites are
Sleep cycle- it uses your phone’s microphone to track your sleep cycles and wakes you up gently at the perfect time.
Pandora-or any other music app. Music apps have a wide variety of nature playlists that help soothe you to sleep and get a better night’s rest.
Calm- Calm is a meditation and sleep app in one. Calm has nature soundtracks like most apps but what separates it is it has bedtime stories you can listen too.