This is a personal story how I overcame morning fatigue, from which I suffered almost all my twenties. A few years ago, I would have considered myself mostly happy. I enjoyed my daily routine, our businesses were solid enough to pay our bills and I was happy with my wife and cat. I could decide for myself if, when and where I worked. It made no difference if I did nothing for several weeks. The dream of every entrepreneur… But on the other hand, I wasn’t really motivated in the morning. When I woke up, I often felt depressed, turned around and most of the time slept for 1 or 2 more hours.
TL;DR – A combination against the morning fatigue
The short answer for all who do not want to read the whole text.
- My passion was gone. The vision I created no longer hooked me and had to be adjusted.
- I had problems with my self-worth and needed to release blockages here.
- My diet was out of balance. I learned more about Ayurveda and it changed a lot.
I checked if the morning fatigue had a medical cause
In general, I felt pretty tired and groggy the whole day. After noon I could easily sleep for 1 or 2 more hours.
So I had my blood values checked and everything was normal to very good. So physically everything was fine, yet I had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning and often felt depressed for no reason while lying in bed. I tried all sorts of hacks that have worked in the past, from habit trackers, or intention setting. That might have worked for a few days then, but somehow I felt the cause must be deeper.
Oh well, of course I tried polyphasic sleeping, but in the end it didn’t work either.
A better way than forcing myself every day out of bed
I just knew I didn’t want to go back to my “old” life, where I had a system to force myself to achieve all my goals. Even though I was one of the most disciplined people in the world and made sure I checked off almost 20 items on the ToDo every day. But maintaining this workload for years drained me. From daily meditation, learning different languages, sports, working sessions, etc. I was a master of self-flagellation, only happy when I managed all the items on my ToDo.
Over time though, I lost the fun in the things that actually used to bring me joy, I was actually tired of things and as written above, I didn’t want to go back there.
Rediscovering a reason to get up in the morning
A friend of ours once gifted Sarah and me the 30 day audio course Personality isn’t permanent by Benjamin Hardy* and one of the first questions was, “What do you hope to get out of the course?”. Pretty standard, but spot on at the time. I answered “Clarity about my future self and a sense of absolute necessity to achieve the goal.”
Because I felt I could answer that question almost 10 years ago, but not now. That was the last time I answered such questions. Then, over time, the necessity got lost. I set many small goals for myself, but when I listened deep inside myself, they were mostly just there to feed my ego. Did I really want to learn another language just because I thought it was cool to know another language?
Why wrong goals make you tired
Sarah was sharing an exercise with me at the time where you were supposed to review all of your goals for the real reason behind them. So I wrote down everything I still wanted to do and examined each point in writing.
- Do I want to achieve the goal for myself or for someone else?
- What do I feel when I imagine myself having achieved the goal?
- What do I feel when I imagine letting the goal go?
- Do I really want it, or is it just nice to have?
- If I died right now, would I regret not doing it?
- Does achieving the goal support my core values?
Out of a total of about 10 goals, only 3 remained. Some things, like playing pool or poker, I like to do, but do I really need to become a master at them? Not really, but as a hobby these activities are great. Do I really need to learn more languages just because my ego is flattered when I can flex around with the language skills? Not really.
My main core values are freedom, love and peace. So the goals that give me time with Sarah and give me peace as well as freedom have remained. It felt incredibly good to just let the other goals go. Suddenly I felt I had the time for the things that were important to me.
Low self-confidence made me tired
In the next phase, I questioned why I had already achieved some of my goals and not others, even though they were so important to me. The simple answer behind all of them was: I had problems with my self-worth. As an outsider you probably didn’t notice this, but deep inside I often felt like a failure. I told myself I wasn’t worth it and so, in retrospect, I sabotaged some of our ventures. And over time, my brain became a master of hidden self-sabotage.
A great exercise to reframe low self-confidence
An incredibly good exercise that helped me reprogram the issue with self-worth and uncover hidden cross border beliefs is this.
I took a sheet of Paper and wrote on the top left:
- “I am NOT worth it”….
Under it I wrote then all things of which I thought that I am not worth it. With me these were e.g. points like
- … to be loved
- … to earn millions with our companies
In the next step I crossed out the NOT and wrote “Because…” at the top of the right page.
Now I went through each point, and wrote down a reason WHY I was worthy to be loved, earn a huge amount of money with our companies…. This took me some time, but when I was done, I suddenly had a list that I could read through every day to break down old neural highways and establish new connections.
This was definitely a gamechanger and there were quite a few tears shed in the process because there was so much pent up anger at myself that was then discharged. Working with the Inner Child, they say I was able to hold myself and the adult version of myself was then strong enough to do so.
Check your diet if you suffer from morning fatigue
The last step that made a big change was to get involved with Ayurveda. This is a holistic approach to bringing the body into balance. What I found exciting was that the questions were not typical personality test questions, but asked about the body constitution. In any case, I found out that my main doshas are Kapha-Pitta and the description also fit me well.
The interesting thing, when I looked at the dietary recommendations, the very foods that I like to eat anyway were at the top. In my youth, for example, I liked to eat very spicy food, but in my twenties this has become less. In the same way, for example, I was never hungry in the morning and more or less had to force breakfast down my throat.
Why spicy food helped me to feel less tired
Then in the description about Kapha-Pitta it said that spicy food works against the morning fatigue of the Kapha and this type likes to skip a meal sometimes. For me, many things were actually something that my intuition told me anyway, but I didn’t implement it. Since then, my last meal is usually between 6-8 p.m. and I don’t eat again until noon the next day. I am also only hungry then again.
This was about 2 years ago now. Even if some may have been the placebo effect, for me it has helped. All together, my morning tiredness is completely gone since then. I am generally not tired during the day anymore, unless I eat a lot of sugar and other carbohydrates at once. Most of the tasks of the day bring me joy from the deepest inner out, and if not, then I see now again the why and the necessity behind it, so it is easier for me.
What I learned from my morning fatigue
What I have learned from this – Despite a lot of meditation and the feeling to have understood many things, the moment you rely on it, you have actually understood nothing. Life is in constant change and the things that may have worked for us years ago may not be good for us today. It is absolutely necessary to take time out regularly to see if the daily tasks are still in line with the core values.
Lot’s of love,
Gerald
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