I used to say proudly, “I will sleep when I’m dead”! Anyone relate?
I can now profess with absolute clarity and certainty that I LOVE SLEEP, moreover, I LOVE NAPS! I actually like to call my naps, “sleep snacks”. Something about the word snack makes me smile and is even more enticing to my brain. But, getting to this point has been a long journey: I’ve had to not only crawl out of some physical setbacks, I’ve had to undo many years of cultural programming about what it means to be hard-working and successful. Probably obvious, but worth noting that I was born and raised in the U.S. This means that I have a long list of cultural messages and norms about hard work, success, money, honesty, integrity, character strength, self-worth, etc. This same list has carried over and impacted many of my incredible (sleep-deprived) clients over the years too.
With this cultural programming, passionate, high-achieving professionals and leaders tend to burn the candle at both ends: late to bed and early to rise. And depending on one’s age, there may be more cultural messages one operates from, like: “burn the midnight oil”, “no pain, no gain”, “work yourself to the bone”, “go the extra mile” “suck it up“, “rub some dirt on it” or “resting is for losers”. All of these cultural idioms have had a way of impacting the way we value sleep. This article is an encouragement to examine your old beliefs and cultural messages around the value of sleep. Sleep, after all, is the place we repair, recover, and reset. Without it, we set ourselves up for chronic exhaustion, foggy brains, grumpy attitudes, and the silent, insidious, beginnings of illness and disease.
Before I reset my values and cultural programming around sleep, I used to sleep 4-5 hours a night. In a culture that praises and rewards this kind of behavior, I was oddly proud of myself that I could still perform with my limited sleep. I wore it like a badge of honor and a sign of my character and commitment to my work and mission. Who brags about destroying their bodies and brains?! I did! I was living on the magical thinking and invincibility of my youth, ambition, and lots and lots of adrenaline, cortisol and caffeine. I had no idea the damage long-term sleep deprivation was doing to my brain and body.
A low value and lack of prioritizing sleep and recovery is a silent, invisible assassin lurking in the brain and body. All of us can push through one or two all-nighters when we are ambitious and driven. We can even push through an exciting project that requires long hours and some missed hours of sleep. But when we don’t catch this early on and it becomes a lifestyle, not an exception, we set ourselves up for some long-term mental and physical health consequences. For me, I wasn’t connecting the dots on how little time I was investing in rest, repair and recovery. I did not know how essential sleep was to detoxing the day’s stressors, managing stress and anxiety, or how important it was to maintaining a healthy weight and physical fitness. I would later have to dig out of a much deeper trough of depression, anxiety, weight gain, and unbearable exhaustion from simply not letting myself rest. This resulted in hitting the invisible wall of burnout which took me years to crawl out of.
Ultimately, I had to change the value I put on sleep. It required me to stop listening to cultural programming and to redefine my relationship with rest, recovery, money, and success. This led me to prioritize my health (physical, emotional, relational, creative, and spiritual) over everything else.
Our bodies need sleep to recover, restore, and keep all of our systems functioning. Our teams, clients, customers, businesses and families depend on us. When sleep is a high priority, we show up stronger, more focused, calmer, nicer, and more capable to solve and manage life and business challenges.
Here are 8 strategies to help you change the value you put on sleep and to create a good sleep practice.
- Examine and reset your beliefs and scripts about sleep (and money-making). If you keep saying, “I’ll sleep when I’m old or dead” or “I can’t make money when I’m asleep” your brain will believe you and you will maintain the same old sleep patterns. This line of thinking tells your brain that you have a reason not to sleep, so it becomes more difficult to relax and get into “sleep mode”. Work on stopping any old beliefs from creeping in and stopping you from rest and recovery. When we tie sleep to our security and need to make money, sleep will lose every time. We need both: A well-rested brain and body and money to survive. When we shift our cultural messaging to reset and recovery being foundational to money-making and survival, we start to feel a shift.
- Stop “stimulant” intake before dinner: sugar, chocolate, caffeine, and some medications can wake your brain up and tell you it’s time to go when you need to be winding down. About 25% of the caffeine in the coffee you have at 7am is still active in your body at 7pm, so try to slow down caffeine use by 2-3pm if possible.
- Limit alcohol at night and before bed–especially on school nights, er..work nights. Alcohol is dehydrating and will cause you to wake up in the night.
- Drink 8-10oz of water with lemon before dinner and drink water or non-caffeinated beverages with dinner–hydration is important.
- Create a Healthy Sleep Script/Mantra: A healthy sleep script/mantra might sound something like: “Sleep is essential to my performance and my short and long-term health”
- Develop a solid sleep plan: Sleep takes preparation. Yep, just like anything good in life, you have to have a plan to be successful. Create and write down your sleep preparation plan. A good sleep plan includes preparing for sleep 1-2 hours before you actually get into bed.
- As part of your sleep plan, have a pre-sleep relaxation routine. This can include anything that gets your body and mind relaxed. A shower, bath, hot tea, a relaxing, nourishing book, stretching, deep breathing, etc.
- Turn off devices (anything with a screen) at least one hour before getting into bed. No more falling asleep to the tv or scrolling through social media in bed. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb 2 hours before bed and set it to turn off DND 2 hours after waking. Ex: 8pm – 8am (Eeek 12 hours! Yep!).
The recovery and repair we get from sleep is essential to LeaderHealth
Being a healthy, high-performing leader requires us to lead the way with our healthy habits. Redefine your relationship with sleep and feel the difference it makes in your energy, mood, health, motivation, and performance, and then see the difference it has on your team. When you take care of yourself as a leader, you give your team permission to take care of themselves.
We are here to support you on this journey. We can assist you and your team with more tips on how to continue your LeaderHealth and Team Health journey.
LeaderHealth = Business Health
Image Credit: Thank you Svitlana & Unsplash
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