Welcome to the Pursue You Podcast, where we are empowering you to continually reflect, design and pursue who you were created to be so you can give the gift of your best self to your family, community, and business!
Today I’m talking about that 6 letter “S” word -- SLEEP. And you might be like, “Mandy you’re going to do an entire episode on sleep?”. Well, I’m going to try because I feel like it’s THAT important.
I’ve been on a roller coaster with sleep I would dare to say my entire life, and maybe it’s because I’m getting older (I just celebrated my birthday), or maybe I went through a period of sleep deprivation with two littles; but the more I read, and study, and actually live in a way where I’m conscious of my sleep, I’m still blown away!
Sleep is important. We’ve all heard it, but I wasn’t listening. I never really had it sink in, so that’s what I want to chat about today. I’m going to share tidbits about my sleep journey in hopes that you can hear the importance of sleep in a different way, so it sinks in for you. When I say this is life changing, I’m not exaggerating. I think you’ll understand if you’ve ever been sleep-deprived that it’s also INSANELY real and something I’m finding so many of you in my community struggle with, so yes, I’m spending this entire episode talking about sleep!
Disclaimer: Any time I’m giving my advice or my thoughts, I want you to know it’s coming from personal experience and it’s meant to get you thinking. It’s meant to get you to think about things in a way you hadn’t thought of before, and I hope it encourages you to experiment and try something new until you find what’s best for you.
[4:10] I start by going into our belief around sleep. What is sleep to us? What is its importance? My original mindset was warped from an incredibly young age. I share how everything I did was all in the name of hard work, and that influenced my perspective on sleep, which was that it wasn’t important.
[6:25] I share how this mindset continued into my entrepreneurial days. Occasional breakdowns helped slow me down from time to time, but I felt that hard work was the opposite of being lazy (i.e. sleeping, resting, relaxing). I found pride in being the hardest working person, and I never really felt exhausted, so I didn’t see the problem.
[7:20] I open up about what finally pushed me to see that my body needed sleep. Two back to back pregnancies, both of which gave me crippling morning sickness, helped me to put everything in perspective. I finally came to the realizations that my actions and perspective regarding sleep were influencing other people, not just me.
[13:00] I talk about how even though my perspective on sleep had begun to transform, I didn’t take drastic action until I realized that I was losing control of myself and my emotions. I share the solution that my husband and I came to and how we were finally able to get sleep after having two littles.
[19:30] I talk about the importance of finally being able to understand what my body needed, and to see how giving it the sleep it wanted gave me more energy and motivation than I had had in a long time. I talk about how it related to getting my cycle back after weaning my youngest. To understand more about this, I encourage you to go back to Episode 8: Pursue You Picks – Do Less.
[20:30] Now that I’m one year into my shifting perspective on sleep, I’m sharing some tips for you to maximize your sleep and make sure you’re prioritizing it, no matter what stage of life you’re in.
[21:45] Identify How Much Sleep You Need – Experiment with different hours of sleep. Use Episode 6: Good Enough to Move On to help see the diminishing returns, and to establish the right number of hours of sleep you need.
[23:30] Figure Out When the Sleep Will Happen – In order for you to get up on time, when do you need to be in bed in order to get your ideal number of hours of sleep? Take a look at your next week and your days and look to see if there’s a conflict and see how you can modify that. You may need to add in a nap or push your sleep and wake times back.
[25:10] What Habits Will Support Your Sleep Schedule – If you’re letting other habits steal time from your sleep, think about what will be more beneficial for tomorrow. Is it better to establish a good sleep pattern, or to spend more time watching Netflix?
[26:40] Cut Yourself Some Slack – If you’re in a difficult season, you may not be able to get the sleep you need right now. I challenge you to be mindful about other ways you can give your body what it needs during this season, until you can get the sleep you need.
Remember, prioritizing sleep does not mean that you’re lazy. If you want to take care of the people in you’re world that you want to take care of, you’ve got to get some sleep. I challenge you to look at these four points to make sure that you have a solid relationship with sleep. Now that I’m on the other side, I see so clearly how from high school, to college, and even five years ago, sleep was laziness. Rest was laziness. I never understood sleep for all the it is worth. When I work, I go hard! But I also love going for a walk, listening to podcasts, staying at home alone and journaling. What I used to classify as doing nothing, I now love to do! The progress I have made with sleep and rest, working with it instead of against it, has allowed me to soak so much more out of life. I finally have the ability to give more to the people around me. By shifting your perspective on sleep, and living out these four tactics, it is my prayer you can give your body what it needs to be its best version because we all know when we are at our best, we have so much more to give.
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