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How to sleep your way to success!
Are you committed to your success?
Are you prepared to do what it takes?
In FIT Wealth’s success training series, we have looked at the many aspects of becoming successful that apply to any field of endeavour.
Today we get serious.
Today we sleep our way to the top!
Imagine this, you are working in the office later than usual, you are talking to this beautiful/hot girl/guy who is senior to you (use whatever adjective and gender you choose).
There is a definite connection, you get along well. This person can help your career.
You know it.
They know it.
Suddenly, your alarm goes off on your phone.
Oops, sorry got to go. Bedtime.
The person you’re talking to has a very puzzled look on their face.
You say “I have go home and get some sleep, otherwise I can’t continue the great work I do for you every day”.
Burning the candle at both ends
Whether you are studying for an exam or working late to either get stuff done or to get ahead, the amount of sleep you get is often the first thing that gets cut.
Unfortunately, so does your performance.
We all like to think that working while tired is still quality work. But it’s not.
From personal experience, my brain shuts down at a certain point and trying to do anything work related become pointless.
It will either take twice as long to do or it will just be rubbish and then you have to rework it the next day once you are feeling better.
Either way, it would have been more efficient to get a good night’s sleep and then do it once and do it right when fresh.
However, certain circumstances don’t allow for this such as tight deadlines and you just have to push through. In these cases, you may want to get others to check your work to make sure it’s not gibberish!
How a lack of sleep creates limits your success
- Trouble with thinking and concentration
- Poor decision making
- Poor impulse control (mouth goes off automatically! Not necessarily for the better)
- Memory issues
- Fatigue
- Mood changes (anger, irritability, sadness)
- Increased potential for accidents
- Increased appetite (I know I eat more and poorer quality foods when I’m tired. The science backs me up on this too.)
This can occur after only one night of poor sleep.
A chronic lack of sleep can:
- Weaken your immunity
- Increase risk of diabetes
- Lead to high blood pressure
- Lead to weight gain
- Increase chance of depression
- Increase risk of heart disease
- Decrease your sex drive (Nooooooo!)
- Increase risk of dementia
- Increased risk of early death
If you are not aware of these things, maybe ask family or work colleagues what you are like when you are tired.
My 13-year-old daughter just had a sleep over and got bugger all sleep. What she is like on little sleep, geez it’s unpleasant!
If you’re a manager and your employees see you the same way, what do you think the work environment is like.
Or if you have a family, your family life.
Why is sleep important for success?
Your brain represents only 2% of your body weight but accounts for 20% of your body’s energy use. This creates metabolic waste that needs to be cleared.
Beta-amyloid is a metabolic waste product that’s found in the fluid between brain cells (neurons). Research shows that sleep helps the brain conduct important housekeeping, such as clearing out potentially dangerous substances like beta amyloid proteins. A build-up of beta amyloid is linked to impaired brain function and Alzheimer’s disease.
Sleep is also important for cellular repair and regrowth. Important processes that occur while you sleep include muscle repair, protein synthesis, tissue growth and hormone release.
Similarly, sleep is necessary for emotional health. During sleep, brain activity increases in areas that regulate emotion, thereby supporting healthy brain function and emotional stability.
Sleep affects your weight by controlling hunger hormones. Hormones such as ghrelin, which increases appetite, and leptin, which increases the feeling of being full after eating.
During sleep, ghrelin decreases because you’re using less energy than when you’re awake. Lack of sleep, however, elevates ghrelin and suppresses leptin. This imbalance increases hunger, which can lead to taking on more calories and therefore increase the potential for gaining weight.
Sleep also helps your body makes cytokines, which are proteins that fight infection and inflammation. It also produces certain antibodies and immune cells, which together, prevent illness by destroying invading germs.
What stuffs up your sleep?
- Caffeine
- Blue light from screens
- Bad sleep habits
- Exercise (too late in the day)
- Diet
- Alcohol
- Nicotine (it’s a stimulant)
- Stress
Before you say that alcohol helps me sleep, while it does help you get to sleep because it is a depressant, alcohol reduces sleep stages II, IV and REM, which are the restorative sleep stages. So, alcohol is not good for your sleep.
Blue light from screens
My sleep has never been great because of my back, however, it got to the point where it was taking me an hour to get to sleep and when I woke up, I felt hungover. During the day was terrible, such a struggle.
I had gone to the doctor several times. No help.
The eureka moment.
I had gone on holiday where I wasn’t watching TV, especially at night. I was feeling great and sleeping really well. I get home and back to my usual routine, almost instantly, the problems start again.
It dawned on me, after a few years of feeling like this, that the TV has been stuffing up my sleep.
I bought some blue light filter glasses and like a flick of a switch, I’m sleeping better and feeling better.
Over the course of the next 6 months, I lose 4 kilograms without even trying because I’m not eating as much because I don’t “need” the extra energy to get through the day.
Now I wear my blue light glasses from 8.30 pm if I’m sitting down to watch TV or if I’m on a screen.
Absolutely amazing change. See, TV is bad for you.
A bit about blue light
You may have heard the term circadian rhythm. It’s your internal body clock which determines when your body is primed for being awake or asleep. Your circadian rhythm relies on daylight and darkness to adjust itself, so your body knows when to be alert and when to wind down.
Blue-wavelength light stimulates sensors in your eyes to send signals to your brain’s internal clock. This is great during the day but not helpful at night.
Your screens (TV, phone, computers, tablets) are a source of light, including blue light. Even your house lights are a source of blue light. Blue light in the evening tricks your brain into thinking it’s daytime, which inhibits the production of melatonin and reduces both the quantity and quality of your sleep.
Back to what stuffs up your sleep …
Exercise and sleep
Exercise can also help with sleep, however, if you exercise too late in the day (e.g. 9 pm) it can negatively affect getting to sleep.
Diet and sleep
According to the Sleep Foundation (www.sleepfoundation.org), high-carbohydrate meals with high glycaemic indexes can also affect one’s energy level and sleep quality. It has been well established that high-carbohydrate meals often can make you feel drowsy. High-carbohydrate meals can also impair your sleep quality. In fact, high carbohydrate intake has been shown to increase the number of awakenings at night and reduce the amount of deep sleep.
Stress and sleep
Stress can cause the autonomic nervous system to release hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones raise the heart rate to circulate blood to vital organs and muscles more efficiently, preparing the body to take immediate action if necessary.
This reaction is known as the fight-or-flight response and was vital for human survival when life was rougher than it is now.
Chronic (longer term) feelings of stress can cause the nervous system to maintain a heightened state of arousal for extended periods with one side effect being sleep deprivation.
We’ve all been there before, a pile of work dumped on us, a mistake you are worried about, relationship concerns. It’s not a nice feeling.
Therefore, any sources of stress may need to be addressed to improve your sleep.
How to sleep better
- Treat sleep with the importance it deserves.
- Keep a constant wake and bedtime.
- Blue light glasses or no screens in the hour or two before bed.
- No strenuous exercise before bed.
- No alcohol before bed.
- No large meals before bed.
- No nicotine.
- No caffeine.
- No bright light before bed.
- Manage stress by whatever means work for you. Meditation, breathing exercises, exercise, practicing gratitude, listening to music, being in the moment with loved ones.
- My personal recommendation – get mobile phones away from your head (on bed side table) at night. Put the phone on the other side of the room or in another room. I feel it really makes a difference.
I dabble with meditation. I don’t really know what I’m doing but I incorporate listening to nature sounds or a guided meditation on YouTube for about 10 minutes most days, incorporate some basic deep breathing exercises and focusing on relaxation. I find that it helps.
Play around with these things and see what works for you. Let me know in the comments section what has worked for you.
Also from my reading, sleeping pills aren’t great for sleep. They work in a similar way to alcohol. They put you to sleep but the quality of sleep is not great.
So, what the hell can you do before bed?
- Screen time with blue light glasses, f.lux or nightshift.
- Reading.
- Talking to loved ones.
- Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Say no more. It’s good for sleep.
The Wrap
I have heard various people complain that if you’re sleeping 7-8 hours a night – what the hell are you doing! You’re wasting valuable time.
I need my sleep. Most of us have many other things we should be cutting out before we cut back on sleep, for example, TV, Instagram, Facebook, video games or any other mindless time-soaking activity.
If you are serious about success you need to be serious about sleep.
The candle can only burn for so long at both ends before the inevitable crash occurs. And a messy crash it may well be.
High performance requires the right inputs such as high-quality diet, exercise and sleep.
Pay attention to your body and how it feels. If you don’t feel great, a good night’s sleep may be the answer. It was for me.
Now it’s time to use your study in success to build your wealth
Take action in your life.
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