Source: endometriosisnews.com<\/p>\n
Everyone knows that fatigue is \u2014 or, perhaps was \u2014 my biggest demon. It has affected my life so acutely that I\u2019ve had to transform the way I live and work to accommodate and beat it.<\/p>\n
I want to be a morning person. I love slow mornings. I love taking the time I need to exercise, go outside, write down my goals and affirmations, and meditate \u2014 all of the things that help me feel good. I have a routine, but the anxiety of falling behind constantly lurks in the back of my mind because I can\u2019t wake up early enough. It\u2019s never quite the experience I envisioned.<\/p>\n
I have battled with waking up for years. I first noticed when I was in my late teens and early 20s. By the time I was running my first business, it felt like I\u2019d been hit by something heavy during the night. My body felt like lead, and the effort it took to move my legs seemed impossible to overcome.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t have much choice in the battle. I\u2019d snooze my alarm while half asleep without realizing it. Waking up was so painful that most mornings I would cry.<\/p>\n
This went on for years, and the impact never seemed to lessen. I left my business because I couldn\u2019t keep up, and moved to a \u201creal\u201d job where they could fire me if I was late.<\/p>\n
My boyfriend would wake me in the mornings by opening all the curtains and making green tea. He would leave it by my bedside so the scent would alert me that it was morning. Then he would gently (and repeatedly) wake me, wrap me in a blanket, and coax me into the living room. There, I could drink my tea in the morning light, signaling to my body that it was time to wake up. Often, I would be on the verge of tears.<\/p>\n
But I refused to give up. I just kept trying. Every day I would set my alarm to the time I wanted to wake, and every day I would hit snooze over and over again. I\u2019d wake up feeling as sleep-deprived as the previous day.<\/p>\n
I desperately wanted to change. I was certain that if I could wake up earlier, the other things I was struggling with would fall into place. It felt like the missing piece of the puzzle. I would hear entrepreneurs talk about their miracle mornings and think it felt wrong and abnormal for my body. I was jealous. I wanted to be that person.<\/p>\n
What I didn\u2019t realize was that I was slowly \u2014 very slowly \u2014 becoming an earlier riser. It was taking years, but I was developing a routine that was training me to wake up.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong. I do not believe in sleep deprivation. As someone who suffers from insomnia and knows the effects of acute fatigue, I don\u2019t think you should be an early riser if it\u2019s to your detriment. (Check out Dr. Matthew Walker and his discoveries on genetics and sleep.) If your body needs to sleep until midday for you to be able to cope with this disease, do what feels right for you.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t training myself to wake up earlier and survive on less sleep. I\u2019ve been working on balancing my hormones so that I sleep better. I\u2019ve been working on time management so that I can go to bed earlier and sleep longer. I\u2019ve found that I feel my best with about 10 hours of sleep. I\u2019ve been trying to get at least eight.<\/p>\n
I still have a long way to go toward improving my energy in the mornings, and my progress was put to the test recently by the Last 90 Days challenge. But I\u2019m now waking up at 6:30, sometimes even earlier. Most days, it happens naturally. My body is waking up before my alarm, and you know what\u2019s even crazier? I feel OK. Sometimes even good.<\/p>\n
I was skeptical that I could reach this place. But I kept going because I instinctively knew that I could be that person. Perhaps it is possible for me to be a morning person after all, even with endometriosis.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[389,273,2195,1459],"class_list":["post-2408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-endometriosis","tag-health","tag-morning-person","tag-painful"],"yoast_head":"\n