When you are exhausted, do you admit it, or do you power through your day in denial? Are you the bringer of love and compassion to yourself when self-care is needed or are you hard on yourself and take self-care opportunities for granted? We enhance our path to happiness by taking care of ourselves first. One of the most loving things we can do for ourselves is to listen to our bodies and respond with compassion to create and hold space for recharging and rejuvenating our “inner-batteries” with sleep.
Not only is sleep as necessary as are air and water, but sleep is a spiritual practice—a gift from our creator, a surrender to something outside ourselves, and a willingness to let go. Sleep allows us to enjoy our peace and awareness, to be awake and step into our real power, and to fully live life the way it was meant to be no matter where we are on our journey.
In today’s modern and ever-shifting world, sleep is commonly taken for granted or even discarded—a consciousness that actually subtracts years from life by many who are consumed with the stresses of balancing work, relationship, finance, family, and everyday personal growth. One third of our lives are spent sleeping, and many think that taking a day off or sleeping more is a sign of weakness. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Sleep, rest, and recovery are signs of physical and spiritual intelligence.
Without sleep, we suffer severely, as sleep-debt represents a personal show of disregard and disrespect. We damage the integrity of our consciousness, and lose our sense of wholeness, vision, intention, and desire. Without sleep, we do not work or communicate to our full potential because we don’t function properly. As a result, we do not excel. But when we practice self-care and learn how to honor ourselves consistently with sleep, we recover and rejuvenate fast, maintaining a steady state of our highest best-self. By understanding that sleep is a time to allow the body to recover, we learn that a good night’s sleep will rejuvenate energies that will not exist for someone who chooses sleep-debt.
For the world’s best, whether Mom, CEO, or Olympian, life’s podium starts with rest and recovery. Why is it that we pay careful attention to our vacation, work, and exercise plans, but forget the driving force behind all of those formulas—sleep? Remember, sleep is nutrition and nourishment. Sleep equals optimal health and performance. Sleep’s greatest benefit is to the most important organ in our body—the brain. After getting the appropriate hours of sleep, our minds return to a renewed state of mental and physical consciousness.
When we start to consider sleep as a part of our daily exercise and wellness routine, getting through the week is not about how much energy we have, but more about how much energy we have left. Fatigue and exhaustion disappear.
Remember that fatigue accelerates every aspect of the aging process, setting off a cascade of events including fat storage; increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and even brain degeneration. Chronic fatigue impairs the body’s ability to use insulin and break down fat, decreases endurance due to glucose inefficiencies, and causes poor muscle recovery due to high cortisol. In addition, people living in a state of sleep-debt will take more time to discover, process, and integrate information, which will compromise reaction time, communication, and overall performance. So if a person required eight hours of sleep and achieved six, it would only take fourteen days to incur a sleep-debt significant enough to degrade communication, awareness, and cardiovascular and mental performance—creating a feeling similar to that of someone adding bricks or biology books to his or her backpack throughout the day.
Optimal health is a choice. It is a choice of self-worthiness. Sleep also is a choice. And the amount of sleep we honor ourselves with also is a choice. Not everyone wakes up in the morning desiring to be average. Some desire to be their best by staying physically active, maintaining optimal nutrition, and living with a sound and healthy lifestyle that includes optimal sleep.
A significant amount of today’s workforce is led to believe that their work is only about production and showing up on time. But when you really think about it, society’s workforce actually gets paid to sleep. In fact, when we enhance our sleep, our work performance soars due to our love for and communication with ourselves and others. This takes the definition of sleep to a whole new level.
Exercise still remains one of our best sleep aides. And sleep still remains one of our best anti-aging ingredients. As a result, making optimal decisions about our sleep ensures that we gift ourselves the best chance for a healthy, awakened, healed, fun, long-living, youthful, and well-balanced quality life. Want to reconnect with who you really are? Want to step into your real power? Start by allowing yourself extra sleep.
Gary Kobat, World Class Athlete, Olympic “Mentalist,”, and expert Coach for The Best Ever You Network is on a heart-felt mission to inspire millions of people to reveal their vibrational highest best self: mentally, physically, and spiritually. The author, international speaker, and Integrative Performance Coach mixes ancient wisdom with cutting-edge trends in human performance to focus his teachings and practice on the importance of self-love and self-worth.