You’re Not Lazy. You’re Just on the Wrong Biological Schedule.

Ever feel like you’re failing at mornings while everyone else seems to have their life together at 5am?

You might not be lazy. You might just be living against your biology.

In this episode, we dive into chronotypes, the natural rhythm that determines when your brain and body work best. I break down the science of circadian rhythms, why society is built around morning people, and what happens when your biological clock doesn’t match the schedule the world expects.

I also share how my Oura Ring identified me as an early evening chronotype, and how understanding my natural rhythm completely changed the way I approach work, creativity, and productivity.

Your brain has a schedule. And when you understand it, you can finally start working with it instead of against it.

CONNECT WITH GEORGIA:

Email: georgia@higherselfhouse.com

Instagram: @higherselfhouse & @georgiianorman

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey y'all, welcome back to the Growth Edit. I am your host, Georgia, and this week I really want to cover the topic of chronotypes because I had a very big epiphany recently. So for most of my life, I always struggled with the whole waking up early and then you have energy in the morning and uh the typical work day, what modern society, what most people, how most people go about their normal day with their circadian rhythm. And I was frustrated because I actually preferred slower mornings. I didn't immediately wake up and have all this energy. And I realized that if I were to schedule early appointments or early meetings, I would feel groggy. My cognitive performance wasn't the best. And uh it would kind of drain me for the rest of the day. And I would always think, what is wrong with you, Georgia? And the people around me are just like, you just have to wake up earlier. You just need to be more disciplined. And then of course I'm seeing everywhere there's the whole glorified biohacking culture where it's like wake up at 5 a.m. and get the workout in and do this and that and meditate and you get all this stuff done before 8 a.m. and you're on fire. And it's just like I for the life's godson of me cannot like I can't, I just don't naturally fit into that. And I tried, I really did try. So years ago, I was dating this guy where he would wake up at 5 a.m. every single morning and wake up, have black coffee, do an intense HIT workout, then meditate and journal all before 8 a.m. And I felt pressured to be on that same schedule as him. And we would go to bed at 8, 9 o'clock. We had to be asleep by 10. So then we would wake up at 5. And I really even though I would wake up at 5, I still really struggled with my energy levels. And again, by early morning, early afternoon, or late morning, early afternoon, my energy would be fried. And I just felt really frazzled and energetically just blunt. Like, what is going on? Like almost kind of dizzy. And I thought it was a discipline thing because it's like, no, Tim Ferris said, no, the successful people, like this is what you have to do. And maybe that fit his chronotype and his particular schedule, but it didn't fit mine. For me, I felt like all of my best work came at night creatively. And it wasn't until around one, two, three o'clock where my energy levels were the highest. So I actually preferred to work out in the afternoon, and then I was my most creative at night, and I would have a slow morning. And again, a lot of modern society and people's lives are not built around that kind of schedule. Now, I was recently feeling this way and feeling really frustrated with myself because I had these thoughts of like, oh no, you're just lazy. You need to be more disciplined. If you just wake up earlier for two weeks and get sunlight in the first 30 minutes, you'll train your circadian rhythm to be a different chronotype. Even though I knew from years ago past experience that it doesn't necessarily work that way, because I did live that life. Now, what actually got me really rolling on this topic was so I have an Aura Ring. And if any of y'all are Aura Ring users, you know that after a certain period amount of time, Aura will um, what is it, house you? It feels like Harry Potter, like Slytherin, Gryffindor. And for me, it housed me in um an early evening chronotype. So it'll house a chronotype to you and it'll tell you, oh, after measuring all of your stats, this is your not, this is your chronotype. So I got housed in the early evening chronotype. And on the Aura app, it gives a very small and vague description of what an early evening chronotype even is. And I read it and I was like, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And then I just kind of, you know, went on with my life. And it wasn't until recently where these thoughts and feelings of frustration of, oh, why am I really struggling in the mornings and getting my energy up in the mornings? And my intuition was nudging me to look more into chronotypes. And it kept flashing the aura image of early evening chronotype in my brain. So that led me down a rabbit hole to really research what all this stuff is really about. And it blew my mind. And y'all, knowledge really is power because even though I intuitively understood that no, Georgia, it's fine. This is just how your body naturally works and operates best. Even though I knew that there was still a knowledge gap. And once I married my intuition with the knowledge, it allowed me to feel a sense of relief. Like, oh, okay, this makes sense, and kind of own my chronotype now. So to understand chronotypes, you first have to understand something called the circadian rhythm. And your circadian rhythm is your body's internal biological clock. It runs on a roughly 24-hour cycle and regulates a huge number of systems, which include sleep timing, hormone release, metabolism, body temperature, cognitive performance, and alertness and fatigue. At the center of the system is a tiny region in the brain called the SCN. And the SCN sits in the hypothalamus and acts as the master clock for the body. And it synchronizes your biological processes using light signals from the environment. So that's why you hear people say, when you wake up, make sure to get natural sunlight within your the first 30 minutes of waking. And it is true because when natural light hits your eyes in the morning, it sends signals to your brain that suppress melatonin, increase cortisol, and wake the body up. Then later in the evening, as light fades, melatonin rises, and the body prepares for sleep. But here's the key point: the timing of this internal clock is not identical for everyone. And that difference is what we call the chronotype. Now, chronotype describes when your body naturally prefers to sleep, wake, and perform. Some people naturally wake up earlier, some wake up later, some people think most clearly in the morning, and others feel more mental clarity later in the day. Scientists usually describe chronotypes as a spectrum. So we have morning, intermediate, evening. Roughly there's 25% morning types, 50% intermediate types, and 25% evening types. But even within those groups, there are variations. So some people are extremely early, meaning the 4 a.m., 5 a.m. club. Some are moderately early. So, you know, 6:30, 7 a.m., 7:30. Some are extremely late. So, you know, 9, 10, 11, and some are extremely, extremely late, where it's you're waking up at noon, 1, 2 in the afternoon. All of this to say, chronotypes are not rigid categories. They're more like positions along a sliding scale of biological timing. Now, this is where things get really important because I'm sure you're probably thinking, well, I can change my chronotype because I just have to wake up earlier for a significant period of time and train my body to set my circadian rhythm for an earlier time if that's what you're trying to do. That thought popped into my head. But upon further research, there's actually a big difference between your natural chronotype and training your circadian rhythm. So your chronotype is your baseline biological tendency. Your circadian rhythm, however, can be influenced by environmental cues. Again, the biggest clue being light. But there are other cues such as consistent sleep schedules, meal timing, exercise timing, social routines, etc. So you can train your circadian rhythm somewhat, but that doesn't mean you've changed your underlying chronotype. Because most research suggests circadian timing can shift roughly around one to two hours earlier or later. But completely turning a night owl into a morning rooster is much harder because your underlying biological tendency remains. Now you're probably thinking, what do you mean biological tendency? Okay, let's zoom back into history where the early humans originated. Now, early human groups depended on someone being alert at night. Imagine the tribes out in the woods, right? If everyone slept at the same time at night, the group would be vulnerable to attacks. But if people naturally slept at different times, someone would always be awake. So you'll have the night watchers protecting the tribe. They have the night shift, and maybe they'll sleep during the day while the day people they do their duties throughout the day. And that kind of natural variation created a kind of biological night watch system. So chronotypes likely evolved as a group survival advantage. So that means being an evening type wasn't originally a flaw. No, no, no, no. It was a role. Fast forward to modern life. Most of society is structured around early schedules. School starts early, work starts early, meetings happen early, and self-improvement culture glorifies the early mornings. You're constantly bombarded with successful people wake up at 5 a.m. Discipline means waking up early. Winners start the day before sunrise. But that message assumes that everyone's biology works the same way. And it does not. Hate to break it to you. And when someone with a later chronotype tries to force themselves into that system, it will actually create something called a social jet lag. Now, what is a social jet lag? Well, if you've ever been jet lagged, I'm sure you know what that feeling feels like. It is living out of sync with your body. And it happens when your biological clock doesn't match your social schedule. It's similar to traveling across time zones and your body is operating on one clock and your life demands another. For example, if your body naturally wants to sleep from midnight to 8 a.m., but your job requires you to wake up at 6 a.m., every day you're forcing your body into a rhythm it didn't choose. And over time, that mismatch creates strain. But the part that I find most fascinating isn't just the biology portion of all of this, it's the psychological experience people have when their chronotype doesn't match society. So if you are like me and you are someone whose brain naturally wakes up later, but you live in a world that rewards early rising, you start to tell yourself stories. You wake up feeling all groggy and start thinking, like, why am I like this? Like, why does everyone else seem to wake up just fine? Why do I feel behind before the day even starts? Beat myself up, beat myself up, beat myself up. And then you scroll social media and then see people posting their 5 a.m. morning routines, their sunrise workouts, the perfect morning rituals, and this is what discipline looks like. This is what successful people do. And you just don't feel naturally wired for that. You start believing something must be wrong with you. But I am here to tell you nothing is wrong with you. No, no, no, no, no. And operating against your natural rhythm creates friction. So your body may still be in a sleep transition when you're forcing it into performance mode. Your cortisol rhythm may not have fully risen yet, your brain not be fully alert yet. However, you're expected to think clearly, socialize, solve problems, and perform. And that creates stress. And over time, that stress can accumulate into fatigue, frustration, self-doubt, and burnout. Oh my gosh, burnout. That's a whole other topic. But this contributes to that. And people rarely interpret that as a biological mismatch. And instead, they interpret it as a personal failure. Again, like I remember I would try to wake up early most mornings. I would try and get on this morning routine because that's what you're supposed to do. And I would even schedule certain appointments or meetings in the mornings or late mornings. And every single time I just felt like my brain wasn't fully powered on. And then after everything's over, I start thinking, oh my gosh, like I could have approached that so much better. And now I'm also just feeling drained. And then my energy levels are kind of all wonky the rest of the day. But now I do my very, very best to have boundaries around my morning time and I schedule important meetings or appointments or the such based off of my energy levels and my chronotype. Once I stopped forcing myself into a productivity schedule that wasn't built for me, everything improved. And again, I intuitively have known this for a while, but I was still struggling, even though I knew this is best for me. Like I mentioned earlier, there was this knowledge gap. And filling in that knowledge gap allowed me to just feel a sense of relief and own my chronotype even more and get excited about it. And I'm not beating myself up anymore. And I just feel more at peace. And it's just, it's just overall improved my life significantly. Because instead of dragging myself through the day trying to create something meaningful, I started creating during the window when my brain actually felt alive. And again, for me, maybe you relate to this, but I'll have a very slow morning. So my energy levels really don't start rising until 11 a.m. to noon. And then during that time, I like to get a lot of admin work done for the business or house chores or scheduling appointments, that kind of thing, research. And then by roughly around two, three, four o'clock, that's when I feel most energized to do my workouts and go to the gym. And then by evening time, by nighttime, that's when I feel my most creative. So I will work on creative projects. I'll record this podcast in the evening. I will write music or do art or whatever in the evening. It's executing the creative ideas and the creative work. So if you are listening to this episode and you have not yet bought an aura ring, go and buy an aura. No, I'm just kidding. This is not sponsored. But there are other ways to figure out your chronotype. And I would really start asking yourself these questions and reflecting of, okay, when do I feel the most mentally clear? Not when you think you should be productive, but when your brain naturally feels sharp. When do you feel like you have the most energy for workouts? Is it in the morning, in the afternoon, or the evening? I was recently speaking with a friend and he was telling me how he would do the wake-up early morning workouts, but then by afternoon and the rest of the day, his energy his energy was tanked. And it wasn't until he switched his routine to have his workouts in the late afternoon where he was able to completely shift and monetize his schedule to work for him instead of against him. Because sometimes when you're forcing yourself to do something because you think it's right, it almost feels like you're fighting against a natural current. And again, that is exhausting. But once you kind of just like give in to the wave and you just let the wave carry you out to sea, and you're like, oh, if I just go with the flow, if I just follow my body's natural energetic rhythm, life becomes a lot more empowering. And I start to create my life from a place that works for me and not against me. So I highly encourage you to do that assessment on yourself. If you have the aura ring and if you get housed into a certain chronotype, I strongly, strongly encourage you to look more into that and really start to optimize your life based off of your natural biology. It will change your life. If you like this episode, please like, comment, share with a friend, hit that follow button if you haven't already. And yeah, I hope this was able to spark some curiosity or interest or epiphany in someone today. I hope you'll have an amazing weekend and a wonderful week ahead. I love you. I appreciate you so much for listening and supporting me. And I will catch you in the next episode.