In the age-old circadian battle between the night owl and the early bird, it seems to be broadly agreed that the ‘morning person’ wins. Advocating for the larks, Hal Elrod’s international bestselling book, The Miracle Morning (2012), offers a 6-part habit recipe for the morning, which rewards the early riser with a golden hour of self-development to start the day—a ritual which seems to offer practitioners a competitive edge in life.

In first encountering the ‘miracle morning’ concept, it is difficult to imagine achieving the proposed 5AM rising time, much less embracing it; even less comprehensible is how practices such as meditation, visualisation and affirmation might be earnestly performed at that seemingly ungodly hour. While exercise is always advisable—and while the world collectively reveres that person who gets up early and exercises first thing—the average person would naturally dismiss the idea of journaling as an optimal morning activity. The whole proposition might then be commonly and understandably written off in favour of… more sleep.

And therein lies what Elrod calls ‘the truth about waking up’. In a powerful insight into why the snooze button, and indeed why morning snoozing itself is bad, Elrod writes:

The old saying, ‘You snooze, you lose’ may have a much deeper meaning than any of us realised. When you delay waking up until you have to—meaning you wait until the last possible moment to get out of bed and start your day—consider that what you are actually doing is resisting your life.

Elrod prompts the reader to consider ‘the kind of negative energy that surrounds you when you begin your day with resistance.’ He proposes instead a ‘personal power that comes from waking up each day on purpose’. It’s a simple yet radical proposal that one gains exponentially from deciding to wake up, instead of needing to, and it has the potential to alter a person’s mindset on the value of their daily waking life.

Elrod’s suggestion is genius precisely because it is so obvious, which begs the question: What other health benefits are there to reap from simply choosing to reap them?