Why and How I Cured my Sleep Deprivation

"You can sleep when you're dead." 
"Sleep deprivation is a spiritual practice." 
"Important people don't sleep very much." 
"Lazy people sleep too much." 
"If you sleep as much as you want to, you're sleeping
 too much."

For a lot of my adult life I believed that sleep deprivation was my badge of honor.  I thought it communicated to others that I was so busy with important things that I didn't have time for mortal stuff like sleeping.  Lack of sleep also made me feel like I was a little bit saintly.

Unfortunately, lack of sleep also made me feel cranky, frantic and unfocused.  I used to fall asleep pretty much every time I sat down.  Going to movies was a waste of time because I fell asleep within the first few minutes.  I fell asleep at work after lunch. (I had to hide in the women's restroom.)

By the time I was in my 40s, I had so much sleep debt that it took me years to catch up when I finally made a commitment to sleep as much as I needed to. 

I might never have given in if it hadn't been for a terrible wreck I had several years ago.  I was pretty badly injured.  As soon as I thought I could, I went back to work and kept my usual too-little sleep schedule.

Fairly soon I began to experience simply being unable to get out of bed in the morning.  I used all the will power I could muster and I still couldn't get out of bed. 

I missed a lot of important functions, and people were mad at me.  I just had to deal with it - I really couldn't get out of bed.  Finally I gave in and quit working.

I went to bed when I felt sleepy and got up when I was finished sleeping.  For several years I slept a minimum of 12 hours a night and sometimes as much as 16 hours. It was frustrating.

But as soon as I started trying to exercise self-discipline by going to bed later and getting up earlier, I went right back to not being able to get up in the morning.  So I would surrender again.

Finally I arrived at the point I am now - I go to bed around 9:00 p.m. and get up about 7:00 a.m.  That's about 10 hours of sleep.  It varies a little from day to day, but that's what I usually need to function.

If I'm more physically active than usual, I will usually sleep longer the next day.  That's necessary for my well-being. 

As far as I know, there is absolutely no virtue whatsoever in sleep deprivation - not for physical health, emotional and mental health, nor for spiritual growth.  I'm against it.

So, besides going to bed when I was tired and getting up when I woke up, I also used sleep hygiene, relaxation exercises, guided meditation, and melatonin to regulate my sleep patterns.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world might not be a better place if everyone was getting enough sleep.  Less crankiness, fewer wrecks, more productivity at work, fewer divorces (maybe more sex because people might actually have the energy), less child abuse, less conflict in general.  Wow! 

Who am I really?

In order for me to have any idea what I really wanted for my life, I had to have at least an idea of who I really was.  For a good part of my adult life I've been confused about the answer to that but didn't even know I was confused.

I had accepted what other people told me I was beginning with my parents, then my friends, then my spouse, then my children.  It wasn't until much later that I realized that who I thought I was was an amalgam of other people's perceptions.  Then I started reading books and taking personality tests. 

Everything I learned was helpful.  My favorite personality tests are Enneagram and the Myers-Briggs.  I highly recommend taking them.  They're fairly easily accessible on line.  The part that interested me the most was that when I took them more than once, separated by a considerable period of time, they came out quite differently.

Personality tests made me think about how I really behaved, how I made choices, how I changed from one kind of situation to another.  That was very helpful because I could also identify which situations were the most enjoyable and which were the least enjoyable.

Of course, personality tests were far from the only options for learning about myself.  Some of the books I read suggested looking at magazines in order to identify what types of outdoor scenes stuck out to me and what type of interiors caught my attention.  What seemed odd to me at the time, but doesn't any more, was that whether indoors or outdoors, I was strongly drawn to scenes that looked peaceful to me.

My attraction to peacefulness began to show up in my clothing choices - calm colors, clothes with no patterns.  Little by little I began to change my surroundings in small ways to reflect my attraction to peacefulness.

After awhile I realized that peacefulness was what I wanted at the center of my life and for the foundation for my life.  Then I had a real goal.  Something that lifted my heart and gave me direction.  The more I worked toward peacefulness as a goal, the more I loved my life.

3 Ways to Build a Foundation for the Life of Your Dreams

Trying to roof a house before you're finished with the foundation is obviously futile.  But I used to try to set goals and achieve them before I actually knew who I was and why I wanted to achieve those goals.  I usually only put a few days of effort into working toward them before I gave up.  No wonder.  I was definitely trying to work without a foundation.

I finally realized that I was choosing goals that I thought I SHOULD choose instead of goals I actually wanted.  I didn't actually know what I wanted either because I was so busy trying to be who I thought I SHOULD be.  It had never occurred to me to ask myself who I was or who I wanted to be and what that person, whoever she was, would want for her life.

So...it was evident that I would first have to discover who I really was...

Step 1 - Discover who I really am (or who I really want to be).  Oh boy!  This is not as easy as it sounds. However, you can make room for a little time with yourself on a regular basis to ask yourself some questions, and you can gradually get acquainted with yourself.  Make it a time when you don't have anything else you have to do or people you need to be with.  You don't have to start with the big questions like, "What do I want my life to be about?"  You can just start with making a list of things you love to do.  Then make a list of things you love:  like what colors, food you love.  Check your closet and select your favorite clothes.  This is a way to start getting better acquainted with yourself.

Step 2 - What do I REALLY want?  Go ahead and make a list of the goals you think you should want to achieve.  Now - notice that what you REALLY want is the feeling you would get from achieving those goals. 

For example, I'd like to have a convertible.  I've seen them on t.v. and in the movies.  The people driving them look happy and carefree. (Except for Thelma and Louise driving off a cliff!)  So what I really want is to feel happy and carefree.  This exercise will help you separate the goals that give you the result you REALLY want, from the goals you think you SHOULD want.

I know I SHOULD lose weight.  But the feeling I would have by losing weight is a feeling of accomplishment, looking better, and feeling better.  When my goal is how I want to feel, I'm a lot more motivated than by a "should."

Step 3:  Begin to add the things you love to your life on a daily basis. 
Here's the easy part.  The fun part.  Start adding the stuff you love to your life.  Don't spend a lot of money; just add the simple, easy things.  Wear the clothes you love, eat healthy food you love, do some of the activities you love.

By making these changes you're telling yourself that you really are capable and ready to build the life of your dreams.  You are building a foundation of self-knowledge and are learning what you really love - invaluable for moving forward.

Changing Focus

As I've changed my focus in my personal life, my focus has changed a lot in my professional life.  Right now I'm in a transition period as I work on discovering how to transition my professional focus from goal setting to  more inner work for the purpose of creating the life of our dreams.  More will be revealed.

Why I Love Being Over 70 years old!

I've never really dreaded getting older.  I've always been short in stature and looked younger than I was.  I attributed my perception that "I got no respect" (Rodney Dangerfield's joke), to being short and young, so I always wanted to be older than I was.

Now that I'm technically an "old lady," I've reached my objective - I'm finally "old enough."

I'm old enough to truly not care that I'm not sexy.  I'm old enough to realize that getting enough sleep and general down time is vitally important.  I'm old enough to know that my spirituality can come first.  I'm old enough to know that prestige is pretty much worthless for happiness.  I'm old enough to know that being busy is not the same as accomplishment.  I'm old enough to know to realize that social convention will not bring me love. 

Of course, it's too bad that I didn't know all that when I was 20, 30, 40, or 50.  But I'm grateful that I've got it now!

Getting Rid of a Bad Habit

I used to think that how you got rid of a bad habit was that you just stopped.  Slam on the brakes.  Try to avoid the whiplash.  Then get out of the old car,  get a new car and drive a different direction. 

For the first half of my life that was the method I tried over and over.  It did NOT work.  Some other driver seemed to be driving my car.  I felt like a loser. The more I tried the method and it didn't work, the more I was sure I was a loser.  I found myself back in the old car like a night terror.  New Year's Resolutions, daily resolutions - nothing but failure.

Only in these new years have I finally found resources so I could learn about how to get rid of a bad habit.  It's not that I didn't dig but what I found didn't work. What I turned up was, do something for 21 days and you will have formed a habit.  I couldn't do something for 21 days.  One to three was my pattern.  Put a rubber band on your wrist and snap it when you do the bad habit.  I couldn't remember to do it. 



Here are the basics:

1)  I had to have a good habit to replace the bad one. 

2)  The good habit had to be one I truly wanted - not just something I thought I "should" want.

3)  I had to start ridiculously small.

4)  I had to have lots of support from the people around me.

5)  I had to make sure I understood what the bad habit was doing for me.  I believe everything we do has purpose, but often the purpose is unconscious.  For example, when I stopped smoking I learned that part of the reason I smoked was because I felt sophisticated and I saw non-smokers as kind of boring.  That had to change.

6)  The new habit needed to be in place every single day.

7)  I needed to reward myself for the progress I made and stay off my case when I had a slip. 

8)  I learned to start over and never, ever, ever, give up.

Habits that Enhance Our Lives

I just finished reading "The Power of Habits" by Charles Duhigg.  It's been a best seller and I can see why.  The author has included a lot of fascinating information about how habits influence both individual lives, social movements and companies.  It's a very interesting read.

On the down side, I thought some of the examples were off base and somewhat forced when it came to organizations.  I am familiar with some of the examples and just didn't see what they read into it.

However, there are some really useful ideas about habits in the book.  My experience definitely agrees with what they say about how habits affect our lives.  The percentage they used was 40% of the time we are operating out of habit.  I would have said more than 50% of the time but whatever.  Since we are on automatic pilot when we're acting out of habit, those habits had better be good ones or our lives will not be what we would wish them to be.

The difficulty comes when we try to change our habits.  According to the author, our brains actually change when we form a habit and the change is there forever.  In order to change a habit, an overlay has to form to obscure the old habit and form the new one.

To form a new habit, it must be attached to a habit we already have and want to keep.  For example, if we want to form the habit of exercising, the first thing is to determine when we want to do it.  Right after our first two cups of coffee, for example.  The coffee is firmly in place and exercising immediately after anchors the new habit in time.  That's called a "cue."  Without a cue to start a new habit, it's not going to happen.

Then by repetition a routine develops.  The more it's repeated, the more ingrained it becomes.  Then the new habit shows up in the brain as strongly as the old habit.  Of course, if the routine stops, the old habit comes to the surface and fills in the space where the new one was.

There has to be a reward for the new habit to stay in place.  It's not good enough that we "should" do the new habit.  That doesn't work with our brain chemistry.  For example, with exercise, it takes awhile for us to reap the rewards of being stronger and healthier.  So, we'll need to find a way to reward ourselves for carrying out the habit if we want to stay motivated.

I wonder why more attention isn't paid to the skill of developing habits since so much of our quality of life is bound up in our habits.  I know for myself I've often had really good intentions but forgot to carry them out.  I put myself down and felt ashamed but I really didn't know what to do about it.  This new information is a huge help.