Choose Your Alarm Sound

In a study by “Sleep Junkie”; 54% of people feel “dreadful” when they hear their morning alarm. 27% feel anxious.

What a terrible way to start the day!

While only about 11% feel energized. And just 2% feel excited. Finally, only .3% feel awake!

The remaining 5% didn’t set alarms.

So what category do you fall under? Do you feel dread and anxiety when your alarm goes off? Do you feel awake and ready to take on the world?

The way we wake up in the morning plays a very big role in the way the rest of our day goes! If we wake up shocked and feeling dreadful, that’s how our day will pan out. If we wake up energetic and full of life, that’s who we will be!

Which is why priming and protecting the morning is the most important thing you can do each day.

Did you notice, in the study mentioned above, the question was “how do you feel when you hear the morning alarm?”. The question wasn’t “How do you feel waking up in the morning?”. It is the dreaded alarm sound we have a problem with.

So it is critical to choose the right kind of alarm sound. Some common mistakes.

1. Choosing a loud alarm sound. If you lived in the generation of phones with a big dial on them, you probably remember the mechanical alarm clocks, they were loud and obnoxious. I recently found one and realised that it woke up the neighbours along with me. This is the exact opposite of what we want.

2. Choosing an alarm sound that is soothing. My father set his iPhone alarm to those soothing bird chirps, he loved it so much, that he would wake up lie in bed for another 20 minutes listening to the chirping. Absolutely useless

3. Choosing your favourite song or a rock anthem. This is a classic rookie mistake. Because you are soon going to start hating this song, this band, this genre of music, everything! The opening riffs of sweet child of mine still fill me with dread.

So, is there a perfect alarm sound? The answer is… …No. I haven’t come across any research discussing the perfect alarm. But more importantly, the sound of the alarm doesn’t matter, as long as you don’t make any of the mistakes discussed earlier.

Instead, focus on this one simple trick. Change the tone of your alarm every week.

So make it a habit, every sunday night you will choose the alarm sound for the next week. It can be a meaningless alarm sound or a motivational talk or a song. But by changing the alarm every week our brain doesn’t associate that sound with waking up from our sleep. So the dread and the anxiety disappears.

This is the exact opposite of the Pavlov Dog experiment.

With this one simple habit, you will never fear your alarm again. Message me and tell me how you feel after this new habit. Tell me what alarm sound you chose.

You can reach out to me on Instagram or Twitter @ashdindoc.