Sleep. Glorious Sleep!

I love to sleep. Sleep is wonderful. Sleep is always what I crave when I’ve had a particularly rough and trying week. Sleep is essential for our bodies to not only be healthy, but also happy.

While I’ve always loved sleep, I haven’t always loved sleeping during the night hours when others sleep. When we should sleep. I could probably top every excuse you’ve ever had because I’ve lived on so little sleep some weeks for all those ridiculous excuses and reasons myself. “If I stay up after the kids are in bed, I get so much more done” or “but I have plenty of time in the morning to sleep in, so it doesn’t really matter when I go to sleep” or “I’m a night owl. No getting around that!”

The point is that sleep really isn’t the best area in our lives to be nixing from. Sometimes it happens, but that should be sometimes. If our best sleep (most healing, deepest, most restful) occurs before midnight, then it’s time to get as much sleep as we can before midnight.

About 6 months ago I decided to stop fighting this and dive in instead. While I have always gone to bed early if I HAD to (if I hadn’t slept in days and I just couldn’t stay awake), I always tried to stay up and do just one more thing. Here’s what I have experienced in the last few months:

1) I’m getting better at going to bed early – it gets easier.

2) I try to be in bed between 9-10pm, depending on activities for my kids and time I want to spend with them and my husband. I was actually having that dreamed about time of reading leisurely before bed and NOT falling asleep the second my head hit the pillow at 1am.

3) After several weeks – I needed to catch up – I started waking up, pretty consistently, about 15 minutes before my alarm went off. For the first time in years, I wasn’t mad at my alarm clock because I was already up and feeling great!

4) I’m learning that my body needs so much more sleep than I was giving it and that I feel healthier and happier when I get enough sleep. I can muddle through on no sleep – good to know for a mother of young children – but why do that to myself on purpose? They’ll occasionally still take turns keeping me up all night, so listening to my body when I can is wonderful!

5) I eat healthier, exercise more often and harder, and am actually getting better at accomplishing the most important things on my lists first because I’m not fighting fatigue all the time.

I’m happier and healthier and I know it’s all thanks to listening to my body and getting as much sleep as I can before midnight. However, in order to achieve my goal of going to bed earlier I had to find a way to remind myself of the time BEFORE I wanted to get in bed. 

One trick I have been using is to set reoccurring alarms. Every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I have an alarm that goes off that says “Get Ready for Bed” @ 8:30pm. I’m not always able to follow that alarm at that time, but each of those nights @ 9pm, another alarm goes off that says “Bed”. (And sometimes I’ve had a 3^rd alarm go off that says “Really, Bedtime!”) 

This helps! I’m not suddenly looking up at the clock and being shocked and my brain is wanting to go get ready for bed. Try it! And tell me what works for you.

What have you given up to sleep this week?