Most people if armed with a hammer would commit the same violent act that the perpetrator in this picture is going to do to her alarm clock. Every morning millions of them go off around the world. Bedrooms are either filled with a favorite radio station, a loud buzz, or the ever so annoying rooster sound. These noises continue until the alarm is shut off, for some (including the one in the picture) this could be by any means necessary.

The alarm clock in my bedroom has a special place in my heart. I had it throughout college and even though on its last leg, it is still reliable. The only problem is I don’t really use it to wake me up. I haven’t in a very long time. I’d say maybe one day out of the week it actually serves its purpose. The other six days I’m my own alarm clock. I shut the alarm clock off before that annoying static sound starts up, and then reset it to wake up my wife when I leave the house.

I have a morning ritual that I’ve been doing for the last two and a half years. I wake up, I open my phone, and then I post one of my own quotes to face book and twitter. Every day except for Saturday (when I post my blog) I do the same routine. The other day a friend saw the time of my post on face book, and texted me these exact words, “Do you ever sleep?” My post was at 3:45am, and the day before that 4:00am. My answer to him was a simple one, “It’s hard to sleep when you love what you do”.

Think about this for a second. The day before your first day of school, starting a new job, or even going to an amusement park how well did you sleep? If you’re human it probably took you a lot longer than usual to fall asleep, but ironically wake up a lot earlier. Why does this happen? Because we’re excited, we’re doing something the next day that we’ve been anticipating anxiously. This is the feeling that I have every day. I have no idea what the day will bring, but I’m thankful that I have another chance to not only do what I love, but to improve upon the day before.

So when I wake up, no matter what hour it is I’m up. The other day I gave a motivational speech, and the topic ironically was about being motivated. I talked to the group about what I call the 3 C’s. I won’t go through what all three of them are, but the first C is cause. When you have a cause or a goal you’re excited about working towards getting up is a lot easier. I have so many different things I want to accomplish I can’t waste time sleeping in. I love the famous line, “Sleep is the cousin of death”. To me it means while you’re sleeping nothing is getting accomplished, you might as well be dead.

When you are your own alarm clock it’s easy to get up, because you do it on your terms. I remember when my mom use to come wake me, and my brothers up for school. The first couple of minutes I would be so cranky and groggy. Well first period I had chemistry, why would I be excited for that? Now if first period was something like gym, or maybe a special class called breakfast, I probably would have been up before my mom knocked on the door.

Ever since I started coaching I’ve done six am practices during our preseason. The reason I started doing them was to see which players loved the game of basketball and which ones just liked it. To be enthusiastic at six am you have to love what you’re doing. My players must (like everyone else) think I’m crazy, because when I come into the gym I’m ready to go. I’m excited to get them better, and when I have players that have the same enthusiasm I know that their special.

Now you may read this blog an think that I’m anti sleep. I’m not running a campaign for insomniacs all over the world to negate sleep and stay up all night. Sleep is extremely important for everyone (myself included), but understand this if you wake up at nine am every morning some of us already have over a three hour head start on you.

Sleep Tight!!