Sleep well to love well

This morning, I woke up with a feeling of gratitude. I was thankful that like most other nights over the last couple of years, I had a good night’s sleep devoid of any type of stress. These days, as soon as my head hits my pillow, I am literally knocked out cold for the next eight to nine hours. No more tossing and turning trying to find sleep due to my mind being fully occupied with all the deadlines I must meet at work.

I remember those days just like yesterday. I would toss and turn in bed for almost three hours, eventually falling asleep way past midnight. With a jolt, I would wake up a couple of hours later with my mind suddenly filled with how I should re-organize that PowerPoint I was working on for my boss so that it would ‘blow her mind’. After about 30 minutes playing around with the PowerPoint in my mind, I would slowly drift back to sleep and in what seemed like five minutes, my morning alarm would annoyingly ring. It would be time to prepare for work. What I figured was five minutes was two hours!

As I thought about getting up to exercise before going to take a shower, I would start pondering on why all the geniuses out there had not yet invented a way for people to be fit without exercising. Then, I would drift off again into sleep and wake up just in time to take a quick shower, grab something to eat for lunch and drive off to work.

Getting to work safely was a miracle because I found myself sometimes nodding off at the steering wheel, as I drove through the morning rush-hour traffic. During the day, I would desperately look for the slightest opportunity to go to a break-out room for a quick nap but because the rooms were often occupied, I would eventually just walk to the kitchen to grab some tea and chat with a couple of co-workers to keep me alert.

I would get home exhausted, like a ticking time bomb and everyone had to ‘walk on eggshells’ around me, lest I go off. If I could, I would immediately go catch a one-hour nap before preparing dinner, but on most evenings, this was impossible. On a few other evenings, I would need to do at least an hour of office work before going to bed. This lifestyle was almost a daily routine.

I loved my job and it kept me on my toes just the way I liked it, but my desire to excel meant that my mind was always thinking about how to do my work more efficiently. This made me anxious most of the time. I struggled with compartmentalizing the different parts of my life and could not seem to achieve the work-life balance people always preached about.

Thinking back now, I realize how poor-quality sleep was affecting my productivity both at home and at work. At the time, I was not aware that my poor sleeping habit was affecting my mood, judgment, efficiency, productivity, ability to learn and retain information and worse still, it increased the risk of serious accident and injury. I did not know that there were longer term consequences to chronic sleep deprivation such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity. Since I was not aware, I did not make high quality sleep a priority and it was slowly wrecking me.

Now, I know better. I now understand how interconnected sleep is with other parts of my life. With better quality sleep:

• my heart and blood vessels rest, which reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke;
• my memory consolidates and improves the alertness of my mind;
• I have higher energy levels to tackle my physical activities the next day, including exercising to keep fit;
• I am more likely to choose healthier foods for proper functioning of my body; and
• I am generally less stressed, which helps me interact with my family, friends and co-workers with a much calmer disposition and love them better through my actions and communication.

Quality sleep has been defined by the Sleep Foundation¹ as:

• sleeping at least 85 percent of the total time you are in bed, which should generally be between 7-9 hours;
• falling asleep within 30 minutes of getting into bed; and
• waking up no more than once during the night.

When I make sleep a priority, I am loving God by taking care of his temple so that I can effectively love others the way he wants me to love them, with patience and kindness. God grants his beloved sleep, but we have work to do! Our work is to fully trust in him as he rules in our affairs. In ALL things, instead of being anxious, we should commit our worries to the Lord in prayer and believe that he has us covered.

The more we practice trust, the more the anxiety and worry in our minds diminish, irrespective of the situations we find ourselves. The more we trust him, the more we can leave our work outside our bedroom doors and expect to sleep soundly. The less anxious and worried we are, the sweeter our sleep will be. The sweeter our sleep is, the better we can love others as sacrificially as we love ourselves and the healthier we will be. Loving people is the bottom line and is what counts for eternity.

Today, I am grateful because my higher quality sleep enables all the other areas of my life to work better together. In my next blog post, I will share some more practical strategies on how you can get more consistent high quality sleep.

References:

1. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/press-release/what-good-quality-sleep

If you enjoyed reading this post, please subscribe to this blog below, to get similar content directly into your email box each week. Thank you!