sleep Archives » Kaizen Ben

Lie in

Everybody likes a lie-in until it ruins the day.

Dragging ourselves out of bed five minutes before work is an easy way to mess up any plan.

Once the emails start pinging, and our colleagues start singing, there are often very few moments left to do anything for ourselves.

Those precious moments of slumber before we lose the day to the world are some of the most deceptive.

That’s why they call it a lie-in.

Spread snoring across the linen might feel like winning.

But everybody knows that when you snooze, you lose.

Sensible Bedtime

The first gut-clench of FOMO for most people comes about 20 minutes after their parents put them to bed.

Sleeping is terrifying and boring. I get it. The journey to the land of nod was always an unwelcome one for me.

Going to bed seems like the worst option of many, much more fun or interesting things we could be doing. And to make it worse, the adults get to stay up as late as they want.

Children don’t realize that adults aren’t staying up and partying. Most of the time, they’re too tired.

Going to bed early is the real adult choice: like a drinking glass of water.

It’s insanely hard to go to bed at 9 pm. But that’s what has to happen if we want to get up and think at 5 am.

As adults, there’s nobody to stop us from staying up all night playing cowboys.

The question is, will that stop us from getting what we want tomorrow?

Achy Legs

Life is full of fantastic sensations — many of them in the bedroom.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of sliding between soft, clean sheets after a long day walking around town or playing in the woods or climbing up mountains.

Tired but happy. Feet gently throbbing. With achy legs and a big smile.

What better envelope is there to seal a day well done?

The Cold Side

It’s not always easy.

It’s not supposed to be.

And sometimes it really fucking hurts.

But that’s ok;

That’s what it’s about.

It still really fucking hurts.

So we shake it off.

We get up and get on.

Because that’s the reason we’re here.

Getting up from those knocks.

Climbing up to those peaks.

Or exploring the cold side of the pillow,

For just a little bit longer because it’s Friday.

Double-fisting screens

The ‘Golden Age of Media’ is gone for good.

TV isn’t more boring than it used to be. The stories and production are probably better.

But when was the last time you watched TV without getting distracted by your phone?

Is that because TV now is crap? Or because our phones have us better trained than the gogglebox could ever manage?

Recently I was scrolling Instagram for memes and an argument while watching a violent TV show, and I caught myself: spread across the sofa, devouring media with both hands like a fat kid up to his elbows in a pot of peanut butter.

Shovelling those images and sounds into my brain as fast as my weak human senses would allow, wallowing in the hormones milked from my tired little brain.

And I thought, “Fuck this.”

So I went and found a book to read.

But that didn’t last very long before I fell asleep.

Mother Nature’s Valium

Here’s a powerful shield against anxiety that we can take everywhere.

Meditation takes advantage of it, but we don’t have to meditate to quiet anxious thoughts or help us sleep.

The fastest way to reduce stress is to take a breath and a half.

In the 1930s, scientists found that all mammals have this automatic breathing pattern that helps them calm down. It helps us offload CO2 and triggers the parasympathetic nervous system — aka rest & digest mode.

Try this:

Take a breath through your nose.
Before breathing out, take another little breath through your nose to fill up your lungs.
Release your breath naturally through your nose or mouth
Repeat from step 1 a couple more times.

And that is Mother Nature’s Valium.

Drop it anytime — there’s no maximum dose.