Creating the Opportunity
When we first moved to Maine, Justin took a night shift position at one of the local hospitals.
Which was great (yay for jobs and getting the mortgage paid!), except that neither of us are night owls.
As in, when left to our natural rhythms, we are in bed by 9pm and up around 5am.
It’s convenient to share a circadian rhythm with your spouse.
Unless they get a night shift job.
We joke now that the year he worked nights was the “year that never happened.”
I tried to adjust my schedule to be closer to his. He tried to short sleep on his days off so we could live a “day shift” life.
None of it worked.
We were simply both sleep deprived zombies and we truly have almost no memories from that year.
The thing is, I’m sure we did stuff. We were new residents of “Vacationland” after all.
But neither of us have any memories of it.
My point?
Sleep matters.
Have you ever heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? It’s cool stuff, so totally Google it when you have some free time. For right now, here’s the super short version:
"Physiological needs must be met first. This means that if a human is struggling to meet their physiological needs, which include food, water, sleep, and shelter, then they are unlikely to intrinsically pursue safety, belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization."
In other words: if these things don’t get taken care of first and foremost, nothing else matters.
That’s a big deal.
I would venture a guess that most of us spending time writing or reading this post are privileged enough to not be facing true food insecurity or lack of access to clean water or experiencing homelessness.
But that doesn’t mean you're taking care of your basic needs sufficiently to motivate you to pursue those higher level needs.
Tell me: when was the last time you truly got enough sleep for a full week or more? For real?
There is nothing on earth that doesn’t get easier to handle when we’re well rested.
We are more patient, more creative, better problem solvers, better listeners, and significantly more focused when we have enough rest. We are happier and calmer and make better decisions. We have more hope and more inspiration and a deeper sense of community.
All of this is affected by sleep.
You know this.
But that doesn’t mean you do it.
Get. Enough. Sleep.
So if we all know this, but we have a million and six reasons we don’t actually do it, how do we make enough sleep happen?
This is one of those self-care practices that, to great extent, falls into the “just do it” category.
All the old advice still stands: create routines around bedtime, go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, limit blue light in the hour before bed (you know what this means, right? For all that is holy, stop looking at your phone when you are trying to go to bed! Seriously!).
Here’s a thought that might help as well.
The podcast Hidden Brain has a 2-part episode called Eyes Wide Open that's about sleep and the affects of sleep deprivation (it’s such a great episode, so check it out). Among all of the notable things talked about, my favorite is how neurologist Matthew Walker talks about creating an “8 hour opportunity for sleep.”
I really love this idea because it fits in nicely with my it-doesn’t-need-to-be-perfect-to-count approach to life.
Instead of freaking out about not getting a perfect, uninterrupted 8 hours of deep sleep, this idea focuses on making sure you give yourself a real opportunity for that to happen. That’s it. Just create the opportunity.
All the same rules apply about routines and putting the phone down, but instead of focusing on when, precisely, you actually fall asleep, it focuses on creating the habit of making space for enough rest. Maybe it’s semantics, but it feels more do-able to me this way, and I thought the same might be true for you as well.
So this week, focus on giving yourself an 8-hour opportunity each night to get enough rest. You know what you need to do to create this, so stop getting hung up on the “how” and just do it.
Just commit to this week and see what you feel like. You can do that, I promise.
Alrighty— I’ve heard from a few people about how the grounding practices have been working for them— I love hearing what you’re doing, what’s working, what’s not, so give me an update and let me know how this self-care series is working for you!
Stay curious out there, my friend.