It’s a beautiful morning, at least it is before you wake up. Instead of hearing the birds chirping, you hear the screeching gates of hell come out of your alarm clock. You wake up alarmed, ironically enough. But not enough to stay up. The process repeats four to five times (hopefully not more, you irresponsible ones). And now you finally wake up, to do your morning routine just in time to arrive at class 45 minutes late. Okay, that may be a bit exaggerated but nevertheless, the morning probably wasn’t the highlight of your day. So how can you make that morning a little better, maybe be productive, and actually set yourself up to have an enjoyable and successful day? Well here are five easy steps.

1. Have a reason to get up.

If you don’t have a reason to want to get up, you probably won’t, or at least not as quickly. This leads to endless hours of pushing a button and scrolling through facebook until you finally get up at 11:45 a.m. However, simply having a reason to get up won’t make you enjoy your morning. One surefire way to do this is to set up a reward. Do you love going on walks? Maybe get up early in the morning for a walk. You could practice a few minutes of your favorite instrument, eat your favorite food, read, or even just meditate. But either way, be excited for the morning. Studies show it can actually be the most productive part of your day.

2. Have a basic morning routine.

Pick your clothes out before you wake up! Unless you can get dressed in less than two minutes, this is a huge waste of time! We waste time every morning making decisions that could have been made before we even opened our eyes. This includes things like what we’ll eat for breakfast, apparel and even when we take a shower and fulfill other basic hygienic needs. Having a basic routine helps to get small decisions out of the way so that we have more free time to actually enjoy the rest of your morning. Additionally, sleeping in the same place in the same conditions every day helps drastically to get good rest and to not oversleep.

3. Set goals to complete for the rest of the day.

This does not necessarily mean a to-do list, although those can be useful for some people. What this does mean is specifically thinking about how you’re going to choose to live out the rest of the day, and writing it down. This includes finding things to focus on, such as “today I’m going to focus on being more intentional with people. I can do this by smiling meaningfully at anyone I run into, actually stopping and having a conversation with someone instead of merely saying hi, or trying to put more input into classroom discussions”. Either way, the point is we’re thinking about our behavior for the rest of the day, in a way that alters our mental state to better achieve those goals. Journaling at night can be a great thing, however, it leaves you no extra time in the day to change the things you reflected about. It often leaves us disappointed, or grateful, depending on the type of things we chose to write down. The point is the things we right down at the end of the day are things we can’t change, whereas the things we write down in the morning are things that we still have the power to affect in a very positive way. This sets us up oftentimes, to make it very difficult to not succeed. You’d be surprised how much, some intentional time in the morning can greatly benefit your entire day, and every day succeeding.

4. Try to wake up naturally.

You do not want to be sucked into the gates of hell that is your eardrums in the morning. Nor do you want to have a heart attack from the mere fear of waking up everyone in the house because of the thunderous applause of a thousand elephants going off on your countertop. Waking up naturally does not necessarily mean not having an alarm, however. It means waking up at the right time. The average sleep cycle is 90 minutes. This website will tell you what time you should go to bed in order to wake up in a lighter sleep cycle. It can mean the difference between waking up feeling like a hungover sumo wrestler who recently ate at hometown buffet, and a light butterfly awoken by the soft sounds of low-tide oceans and, you guessed it, a mother’s love. When considering alarms, try to think of something less abrupt, maybe with a lead up into a chorus. Also, various other considerations are sunrise alarm clocks, which work remarkably well, or vibration watches. But it will be a million times easier to wake up at the end of a sleep cycle than in the middle, so keep that in mind. Try also to sleep with the blinds open for natural lighting purposes. It will signal your brain to wake up in the morning. It’s really hard to wake up in the basement, trust me. Some other ideas I’ve heard are waking up a few hours before you need to and then setting an alarm next to a cooking skillet of bacon. Wow, the sounds wonderful, but I don’t think I have the conviction.

5. After you wake up, stimulate your body.

Whether that means taking a shower or doing a few warm up stretches or exercises, having an awake and excited immune system can help you have a great start to your day! Also, try eating healthy foods with lots of antioxidants and overall things that just get you energized. Sidenote: try not to rely on coffee too much, as it’s nowhere near the best or healthiest source of energy (if you disagree with me, fight me!).

Overall, all of these things coupled together can help you have a great morning and start you on your way to a more productive and exciting day and life. Never underestimate the power of a healthy morning schedule. Also, understand that some people can’t sleep early (I being one of them) and or have really busy schedules. Just make sure to take some time out to relax every day, even if that means getting up a few minutes early.