Bountiful Breakfast : The Sleep Edition
Consistently good night’s sleep makes everything better. When we wake up refreshed every morning, we’re ready to face the day ahead and any challenges it brings. At CreateFuture we’re always exploring new ways of helping our people be healthy, happy, creative and productive, so we called upon sleep coach and expert Beatrix Schmidt to guide us towards enjoying a peaceful and restful good night’s sleep, so we can feel better and work better. As we are all about sharing the love, here are some expert tips for improving your night, and with it, making every minute of your day count too.
Sleep matters
Our quality of sleep has a direct impact on productivity and motivation, so we were all keen to find out more about the 7 areas of life that affect our sleep and the 4 pillars of great sleep. Beatrix opened with numbers. 1 in 3 people in the UK struggle with sleep, which is no surprise, particularly right now, as we are grappling our way out of the pandemic. But there’s hope. Providing our sleep problems are not related to medical sleep disorders or other underlying health conditions, these can be overcome by taking a close look at our personalities and coming up with a practical and personalised plan. Here are 3 places to start.
It’s a personality thing
First, let’s explore our traits. Are you ambitious, a perfectionist, or a worrier type person? If so, and it seems to be causing problems falling asleep or staying awake in the middle of the night, you’re probably not allowing your brain any down time. Beatrix recommends integrating an exercise into your day where you take 45 minutes in a quiet space, a couple of hours before bedtime, to let your brain do all its thinking and processing of all that happened during the day. Think about your day, think about tomorrow. Think about everything you’ve done, conversations you’ve had and your future plans. Let your brain run through all of those things and allow it to calm down so that it’s ready to rest by bedtime. But bear in mind, this is not about self punishing or criticising yourself, and ending up with even more heightened emotions than you started. This exercise is about concluding the day and coming to peace with it all helping you to separate the daytime from your nighttime. Let’s make sure you don’t end up feeling worse than when you started the exercise!
Like night and day
Separating day and night by creating healthy boundaries is crucial. For people who work, study, socialise and sleep in one room this is can be a bit harder, but not impossible at all. She recommends training your body and your mind to understand the difference between daytime activities and your preparation for sleep (not just jumping on your bed). A good way to do this is using a cover on top of your duvet during the day signalling to the brain that it is for daytime use, and removing it at night, to separate sleep from the rest of your activities. But to do this, you also need to work on your mindset, embracing the night time and doing your best to not use your bed for so many things but create ‘corners’ for different activities (of course this is space dependent). The brain is clever like that and this is where those self-coaching principles that Beatrix talked about come into the picture. Instead of lying down on your bed because you just can’t be bothered moving to the couch, create a healthier overall approach, separating your bed to stay for sleep and intimacy only.
Nighttime disturbances
Waking in the night and not being able to fall asleep for a long time is a common problem. For those who rouse more than once and find it hard to get back to sleep, with your mind becoming overactive, maybe even ending up with frustration, Beatrix recommends developing a way to relax in bed so you have a chance of falling back into sleep again. One way to do this is to remain calm, not put pressure on yourself to fall back into sleep straight away and talking to yourself in a reassuring and calming way. As an example, you can remind yourself that you are safe and comfortable, that you are resting and you are ok (which is still better than working yourself up and getting frustrated about it all). The exception to this rule is if you get anxious and may even experience really heightened emotions, please don’t stay in bed if you are unable to comfort yourself, seek professional help because the root of your nighttime wakings may be due to other problems.
So, let’s get the 4 pillars of great sleep (accordingly to Beatrix’s methodology right and we’re on our way to restful, peaceful and refreshing nights:
1. Falling asleep easily with 30 minutes or less
2. Sleep through the night without disturbances
3. Wake up mentally and physically refreshed.
4. Being able to maintain good energy levels during the day. If you’ve optimised the quality and quantity of your sleep to suit your individual needs and peak performance, you shouldn’t need a nap.
How about putting in place one of Beatrix’s tips and give it at least 10 days to work. Remember, it takes time for your body and your mind to learn new habits and create an outcome, so trying something for a day and expecting a ‘miracle’ is probably not going to work.
And if you’re interested in hearing more about her amazing Sleep Skills For Life Masterclass, so you can perform better at work and at home after a great night’s sleep, let us know and we’ll put you in touch.