Jump out of bed or slither out? Two opposite morning philosophies

The Short Version

There are two very different ways to get out of bed, and one of the loudest voices for each is the same person. In one episode, Mel Robbins tells listeners to get up the moment the alarm rings: count 5-4-3-2-1 and move, no snoozing, no lying there [1]. Jocko Willink takes the same no-debate approach: "I don't debate with myself. I'm not negotiating" [3]. But in another episode, Robbins, recording from her own bed, teaches "slithering," a slow slide onto the floor that she learned from her therapist, Anne Davin, for mornings weighed down by dread [2]. The countdown got her up for years, she says, but it didn't remove the heavy feeling, which was waiting for her again the next day [2]. Both approaches share one rule, don't stay in bed and don't get back in, and they split on how you treat the feeling that's pinning you there: override it, or move with it [1][2][3].

Table of contents

What They Said

Mel Robbins, version one: get up the second the alarm rings

Robbins starts her morning-routine episode with a confession: "it may surprise you to know that I'm not a morning person, not at all" [1]. While her husband springs out of bed, she says she wakes up feeling like she gained 200 pounds overnight [1]. To people who can spring up, she says they won the lottery: "congratulations, you don't need to rub it in" [1]. She wants them to listen anyway, to gain "more compassion and understanding around the people in your life who can't just spring out of bed" [1].

She lists seven reasons mornings can be hard [1]:

1. Shift work. As a young lawyer she worked night court, which threw her off completely.
2. Life changes like retirement or an empty nest. She cites a University of Wisconsin study finding retirees often sleep longer, go to bed later and wake later.
3. Really nice sheets, half as a joke. Her bamboo sheets make the bed almost too good to leave.
4. Genetics. She cites a Nature Communications study linking 351 genetic markers to being a morning person, a study suggesting morning-type genes came from Neanderthal ancestors, and Harvard Medical School's point that the internal clock varies by person but can still be optimized.
5. Trauma, which can activate a freeze response. She cites University of Arkansas research linking traumatic events and PTSD to disrupted sleep.
6. Anxiety, which is highest for many people in the morning.
7. Depression. She says research shows 75% of people with depression struggle to get up, and warns that "your depression lies to you" [1].

The anxiety mechanism is the one she has lived with. "Cortisol is highest in the morning because cortisol helps you wake up. That's why it's there. But the problem is, if cortisol remains elevated, you're going to feel more anxious" [1]. Drinking the night before makes it worse: as the body processes alcohol, blood sugar drops, and "when your blood sugar drops and your body then tries to bring it up, what it's doing is it's pumping adrenaline into your body, which then what? Stamulates fight or flight" [1]. Her own history: "I have woken up and felt anxiety is the first thing I've felt in my body since I was 15 years old. Like this is like my alarm clock in the morning" [1]. Not knowing the causes left her feeling "like I was damaged goods that was going to feel this way for the rest of my life" [1]. Linking her heavy mornings to past trauma was freeing: "this isn't a deficiency. This is just something that I need to heal" [1].

Despite all that, her step one is firm: get up the moment the alarm goes off, with no snoozing and no lying in bed [1]. She says research shows lying in bed increases rumination and worsens anxiety and depression [1]. And because cortisol is highest in the morning, lying there marinating in it makes you feel more anxious, depressed and full of self-doubt [1]. She cites Emory University research on "bed rotting," lying in bed ruminating, as a common symptom of mood disorders [1]. Sleeping in occasionally when you're worn out is fine, she says; chronically lying there dwelling on what's wrong is the problem [1].

Her tool is the 5 Second Rule, which she created about 15 years ago: count 5-4-3-2-1 and move [1]. She says if you hesitate more than five seconds you lose the motivation, and the countdown works like a first domino that can knock over something bigger than itself [1]. She keeps her phone in the bathroom so she has to get out of bed to turn off the alarm [1].

The rest of the routine builds on the fast start. Make your bed, partly so you won't climb back in and partly to practice doing what needs to be done no matter how you feel [1]. High five yourself in the mirror [1]. Drink a full cup of water and wait at least an hour for caffeine [1]. Get outside for morning light using a 5-10-20 rule: five minutes if it's sunny, ten if cloudy, twenty if it's raining or you only have bright indoor light [1]. Take a 10-minute walk [1]. The six steps take about 14 minutes [1]. Her case for doing them: "This is the only time of the day that you're fully in control" [1]. She quotes James Clear: "you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your system" [1]. A morning of snoozing, racing and coffee "is a system" too [1].

Mel Robbins, version two: slither out

In a separate episode, Robbins records from bed, eye mask off and retainer in, with her cat Mr. Noodle beside her [2]. Her description of waking up: "the first thing I felt was a sensation of heaviness. It's almost like there's always been something standing on my chest and it goes from that sensation of heaviness like the bed is a giant magnet and I'm just a little paperclip that's now stuck to it" [2]. Then her mind starts spinning through what she did wrong yesterday and what she isn't ready for today [2]. It happened on vacation, at home or traveling for work [2].

Here is the key admission. For years her answer was to force herself through, including with her own 5-4-3-2-1 countdown. It got her out of bed, but it didn't remove the feeling, which was waiting for her again the next morning [2]. That is the gap slithering is meant to fill.

The technique came from a hard season. Three or four years earlier, her family had moved from Boston to a tiny Vermont town, she was sleeping in a bunk room in her mother-in-law's house during a bleak winter, and she had lost her dream job as a daytime talk show host [2]. Sobbing on the phone to her therapist, psychologist Anne Davin, she described how hard it was to get up [2]. Anne asked when she first remembered the feeling. They traced it back through law school, college and high school to fourth grade, when Mel woke in a bunk room on a ski trip to an older child assaulting her. The next morning she felt heaviness and dread, as though she had done something wrong [2]. Anne's reading: "The dread that you felt upon waking as an adult was a somatic residue of this unresolved trauma" [2].

Davin explains that slithering "isn't a formal technique that is taught. You won't find it in someone's lecture or coursebook. It's an example of somatic inquiry" [2]. Instead of trying to make sense of a feeling, "we let the body speak its minds through movement. Sometimes it's better to feel our way through rather than try to figure our way out" [2]. Robbins's translation: "Somatic is a fancy word that means of the body... In order to move trauma through your body or to get rid of these negative and heavy sensations, you got to drop from the neck down and process it in the body" [2].

The core instruction is the opposite of the countdown: "instead of pushing through the sensation and whatever it is for you, whether it's on edge or heaviness or dread or overwhelm, you're just going to join with it and move with it" [2]. The steps, as she demonstrates them [2]:

• Notice the emotion and where it sits in your body. For her, it's heaviness in her chest, like tar.
• Let the weight of it carry you. Slide one foot out, then the other, and drip or roll onto the floor.
• Get your whole body on the floor. Early on, she lay on her stomach.
• Move slowly, twisting, bending your knees, writhing, until the heaviness starts to break apart. At first this took her a minute or two.
• Don't stand yet. Roll onto all fours and crawl toward the bathroom.
• Stand only when you feel ready.

It felt ridiculous at first, she admits, but from the first try, by the time she reached the bathroom, the heaviness was gone and a sense of freedom had replaced it [2]. A bonus: her mind stopped rehearsing the day's worries because it was busy wondering what on earth she was doing on the floor [2]. Anne explains the mechanism: "The best way to work with a symptom, a somatic symptom like this is to join with it, turn towards it, amplify it" [2]. As Mel let the dread lead, the residue shifted from frozen to thawing to fluid, and "Your nervous system shifted from a state of distress to neutral and then to calm" [2].

Over six weeks, the practice shrank. Within a week or two she needed only three or four crawl steps before standing. Eventually she only needed to roll onto the floor, and later just to put a leg out of bed [2]. She pairs it with one firm rule: "No matter what, don't get back in bed" [2]. She makes the bed as soon as she's up, because once you're moving you can keep going [2].

She adapts it widely [2]. Use it on the couch during the day: "just slide right off, slither on the floor, crawl to the doorway of that room and trust me, you will break apart that feeling" [2]. With a high bed, ease one leg out, move to a half sit and lower yourself with your arm [2]. Pets help: when her dogs crawled along beside her, "the laughter and the added kind of fun of an animal being there. Shakes up all this sensation even faster" [2]. It's "a fantastic technique to teach to a child who has anxiety, who has trouble getting out of bed" [2]; a parent can climb into bed and suggest slithering out together, which also validates the child's heavy feeling [2]. People with physical disabilities can bring the idea to a physical therapist, nurse or doctor to adapt it [2]. And she jokes that anyone who springs out of bed when the alarm rings is a "weirdo" [2].

Jocko Willink: no negotiating with the alarm

Retired Navy SEAL officer Jocko Willink, talking with Andrew Huberman, represents the pure get-up approach [3]. When Huberman asks whether he wakes up full of energy, Jocko says neither extreme is true [3]. He doesn't claim to feel great; he just doesn't treat the feeling as the deciding factor. When the alarm goes off: "I don't debate with myself. I'm not negotiating" [3].

His reasoning is about discipline over motivation. Motivation, he says, "isn't something that I am going to count on because it's just an emotion that's going to come and go" [3]. His daily actions come from discipline, not from feeling like it [3]. And he has a promise for the morning that follows: "If you go work out, you're going to feel better" [3]. Training generates energy; only a truly extreme day leaves him tired [3]. He knows the start is hard. On 80-pound ruck marches, "the first 17 to 23 minutes just suck," and then he becomes a robot who can keep going indefinitely [3].

His broader philosophy explains why he won't lie there. "So action for me is a cure for a lot of problems that we have in life" [3]. The longer adversity sits "with the upper hand inside your head," the worse it gets [3]. That applies to grief over lost teammates and to missing a promotion: analyze quickly, then act [3]. He also believes in deliberate discomfort. Asked whether ordinary people should seek it out, he says "100%": just as squats build legs, you build resilience through repetitions of things that require you to be tougher [3]. Huberman adds that training you love doesn't count [3].

Huberman supplies the biology behind an active early start. Everyone gets one large daily cortisol release, and it should come early. By his account, morning sunlight raises that peak by about 50 percent and exercise adds another 50 to 75 percent [3]. That early pulse boosts energy, immune function and focus, and sets a timer for sleepiness roughly 14 to 16 hours later [3].

Jocko's own framing of depression is worth noting in this debate. He describes it as being inside a storm cloud: from outside, a friend can see all your advantages, but from inside, every direction looks dark, even when you only need to move a few feet to get out [3].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

Common ground: don't stay in bed. All three positions agree that lying in bed is the worst option. Robbins's first episode says lying there increases rumination and lets you marinate in cortisol [1]. Her slithering rule is "No matter what, don't get back in bed" [2]. Jocko doesn't negotiate [3]. Even slithering takes only a minute or two at the start, and it gets faster over six weeks [2]. None of the sources endorses snoozing or "bed rotting" [1].

Common ground: movement changes how you feel. Jocko says a workout will make you feel better [3]. Robbins's routine includes a 10-minute walk [1]. Slithering is itself movement; the change comes through the body, not through thinking [2]. Robbins says of Anne's approach that talking about your feelings wasn't enough on its own; "you got to drop from the neck down and process it in the body" [2]. Huberman's point that exercise boosts the healthy early cortisol pulse [3] fits here too.

The real split: override the feeling, or join it? This is the core disagreement, and it's partly Robbins disagreeing with her earlier self. The countdown and Jocko's "I'm not negotiating" treat the heavy feeling as noise to act past [1][3]. For Jocko, motivation is "just an emotion that's going to come and go" [3], so it shouldn't vote. Slithering treats the feeling as information stored in the body that needs to be moved through: "instead of pushing through the sensation... you're just going to join with it and move with it" [2]. Robbins's own experience is the evidence for why a second approach was needed: the countdown got her up but didn't remove the dread, which came back every morning [2].

Each side has a reason. The override camp is solving the problem of hesitation. Robbins says hesitating more than five seconds costs you the motivation [1], and Jocko says the longer adversity sits "inside your head," the worse it gets [3]. Slithering is solving a different problem: a recurring somatic feeling, which for Robbins came from trauma, that force leaves in place [2]. In Anne's words, "Sometimes it's better to feel our way through rather than try to figure our way out" [2].

Different starting points. Jocko says he wakes up neither full of energy nor wiped out [3]. Robbins describes waking with anxiety since age 15 and a weight like something standing on her chest [1][2]. The same instruction lands differently on those two bodies. Robbins's first episode names why: genetics, trauma, anxiety, depression, shift work and alcohol all change what a morning feels like [1].

Where they don't really conflict. Robbins didn't abandon the fast morning. The six-step routine still starts with getting up at once [1], and slithering sits alongside it for the mornings that feel like "too much to bear" [2]. She uses it "any time. There's a morning where I just wake up and it just feels like too much to bear" [2]. So in her practice, the two aren't rival philosophies as much as tools for different mornings.

Why It Works

Why getting up fast helps. Robbins says lying in bed increases rumination and worsens anxiety and depression [1]. Cortisol peaks in the morning to wake you up, but staying in bed while it's high leaves you feeling more anxious [1]. Moving quickly interrupts the spiral. The 5 Second Rule works, she says, because hesitating more than five seconds costs you the motivation, and the countdown acts as a first domino [1]. Huberman adds that the early cortisol pulse is healthy when paired with action: morning sunlight raises it by about 50 percent, exercise by another 50 to 75 percent, and it sets up sleepiness roughly 14 to 16 hours later [3]. Robbins's own light advice echoes this: morning light helps you move into the awake phase and starts a countdown toward bedtime [1].

Why discipline beats waiting for the feeling. If motivation is "just an emotion that's going to come and go" [3], a plan that depends on it will fail on the bad days. Jocko's experience is that the feeling usually follows the action: the workout makes you feel better [3], and even the brutal first 17 to 23 minutes of a ruck give way to a steady rhythm [3].

Why slithering helps some people. Davin's explanation is that the dread is a "somatic residue" of past trauma [2], stored in the body. Talking about it helps, but may not release it [2]. Joining with the symptom, turning toward it and amplifying it lets the nervous system move "from a state of distress to neutral and then to calm" [2]. Repeated mornings teach the body to link waking up with safety [2], which is why the practice got shorter over six weeks [2]. There's also a simpler effect: the absurdity of crawling across the floor breaks the mind's worry loop [2], and a pet's company adds laughter that breaks up the feeling faster [2].

Why a made bed helps both camps. Robbins says once the bed is made, you won't climb back in, and making it practices doing what needs doing regardless of mood [1]. She pairs it with slithering too [2].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

Getting up fast fits: people who hesitate, snooze or scroll but don't wake with a heavy physical dread; people whose main problem is the negotiation itself [1][3]. It also fits anyone who wants the full morning sequence of light, water and a walk, since it gets you there quickly [1].

Slithering fits: mornings when dread, overwhelm or an on-edge feeling makes it almost impossible to start [2]; people whose heaviness keeps returning no matter how many times they push through [2]; anxious children, who can be invited to slither out with a parent instead of being pushed [2]. It also works during the day on a couch [2].

Neither is a treatment on its own. Robbins says she is not a therapist, that Anne is not the listener's therapist, and that slithering is a resource to try, not professional treatment [2]. She warns that depression "lies to you" [1], and Jocko describes depression as a storm cloud where every direction looks dark [3]. If mornings are consistently dominated by dread, anxiety or hopelessness, or if they're tied to past trauma, working with a therapist or doctor is the right step alongside any routine.

Watch the extras that make mornings harder. Alcohol the night before drops blood sugar and spikes anxiety by morning [1]. Shift work, life transitions and genetics also change what's realistic [1]. Robbins notes that the internal clock varies by person but can still be optimized [1].

Don't turn either into a rule for everyone. Robbins explicitly asks people who spring out of bed to understand those who can't [1]. And Jocko, the most disciplined voice here, still doesn't claim to wake full of energy [3].

What To Do With It

1. Diagnose your mornings first. Notice what you feel the moment you wake. Is it plain reluctance, or a physical heaviness, dread or on-edge feeling that keeps coming back [2]? Check Robbins's seven reasons, including alcohol the night before, shift work, anxiety and depression [1].

2. If it's reluctance, don't negotiate. Count 5-4-3-2-1 and move when the alarm rings [1], or follow Jocko: no debate [3]. Put your phone across the room or in the bathroom so you have to get up to turn it off [1].

3. If it's dread, slither. Notice where the feeling sits, let its weight slide you onto the floor, move slowly until it starts to break apart, crawl toward the bathroom, and stand when you're ready [2].

4. Whichever you choose, never get back in bed. Make the bed right away so the option disappears [1][2].

5. Move early. Take a 10-minute walk [1] or train, trusting Jocko's promise that "If you go work out, you're going to feel better" [3]. Expect the first stretch to feel bad [3].

6. Get outside for light. Use the 5-10-20 rule: five minutes if sunny, ten if cloudy, twenty if raining or indoors under bright light [1]. Huberman says morning sunlight boosts the healthy early cortisol peak [3].

7. Drink water first and delay caffeine. Have a full cup of water, then wait at least an hour for coffee [1].

8. Track your progress over weeks. Robbins went from a full crawl to just putting a leg out of bed over six weeks [2]. Notice whether your routine is getting shorter or easier.

9. Use the tools with kids and pets. Climb into bed with an anxious child and slither out together instead of pushing them [2]; let the dog join in [2].

10. Get support when mornings stay dark. If dread traces back to trauma or feels like depression, bring it to a therapist, as Robbins did with Anne Davin [2]; a routine can support treatment, but it doesn't replace it [1][2].

Sources

1. Try It For 1 Day: Do This Every Morning to Boost Motivation & Focus · The Mel Robbins Podcast
2. Start Strong: Do This Every Morning to Get Out of Bed, Beat Anxiety, and Feel Incredible All Day · The Mel Robbins Podcast
3. Jocko Willink: How to Become Resilient, Forge Your Identity & Lead Others | Huberman Lab Podcast #104 · Huberman Lab