So much to say about sleep.
Do you Google?
Google about doing something that you should stop Googling and get on to doing?
The above is me in bed. (Yes, take that as you will)
You see, I only sleep like six hours a night at most, and I feel fine and very certain that is super unhealthy. Isn’t that interesting? That the thing I teach people here ON THIS VERY BLOG, and in client sessions and community groups – when it comes to sleep (as one example) I like really don’t do at all.
What is that?
That is trusting one’s own inclination - after 10 PM on weeknights, I am not capable. Not at all capable. Rather, as I struggle to open my phone with my face and fail (as Apple does not recognize me with my glasses on which is 100% stupid because it does with my sunglasses on, but whatever), I think of all the question I can ask the magic eight ball of the internet that will make me think I am OK and save me from needing to ask myself – How are doing, Tracy?
Answer – really really well, thanks. I am never tired. LIKE NEVER TIRED. My skin, well I like it, it looks OK. I can sleep for ten hours or two and it kinda does not make a difference. And sure, I will die or whatever and maybe that creepy sleeping metabolism, but (and I know this, I mean, we all do) Google doesn’t know shit about that. Look, all the sites that discuss rules about sleep are listed by SLEEP CENTERS, so of course they are saying I am dying and prematurely aging, and my skin is crumbling. That serves them. But, hey, that is not exploitation, that is reason. It is not their job to care for my sleep – or tell me what feels good, that is to be in my prerogative alone.
OK, well what did I just do there? Did I just talk myself out of selling coaching? OH, HELL NO I did not, what I did was do this:
Knowing what works best for you is a think ONLY you know. And that ‘thing’ the best working thing – that gets to change!
Why? Because you are awesome and vibrate and so should your tools be too!
What an ‘expert’ – be they a coach or a sleep expert or anyone else – can and is to do, aka their role, is to be that power cord/conduit or temperature check as it were, betwixt the “problem” and the “answer”.
Let’s look at that: What are problems?
How is this: Is my sleep pattern a problem? Or is yours? Or the hours that you choose to work – are they? The arrangement of your apartment? Dishes in your sink? Frequency in which you wash your hair? Brush those teeth? Money you spend? Hours you watch TV or scroll social?
Do we even know?
I mean, how do you feel?
Tired? Broke? Dirty? Stressed?
And… why might you (we) be asking at all?
Well, how is this for a sort of answer (or rather two kinds of answers):
1) We earnestly feel ‘right’?
2) Or there are messages from outside that are having or have had massive influence on those within, and to tell the difference between the two may have become mixed and rather murky so that the ‘where it’ and the ‘where they’ were are one wonky ‘one”.
That is EXACTLY where my relationship with sleep lives.
See, I wake up fine. I wake up alert, scrambling downstairs to hustle on the lights (darkness makes me sad, simple but there ya go!) hit the bathroom, pull on some workout clothes, feed animals, walk Benedict, clean up grossly and ravenously liked dishes, grab my dumbbells get to dancing and lifting and lifting and dancing. I sometimes skip coffee, I often have two, it depends on the mood. I don’t nod off, I don’t drag, I just keep cooking and come bedtime, I am OUT fast as you-know-what.
Oh, and as stated earlier on, I look at my phone screen MOMENTS before hitting the hay. It is plugged in my bed, and I often check it when I do wake up to pee or perform more in-depth lavatory actions, I’ll check it yet again (and maybe even like or reply...) before heading back to snooze-ville.
Do I have a problem?
I don’t think anyone else can say so. What they could do – and what a coach or other kind of expert if we like and trust them might offer is an invitation to re-focus – to steer us to the thing that matters most - that which we know best.
Funny, just earlier today a dear client and I had this very conversation about whether to stay in a career-changing-aimed-higher education journey regarding feeling being in the grid, habit and history of pushing through, and what the connection to the goals of their entering the program of study is – now that she is ‘in it’. Here is what I told her and here is so that I say to you:
You know what to do best.
Each of you knows what to do best. What may be murky is why you are not living and acting on and benefiting from that wisdom you supposedly have.
In stopping through the mud on that topic – pack your kit with this: it is in there and what is hard is that is all the litter built up on the floor of the creek. We can thank a lot of things – like society and capitalism, school, your parents (my parents) all of it. To take away the keys to our agency within action is one of the ways that we are kept on the road, in line, and asking “what should I do” vs how can I live better.
Yup, I don’t sleep ‘enough’ but I wake up happy. And too, I drink more than the recommended number of glasses of red wine, workout with equal exuberance and indulgence, and have more cats that might be statistically encouraged – OK. Well, you are reading and kinda curious (tell me that is not the case) to know more. First step, accept that questioning is cool – and it may start as ‘what is right’ but here, at #SDYD we conclude with – how do you feel?
