Do you hate getting up in the morning? How to wake up on time.

Ring! Ring! No, it's not the telephone, not a siren; it's worse. The alarm to get up in the morning. Who knows what makes it so traumatic, but it is.

One summer in high school, I remember every morning was an existential experience. Sometime the question was where am I, sometimes who am I, but the worst is why I had to wake up in the first place.

What makes it so hard to get up. Why do we hit the snooze button over and over when we know we will regret it later?

Okay, there are lots of elements involved, but the will is an important one. I am not about to propose a ten point wake-up plan. We don't need to chant, "I will get up" ten times before bed, or even necessarily meditate on the man we'll me if we get up on time.

When I wrote my mini-dissertation on the will, I realized many types of motivations are involved. That means, we have to experience the value of our decision, their good, on many levels.

When we are only half-alive and groggy, most of the deep spiritual motivations - our mission in life, our desire to help others - aren't even on the radar screen.

The motivation has to be more concrete. Just the fact of having the alarm across the room - we have to get up and turn it off, an immediate reminder of how hungry we are and how good breakfast sounds, or just jumping out of bed for some push-ups. 

These simple things jump start our will and make us capable of choosing things that help us to fulfill longer term decisions. Our will depends on a hierarchy of values. How is yours?