I used to marvel at people who would boast that they could get by on 4-5 hours of sleep a night. I wanted to be them. Because I always felt like I needed more hours in my waking day to accomplish things. I can actually recall sitting in the audience of multiple different "rah-rah" events and hearing some form of: “Need more time? Sleep less.”
Don’t laugh…I know you’ve heard it before and many of you believed it right along with me. You heard them saying, “I just go back to my computer and spend an hour working at night before bed when others don’t”, or “I just get up at 4AM and start my day before others.” I’m not here to tell you that getting up at 4AM or staying awake until midnight is a terrible thing. I won’t even tell you that an hour before you go to bed at night cleaning out your e-mails or before you head into the office in the morning is a bad plan. For many, that’s exactly what they need in order to close out the day and get a good night's rest or to set-up the day to be productive.
However, I am going to tell you that there are a host of studies that have been completed and most human beings cannot operate on 4-6 hours of sleep. We just plain need more than that to operate at a high level and we need it to be good, restorative sleep.
Do you get 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night?
- If not, why not?
- What’s waking you?
- What are you thinking about when you wake up?
- What prevents you from getting back to sleep quickly?
I'd like to encourage you to take a few moments to answer those questions (maybe even keep paper and pen beside the bed to capture those thoughts). At Rewire we know that Rest is necessary to fight the battles you need to win in your life. You can change and we’re here to help!
