Maybe this has happened to you, too.
Starting in high school, through college, and into my 9-5 working life, every day I relied on my trusty alarm clock to get me up on time. It was an absolute dependency. If for some reason the alarm didn’t go off, I’d be late for class or work.
I could roll with the occasional slip up . . . until I couldn’t. I started having urgent meetings, planes to catch, and other absolutely can’t-afford-to-miss dates. The night before those days, I’d double check my alarm clock and fall into a restless night’s sleep. As it happened more frequently, I found myself waking up just before the alarm went off, sometimes seconds before it sounded.
Soon it developed into a weird habit. Every morning I would wake up moments before the alarm. It was as if I had an internal alarm clock that was in sync with the one by my bed. It quickly became an annoyance when the alarm would go off after I was already waking up. I began experimenting with shutting off the alarm clock and relying only on my internal clock to wake me up. I discovered that just before shutting my eyes at night, if I checked the time and made a mental note of when I had to get up, my mind would do the wake up job perfectly.
Today I don’t own an alarm clock. I haven’t for years. I never oversleep. Without fail I wake up at 5:30 every morning to get my kids off to school. For now, until they can train their minds, I am their alarm clock!
