When someone asks me how I find time to ______________ (fill in the blank: exercise, clean the house, pray), I say that I wake up early. Sometimes very, very early.

You’d be surprised how many people get mildly pissed off at my answer. They immediately fire back with “oh yeah, well I’m just not a morning person” or “oh yeah I tried that and hahaha it didn’t work for me.”

Here’s the truth: no one likes waking up, much less waking up early.

I’ll grant you that some people are naturally disposed to like mornings or to be night owls. I get it.

I was a self proclaimed night-owl until college. Then I had things to do early and you know what? If you want something badly enough, you will be willing to wake up early.

I’m also not going to say it’s easy. Of course it’s not easy. It’s a discipline like anything else. But hey, you force yourself to wake up to get to work, surely it’s the same skill administered differently.

But it’s easier to make excuses and say that you don’t do mornings or you prefer to do X in the afternoon. But in my experience it’s way harder to convince myself to do something after work, or before bed, than in the morning. In the morning my alarm goes off, I get up, and I hit the gym. I don’t think about it. I just do it. At three in the afternoon I can spend quality time coming up with excuses. Legit ones, too.

In my experience it doesn’t matter what stage of life you find yourself: single, married, kid or kids. If you don’t want it enough, it’s not gonna happen, whatever your “thing” is. If you don’t want to force yourself to get up an hour early to X, then please don’t get annoyed with me because I do (and because it really does solve many of my “I don’t have time!” problems. Really.)