Tip #31: Strike with Overwhelming Force

Here comes the king of all tips. If you still fail to wake up early but have not lost hope, try this one. When everything else fails, it is time to get to serious military tactics.

The Overwhelming Force Approach

One known military tactic is called overwhelming force, or rapid dominance. It is simple, yet more powerful than any other tip. Overwhelming force means using ALL possible tips altogether, at the same time.

Want to wake up early? Go use all 30+ tips listed on this site in one morning. Yes, it is overkill. Yes, you could get the same results using fewer resources, less time, less money. But that is exactly the idea behind overwhelming force: by over-committing you eliminate any chance of failure. You dominate.

Why It Works

Let’s say you want to lose 20 pounds. You buy a book on how to lose weight and read it, but reading alone does not change your weight. You start doing regular exercises but it does not help. You turn to a diet. After some time you see no results and decide to try that special herbal tea. There are probably 9,999 other tips on how to lose weight, and if you try them one by one it simply will not work. But if you try several tips at the same time, your chances to succeed will grow immensely.

It is the way the human mind and body work. The more your mind is engaged, the more likely your body is to respond. Overwhelming force is not so much about putting your body under stress — it is about making your mind focus on one goal and keeping that focus until the result is achieved.

If all you do to lose weight is exercise once a day, you will seriously think about losing weight once a day. If you do 10 things during the day to help you lose weight, your mind finds itself thinking about it much more often and from different perspectives.

Apply It to Early Rising

I am sure if you try at least half of the tips listed on this site, you will be able to wake up early. Set your alarm far from the bed, build a morning ritual, create a reward, give a promise — do them all at once, not one at a time.

If you do not want to do it all, then you are probably trying to make it easier for yourself to justify staying in bed. There is nothing wrong with that — it just means you are not yet ready to commit, and the time for dominance has not yet come.

If you believe your time has come, Steve Pavlina has a great article about using overwhelming force for reaching your goals. Here are a couple of quotes:

“Think of all the personal resources you can use to apply overwhelming force to one of your goals — your intelligence, intuition, skills, talents, time, money, family, relationships, reputation, assets, environment, etc. If you find that you’re stuck in a stalemate vs. the resistance working against you, then perhaps it’s time to apply the strategy of overwhelming force and just get the job done.”

“Ask yourself: What would it take for me not only to achieve this goal but to absolutely dominate it? Imagine your goal as if you’re planning a battle that you MUST win, regardless of the cost.”

Now it is time to show your power.