#55: Lose the snooze! The Science of Starting Your Day

In this Season Two opener, we explore why hitting the snooze button may be disrupting your nervous system, how sleep cycles influence morning focus, and why writing down intentions can transform your day. Learn how small, intentional morning habits improve clarity, reduce stress, and help you show up more grounded — even if you have kids or a busy schedule. Perfect for anyone seeking a calmer, more purposeful start.

Topics Covered:
– Sleep cycles and morning grogginess
– Why snoozing increases sleep inertia
– Procrastination as a stress response
– The neuroscience of writing intentions
– Morning practices for busy lives
– How tiny habits create lasting change

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Transcript

Season Two: Small Shifts

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Transform Your Life. Just count me in. If you're here, it means you're ready for something different. Season two is about small shifts that change everything. Not hustle, not pressure, presence. Over the last 54 episodes, and I can't believe I'm saying that, that's a lot of episodes. We explored stories, healing, and what it means to live your best life. This season, we're going to go a little deeper. We're going to talk a little more about your nervous system, your mornings, your habits, maybe some unconscious patterns that end up shaping your choices. We're going to explore why hitting the snooze affects your focus, why writing things down helps you follow through, how stress shows up in your life as procrastination, and also how some inherited patterns might be influencing the way we live and the way we love. Each episode is going to order some science, some real life insights, some wisdom, and some practical tools that you can use right away. Even if your life is busy, loud, or full of responsibility, this season is going to be about integration. It's clearing the clutter, it's listening to your heart, it's aligning your energy, it's nourishing what matters, practicing gratitude, and learning to enjoy the journey. If you've been craving clarity, if you're ready to meet yourself before meeting the world, if you're open to the change that starts from within, you are in the right place. Season two begins now. I am so glad you're here. Hey, welcome, welcome. I'm so happy you decided to join today. I'm Sari Stone and I'm your host for Transform Your Life. Just Count Me In. And welcome to season two. If you've been craving more focus, more clarity, and a gentler way to start your day this season, particularly this episode, is for you. Today we're going to talk about something simple that has a surprisingly powerful impact on your nervous system and your mindset and actually your productivity. The snooze button. And what happens when you choose to wake up with intention instead. So what's really happening when you hit the snooze? Most of us move through sleep cycles about every 90 minutes, shifting between deep sleep and lighter stages, including REM sleep. And I think most of us know that. The 90-minute part was new to me. Toward morning, your body naturally prepares to wake. Your cortisol starts to rise slightly, your nervous system starts to transition you into alertness, like, hey, you're getting ready to wake up. It is doing it, it is gently waking you up. When you hit snooze, you interrupt your own process. That's right. So instead of completing your final sleep cycle and waking up gently the way you're meant to, your brain tries to drop back into sleep, only to be jolted awake again minutes later. That back and forth cycle creates something that we call sleep inertia, and it ends up being a foggy, heavy, disconnected kind of feeling that even coffee can't get rid of. So snoozing doesn't give you real rest, it gives you actually fragmentation, and something deeper is happening there. Snoozing trains your nervous system to delay your engagement with your life. In a way, hitting the snooze is a tiny form of avoidance. That's right, avoidance, procrastination. It's not laziness, it's actually protection. Your system is saying, Oh, not yet. Problem is that same pattern often shows up later in the day. How many times do I say not yet? Procrastination, feeling overwhelmed, resistance to what I'm doing. The snooze button is actually pretty symbolic. It's your first relationship with your day. How do you start your day? So important. Snooze is actually a stress response. Here's something really powerful to understand that I learned about procrastination. There's a couple different kinds. One is creative, like positive procrastination is actually part of a creative process where you might procrastinate until you feel inspired on something where you don't have a deadline or a timeline. And that's actually a good thing because you might not be in the right mindset or in the right energetic flow to create something. Most procrastination is actually a stress response. We're avoiding something that stresses us. It happens when the nervous system feels overwhelmed or unable to do what's going on, unable to meet an expectation or unsafe. When you hit snooze, it's not like you're failing. You're actually regulating. But regulation through avoidance, not good. It keeps you in a reactive state. Regulation through intention moves you into your own agency. This is where your change begins. Not through forcing yourself, through awareness. Another thing that you can do in the morning is write things down. And let's talk for just a minute about mornings. Not morning routines, not morning protocols, just morning practices, morning rituals, morning intentions. Research shows that when you write things down, especially by hand, you activate multiple parts of your brain, which is why taking physical notes is actually better than taking notes by typing them. And they've proven this over and over again. There's memory centers, there's nervous systems, motor systems, and all types of attention networks come into play. Writing can help you to turn vague thoughts into commitments. It clears out your mental clutter. It creates clarity. Writing things out dramatically increases follow-through, and that's the big aha. It increases the probability that you're actually going to take action and activate, move into an activation phase. But this is not about you creating a to-do list. And trust me, I'm all about the to-do list. Sometimes I even do something that wasn't on the list and I add it on there just so I can cross it off. I'm not bashing to-do lists, but that's not what this is what we're talking about. This is about choosing four or five things, just taking a moment in the morning that nourish you. Not productivity tasks, personal intentions for ways that you're going to put yourself first today. For example, I'm going to take five deep breaths before I check my phone. Ultimately, we want to try to be awake at least an hour before we're on a screen because then right away it's telling me that something else is more important than I am. The news on my screen, the update on the weather, the recall on the spinach that we just bought, somebody else's post on Instagram, the stock market. I mean, it tells us in so many ways that that's more important and it grabs our attention. For that reason, I recommend that you make a moat and don't do it for the first hour that you're awake. But if you can't, if you're not able to do that, commit to taking five deep breaths just to regulate your nervous system before you check your phone. You can think about moving your body, drinking something you love, spending a few minutes outside. Maybe I'm gonna listen to music that shifts me. So I'm gonna use that good smelling lotion or aftershave. I'm gonna make sure I taste something good. I see something that I like looking at. I smell something that I like. I enjoy stretching or moving my body and I hear something. I'm gonna use my senses and enjoy being in my body. This can even mean having a moment of silence, or enjoying the chatter of your children, or the birds outside, or listening to some music that you like in the morning. These are all signals to your nervous system that say, I matter, I come first. Well, realistically, what if you don't come first? What if you have kids or a busy morning, even dogs that are demanding of you? I know not everybody gets quiet mornings, so let's make this real. Your intentional moment doesn't need to be an hour at all. It doesn't. You can do this in two minutes. You can take two minutes to breathe in the bathroom. You can take 30 seconds to write a couple things the night before, even if you just want to write them on the mirror. I have one mom who writes them on the mirror with a dry erase marker and they come right off. That way she's got it written in the morning already, and when she brushes her teeth, she sees it. And these are things, again, not productivity. These are things you're doing to just enjoy being you and honor being in your body today. Standing in sunlight while your coffee brews in the morning. One big conscious inhale before you open your phone. What I'm saying here is that your tiny choices count. Your tiny choices all add up, and you don't need perfect conditions. All you need is presence, and that is always available to you. So, how does all this connect with change? Because we know change only happens at the speed of safety. It doesn't happen always in big dramatic moments, it happens in little micro decisions. Choosing not to snooze, choosing one intention, choosing to meet yourself before you meet the world today. That's transformation. Season two, all about integration, small shifts, nervous system awareness, intentional living, and this is the beginning. Let's face it, anybody can find research these days to back up just about anything. What they can't do is tell you how you actually feel. They are telling you what's right for you. But you have to get quiet enough to listen, even if it's only for 30 seconds. So the first step for all of us is just to get regulated. It happens in a couple of breaths. You will know. Let the awareness in your mind allow that energy in your mind to drain into your heart, and you will find all the answers you're looking for on the ways to transform your life and take the next step. You've got this. Tonight, I would invite you to just try something simple. Before bed, write one intention for the morning. It can be anything. Tomorrow, wake with your first alarm. Not because it necessarily feels good, because it may not, to be honest with you, but because you know it's good for you and you're putting yourself first. It's one of those things. Like sometimes we just have to do what we know is good for us, even though we might not feel like it. And that is making a choice to choose ourselves. Notice how your day feels different. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with somebody who looks like they might need a gentler start, or somebody that maybe looks like they're not feeling regulated during the day because it could very well be as simple as them not hitting the snooze. We are all in this together. Thank you so much for joining me today. If this episode spoke to you, I'd really love to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram or on my Facebook page, just count me in. And if someone came to mind while you were listening, please share this episode with them. Sometimes one conversation can change everything. Thank you for being here, for choosing growth, and for doing the inner work. I look forward to being with you again next time. Remember, we're all in this together. Hit that subscribe button. Just count me in.