Sleep is important. No seriously, sleep is super important. Who decided that it was a badge of honor to walk around telling people how little sleep that they got last night? I have some choice words for that person and their unhealed trauma. Don't get me wrong, I would be shocked to ever meet someone who could honestly say that they never bragged about their lack of sleep at least once in their life. But how did we get here? And why did nobody ever stop and say something like, hey, I feel like crap and don’t perform well if I don’t get enough sleep. Why was that never the response?
The jaded part of me wants to go deep and blame it on the industrial revolution and this country’s history with working people to death for generations. Origin stories are fun and all, but it has clearly morphed into something even uglier than it started as. It’s almost as if we are all out here just barely surviving and the only way that we can stomach it is to make a joke of it and laugh it all off. You think that you can torture yourself? Ha! Watch this! I’ll do all of that and try to raise tiny humans at the same time. It’s just insanity.
In the corporate world there's this terrible phrase that everyone uses now, "do more with less." To me, subjecting yourself to constant sleep deprivation is the personal equivalent to that. If we do it at work, we can certainly do it home, can't we?
Be careful of things that you just accept as "normal" because everyone else is doing it. The older I get, the more that i question why on earth so many people just accept things as "normal." It was once "normal" to own other humans. It was once "normal" to send gay kids to conversion camps and pretend like it wasn't physical and mental abuse. It was once normal to beat your children for talking back. I could keep going, but i think you get the point.
With each passing day I feel like i awaken more and more, only to look around in absolute horror realizing how many people around me are just going through the motions. Everyone is just doing the same things that the people around them are doing, no matter what it is and no matter if they even have an interest in it themselves. We have become so influenced that we don't even realize to wonder what we want or need for ourselves. I need sleep. I need proper nutrition. I need more natural ways to move my body every day. Who else is ready to acknowledge what they actually need from this life?
Now is the time to stop the sleep deprivation celebration.
There have been so many studies done on sleep at this point that it’s indisputable the incredible impacts that sleep has on your mental clarity, overall health, mental health, productivity, and so many more things. No matter your reason for riding the sleep deprivation train, I politely request that you get off at the next stop.
The consumerism machine is out there touting the importance of all of this “self-care” in the form of spa days and skin creams. I will give them credit for highlighting the importance of self-care, but the real lesson comes in knowing what real self-care is. Getting adequate sleep at night is hands down the greatest gift of self-care that you can give yourself. When was the last time that you went to sleep before 10pm? When was the last time that you got more than 8 hours of sleep in a night? These things are possible! And if done consistently, can literally make you live longer.
I once coached a woman who was a super high-achiever but she was struggling with health problems because she was “too busy” to get more than 6 hours of sleep in a night. The woman was running her own business successfully, exploring some big growth opportunities while she was also managing a household with 2 kids. She was trying to be everything to everyone and burning herself out in the process. After some coaching, the woman discovered that she had an underlying belief that sleep was “not productive.” She could not prioritize sleep over her other priorities in her life because of an underlying need to constantly be productive. Once she was able to shift her belief that sleep was in fact productive because it was going to give her the health and vitality that was needed to really tackle those other priorities in her life, she was able to make some of those hard decisions about what she could no longer commit her time to so that she could finally prioritize sleep for herself.
That was her block, but what is yours? Why aren’t you willing to prioritize your own need for sleep over whatever you’re choosing to do instead? Don’t come at me with “I just don’t have enough time in the day” either. Literally everyone feels that way. It is not an actual scarcity of time but a lack of proper prioritization. Be real honest with yourself and just sit with it. Why REALLY aren’t you ready to prioritize sleep? If you need a little help making this a reality, I’d love to work with you.
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