Self-Care Deposit

Checking in on an app, how much money we have in our account, which of our stocks may be time to sell, and which NFT collection is soaring is one thing, but checking in on our self-care is another whole level.

Our health/well-being is our #1 asset.

This is where sleep and the overall magic pill of rest comes into play. I have always heard and known the importance of sleep, but for some reason, I just didn’t think it pertained to me or I didn’t take it seriously.

Last year, I did a lot more listening and reading up on sleep, as well as simply being in tune to fitness and health and was always led to the common factor of our body needs rest. Therefore, one of my resolutions for 2022 is to get much better sleep and be in tune to how much recovery my body needs, and rest accordingly.

I am going to outline a few tips that have made it easier for me to have the mindset of getting to bed and/or taking that day off over putting in an extra hour or showing up to an extra occurrence, respectively.

Here are the big three mindset approaches that have provided me with some success, and I look forward to executing more on them in 2022 and beyond:

Think of sleep as a 2 to 1 deposit

An amazing concept that I don’t recall where I heard or read, probably on TikTok (after spending too many hours into precious downtime on the app ((we’ll get into that later))), that really changed the way I think about what to expect from my day ahead. Now that I recall, it was probably from Matthew Walker on The Joe Rogan Experience.

The concept is for every minute of sleep that you get, you get two minutes of good, productive waking time. So, if you sleep eight hours, you get sixteen hours of great time awake. If you sleep six hours, you get twelve hours. Now I can’t say there is any hardcore science backing this, but I do believe this to be true and the overall concept makes sense. So, now I thought about this – as someone who typically would get around six hours of sleep, that would mean four hours out of my day would not be good hours! Now when I put it this way, that seemed scary that I would be compromising up to four hours. Sure, I might not need my breakfast time or lunch phone scrolling to be the sharpest, but what if instead it landed during one of my client trainings, group fitness classes, or sitting at the laptop writing for Vocal!

This opened my eyes and now has me eyeing a nightly deposit of eight hours because at this moment, I believe that is the optimal time that I need.

Reward the body and mind by now letting all the good work ‘soak’ in

When it comes to using sleep as a tool to collect thoughts and bring order to them subconsciously, as well as help the body recover from the work that has been put in, here, there is scientific evidence. Sleep is the #1 medicine in resetting the mind and all the moments that occurred through dreams and deep sleep (REM and NREM), as well as helping the body recover from exercise and daily living.

Throughout the whole day, we keep pressing ‘Go’ with the work we do and the thoughts that we generate that the ultimate cherry on the cake will be that good night’s sleep to bring it all together. This ultimately will lead to an amazing cake and making of a new cake the next day! Therefore, with something so delicious waiting for and helping cap off my day, there is no reason not to make sleep an important ingredient to my 2022.

Better off saving it to tomorrow while becoming sharper in the process

One of my guilty pleasures is scrolling through my feed before my night winds down. Now I will say with my recent jump onto TikTok, the feeds have been incredibly positive, so it leads me to going to bed with an optimistic, positive, and motivational outlook. The problem is, I go to bed way too hype. This might not seem like a problem, but in the sleep world it is. This leads to poor sleep. Even if the eyes are closed, our bodies might not be reaching our deepest state of sleep which is needed, and this leads to foregoing the benefits previously mentioned.

Therefore, I am making it a goal to be off my phone an hour before bed. Having a book ready to read is a great way to offset the urge of going for that phone. But Mike, there is so much good content and ideas and creation to be had? …I hear you. I do think that all of this though can be taken on the next day, earlier in the day, and with a greater force because of extra sleep.

That was all for the nighttime and my goals in approaching sleep in 2022. I also wanted to touch briefly on rest during the day and as a journey.

Hustle culture is real, and it produces results. I am starting to learn though that for me personally, I am producing greater results, whether it be physically or mentally, with the addition of rest into my ‘hustle culture’.

For 2022, I must treat being restfully sound as important as financially sound or socially sound or spiritually sound. Too often rest as in days off from the gym, not squeezing in another project into the night, or not taking on more than I can chew takes a backseat to the hustle culture. I am huge believer in showing up and will continue to believe in the ‘figure it out’ mentally.

But here is to 2022 and getting more rest and sleep and figuring it out on how to prioritize what is important in our lives to keep in our waking day, and then let the body and mind enjoy its time as we sleep the night away.

It is 10:45am, and I would say that was a great hour spent of writing. I hope you enjoyed reading, and have more plentiful hours ahead, followed by a great night’s sleep. Thank you.