Don’t hit the snooze button

I am the type of person that usually gets up before my alarm clock goes off in the morning.  Actually, most mornings it is well before it goes off.  I have that internal clock now that just knows when it is time to go.  Each morning there a few ways that we all can be woken up.  If you are like me (95% of mornings) you just wake up because you have had enough sleep.  Some people, like children require a parent to wake them up and then lastly, maybe you are woken up by your alarm clock.  I think the alarm sound on my iPhone has to be the most annoying sound on the face of the earth.

Just like we are woken up on a given day, life experiences can sometimes do the same thing.  I recently had this experience personally.  As I mentioned above, I am the guy that gets up well before the alarm goes off.  Alarms to me are loud, frighten me, and are annoying.  Alarms remind me of being in school where we had those fire drills. I can remember walking down the halls and when you would walk by the actual alarm you had to cover your ears because it was so loud.  That is how I think of alarms.  So I would prefer to stay away from alarms.

In a recent experience in my professional life the alarm has gone off to awaken me to some realities of my life.  For the first time in my life, it required the alarm clock to go off instead of me getting up on my own.  I can now hit the snooze button on the alarm, or jump up and get moving.  We have all heard the story of a person that is over weight and lives an unhealthy lifestyle.  Then one day it happens, they get the chest pain, the sweats, the numbness in the arm.  They had many of these signs along the way, but they just kept sleeping, they didn’t change their ways.  So now the alarm has gone off, and they are at the ER about to have a Heart Cath and they find out that they are having a heart attack.  See the Heart Attack is the alarm.  They allowed the alarm to go off, and now it is time to change, because now they must change.

I recently had the alarm go off, (Luckily I can’t die in this situation, physically at least, mentally maybe)  I can hit the snooze button or make the necessary changes so I can get up before the alarm goes off next time. What happens when you hit the snooze button? Well you are usually running behind all day, or even worse, you are actually late to work or wherever else you need to be.  I am going to choose not to hit the snooze button.  See, I am usually up before the alarm goes off, that is how I live my life, this time the alarm has gone off, and I must choose not to hit the snooze button, and get up right now.

Brian Willett