The most popular feature of the alarm clock is the snooze button. There are several days in any given week when I hear my alarm go off in the morning, hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. I deliberately set up a wake up call in the form of my alarm and fail to wake up when it goes off and prefer to hit the snooze button instead.

While this is true in the literal sense for most people who set alarms, it is also true for most people in a metaphorical sense.

As we go about our lives, we get wake up calls all the time. Being passed over for promotion, being rejected in a job interview, being turned down by a date, being let down by a friend, racking up credit card bills that are greater than a month's salary - these are all wake up calls.

Yet, as often as we hit the snooze button in the morning, we hit the snooze button on these wake up calls as well.

We recognise them for what they are - wake up calls designed to shake us out of our slumber and get us up and going to take on the world - and yet we fail to wake up, hit snooze, and continue in our state of semi-slumber.

This is not for a lack of ambition or desire. This is not for a lack of dedication to go after what we want to achieve and to be better. This is not for a lack of recognition of the wake up call for what it is.

But it is simply because our current state of slumber is easy to be in. It is cozy and comfortable. It takes no effort to be there. While waking up and going out to take the day ahead head on takes effort, takes deliberation and takes energy and action.

The snooze is an alternative we choose over and over because it lulls us into thinking "just five more minutes" until it cascades into a whole hour that we now cannot recover and puts us in a position of hurry for the rest of the day.

In real life too, it is easy to think that way. Let me give it another three months, let me give it another year and see where it goes.

Have you had such thoughts about your career? About your goals? About your dreams? About your relationships?

I have.

That thought is the equivalent of hitting the snooze button when your life gives you a wake up call.

It lulls us into thinking we are in a cozy and comfortable situation. It lulls us into thinking that confronting what's out there is a dreadful task. It makes us lazy. It leads us to stagnate.

Growth happens when you seize the opportunity, when you take the wake up call seriously and take action.

The simple trick for unleashing incredible step function growth in your life is to recognize the wake up call and curb the urge to hit snooze and wake up and take action instead.

Seize the opportunity. Don't hit snooze. Wake up!