Stop feeling guilty about sleep
Sleeping is often associated with being lazy — especially coming from someone who ‘naturally’ wakes up at 6am or claims they only ‘need’ 4 hours of sleep.
Until I radically shifted my perspective on sleep I would often have this guilty feeling for lying in, even if there was nothing I needed to get up for. And going to bed early just felt pathetic and antisocial.
Having a lazy morning on the weekend was not ever an option growing up. Saturday mornings I had cello lessons, Sunday was church. And neither of those were much later than the usual school start.
Sleep is for the weak
Then at university, sleep was not advocated much either. How little sleep you could survive on was a boasting point. You can sleep when you’re dead and sleep is for the weak, are phrases I heard over and over.
About a year ago I read Matthew Walker’s bestselling book Why We Sleep, and it has changed my sleep and consequently my life. I know it sounds cliché. I never thought I would say a book changed my life, but sleep and lack of it, affects all aspects of your life.
If you can’t get through a day of work without caffeine, you’re probably sleep deprived
Firstly I had to accept that I was chronically sleep deprived. If you can’t get through a day of work without caffeine, or after lunch you feel like falling asleep at your desk, you’re probably sleep deprived.
This was a very hard realisation for me to come to terms with… because at least 95% of people I know are chronically sleep deprived. So it’s normal, right? Everybody drinks coffee, everybody is tired, everybody is lacking in energy, everybody struggles to get up in the morning.
Sleep is the best medicine — Dalai Lama
Yes normal it certainly is. But that does not make it healthy. The impacts of neglecting your sleep are far-reaching.
Short term it decreases your decision making abilities, creativity, learning capacity, problem solving, memory, emotional wellbeing, and weakens your immunity. Long term it increases your chances of developing Alzheimer's, diabetes, cancer, mental health issues, not to mention having a shorter life span than those consistently sleeping enough.
So what is enough sleep?
Everybody always mentions 8 hours as the golden rule. This is the statistical average for what amount of sleep healthy adults who are not sleep deprived would need. However... Firstly, the spread is more like 7.5–8.5 hours (still healthy, non sleep deprived adults). Secondly, this is assuming you do not have a heavy life load. If for example you have young children, or a stressful job, or do a lot of physical exercise, or struggle with mental health, you will need more than the statistical average. Possibly much more. Thirdly, this is referring to actually sleeping, not including the time it takes to fall asleep, or the time you are awake at night because the kids/dog/your bladder woke you up.
In short, 8 hours is a healthy rule. However, you may need 9 or 10 hours every night. And that is ok. Roger Federer needs 12. So own it. Do it for your health because without good health everything looses its value.
Roger Federer sleeps 12 hours every night.
Remember, if you are chronically sleep deprived you probably have no idea how much sleep you need because your body desperately needs more in order to get back to a baseline. So just sleep as much as you can, until you no longer feel exhausted.
Making sleep a priority
In order to get yourself into a healthy sleep space it needs to be a priority. For most of us who have to get up at a set time in the morning the only option is to go to bed earlier, which is hard. You need to shift your mindset and think long term. Watching an extra episode or working late is meaningless if you think of the damage that lack of sleep is doing to your health.
Set an alarm for bedtime — it is so easy to loose track of time in the evening. And don’t underestimate how long a bedtime routine takes — I have an alarm set for an hour before I actually want to be asleep.
Have a lie in on the weekend. Not because you went to bed late, but to get some extra hours of sleep. I’ll often sleep 12 hours on weekends in order to feel fully revived.
Sleep hygiene is a whole new subject I will cover separately. For now, just stop feeling guilty for needing more sleep. Accept it. Act on it.
It is possible to not feel tired all the time! It took me about 3 months to sleep my way out of chronic deficiency. Now I need about 9 hours every night and I feel balanced and healthy.
Happy sleeping xx
