From night owl to lark: is that possible?

It’s two thirty-seven and I’m wide awake. That’s unusual. Otherwise, when I wake up in the night, I just turn over with a contented grunt and am glad that I can fall back asleep right away. Unless I have to leave before half past six, for example for a train or flight. Then I toss and turn, not relaxed, for fear of oversleeping and thereby ruining the super saver price.

Today is one of those nervous nights because in just two hours and 23 minutes the first day of what will probably be my new life begins. So early, because that’s part of the concept from now on. In his best-selling book, The Five O’Clock Club, American personal trainer Robin Sharma claims: “Create your morning, and anything in your life becomes possible.” Sounds promising. How that should work and what can be done so early, the Internet spits out suggestions like a crazy slot machine with change. Hashtag morning routine, hashtag that girl: work-out, lemon water, reading the newspaper (or world literature), meditating, journaling, in other words: writing a diary (by hand! Because the hemispheres of the brain are better connected!), learning Chinese vocabulary, the three most important daily goals on post- write it down. That’s how – supposedly – winners like Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey and Gwyneth Paltrow do it. What they can do, I can do it too: From today on I’m going from a sleepy owl to an energetic lark. Fresh, energetic, successful and probably filthy rich too.

I thought so. Instead, I lie stiff as a board in bed and am afraid of oversleeping, despite the alarm clock. Oprah Winfrey, a regular at the Five O’clock Club, claims she doesn’t even have an alarm clock. Nerd! Or maybe she just stares at the time on her phone all night, like me? Anyway, after two sleepless hours, at 4:55 am, I get up. It’s not that bad, I think, actually I feel pretty fit. No wonder, I probably have an adrenaline level from nervousness like the soccer player Alexandra Popp with her goal in the European Championship semifinals against France.

It’s not easy for the early bird

I open the balcony door and carefully breathe in the cool, fresh air. This is a beginner’s exercise: consciously feel the ground under your feet, consciously fill your lungs, consciously let go and so on. I don’t have to start running training on the first day. Out in the dark I see deserted streets, a church tower behind trees. A stage for a play without actors. An interesting thought. I have to continue that straight away, even before the first Mandarin lesson and the “New York Times” app that I downloaded for my international press reading. Thinking is almost like meditating. So why not move onto the sofa, into a comfortable position?

When I wake up, a good four hours have passed. Hashtag megafail. At least today is Saturday and I don’t have much else planned.

I know the Orient, I’ve been there before. In my mid-20s, I would occasionally stumble across the weekly market on Saturdays after club nights at 6 to convince the market women to sell me something outside of their business hours – so I could sleep undisturbed all day afterwards. When I was in my mid-30s, I would have fun with my wide-awake toddlers very early in the morning. Except I didn’t chalk this up as a spiritual growth experience. Rather than a somewhat annoying phase of life. But those were the noughties, when smoking was still allowed in pubs, and sleeping late was not immediately considered a pronounced weakness of character.

So now again with feeling. I’m taking a break on Sunday – I need to recover from the stress of last night. On Monday, I take it easy and only start at half past six for a dynamic walk along the Elbe, far away from chairs and loungers. In the stairwell I still find myself heroic, but on the street I’m already mainstream. For others, stepping out the door right now seems perfectly normal. Comfortable walkers, focused cyclists, performance-oriented runners. Magpies, cleaning crews, seagulls. The last hippie in Hamburg is sitting on a meadow in a batik shirt to greet the day. It’s beautiful, such a light-flooded early autumn morning. I briefly wonder if I could muster that same warm feeling for a drizzly November day, but immediately push the thought away.

New morning, new happiness

Cheerful and in really good spirits, I book a morning workout at the nearby park for the next day, ignoring the fact that it doesn’t start until eight. There was no class at five! I think the first exercise is really good: strengthen your inner core, just by breathing. In the dog looking down, however, I already get pitying looks from walkers. Wow, how exhausting! Later, when I get home to recover, I lie flat on the living room floor and run a meditation called the Inner Garden. A flute flutes and a voice chirps positive affirmations of anything with love and treasure within me. At some point the sentence falls: “Money flows effortlessly into my life.” I’m really awake now. And take a look to see if it’s already there, this money in my life.

New morning, new station wagon, new luck? Ginger tea inside, cold water outside. The Hamburg swimming pools have their own morning club. At 6:30 am I’m sure I’ll be the first. think! Because when I get there, about 20 people are already standing in front of the turnstile: pensioners, shift workers, high achievers. And I at the back, the wimp. Ten minutes later, everyone is already in the outdoor pool while I’m still feeling with my big toe. After overcoming the surprise comes, then the great freshness: water and movement make me come alive in one fell swoop. Almost euphoric. Why didn’t I know this before? Immediately afterwards, one of the bathing cap wearers corrects me in a friendly but firm manner: “You’re swimming exactly in my lane!” Everything is in order here, as if the crawlers with their concentrated plowing were just getting the day going in the first place. While I draw my straight lines, optically more dachshund than dolphin, my brain really gets up to operating temperature. Which three daily goals should I write down on a post-it later? What would be the perfect triad? Professionally, privately, spiritually?

The longer I think, the more I get bogged down. Maybe because I find the written daily goals a bit silly. To me it’s a bit like people who claim they order their wishes from the universe and then actually get them. Perhaps my lack of decision-making is just the first harbinger of the side effects of my lark project. For a few days I was really euphoric. Then the hangover came. So, as I continue to experiment with workouts, self-suggestion, and healthy hot beverages from day to day, at the wrong time I’m overcome by a heavy fatigue – sometimes at my desk in the morning, sometimes in the supermarket in the afternoon. It’s actually logical: If you want to get up earlier, you have to sleep earlier. I honestly hadn’t considered that. So from now on it’s: Dinner, brushing your teeth, Heia.

Does getting up early really make everything better?

That goes well for two or three days, then my sleep is like a hole in Swiss cheese again. I wake up before midnight and I’m in a bad mood because I’m missing my favorite part of my day. Evenings with friends, husband, children. I keep waking up after midnight, thinking I missed the five o’clock alarm. That’s not healthy. Next Monday night, around three forty-five, I check my account balance. At least the money has flowed in by now. Is not it. Something is fundamentally wrong here. It’s probably not just my biorhythm that’s sabotaging my morning routine, but also my self-image. As long as I see myself more as a semi-intellectual owl in an existentialist turtleneck than as a thoroughly optimized size-zero lark, none of this will work. I have to want this, really want it! But do I want that? Am I still me then? If I really want to learn Mandarin one day, I can do it at nine in the evening – that’s five in the morning in Shanghai. This thought calms me down so much that I fall asleep on the spot.

I wake up by myself at a little after six and decide to take a last morning walk. When I get home, my husband and my daughter have already had breakfast, only the 14-year-old is once again sleeping to death. It’s just my son. I’ll wake him up in five minutes. Until then: a brief moment when no one wants anything from me, not even the day itself. Briefly open the balcony door and take a deep breath. Maybe that’s it: a little bit of buffer time before the daily madness erupts. Without workout, lemon water and vocabulary. Morning routine light, so to speak – so it could maybe still be something. The only thing we really need to talk about is this money thing.

Verena Carl really wanted to read the book “The Five O’Clock Club” for research purposes. Unfortunately, he always fell asleep

barbara