Day 3 – Sleep
Have you been catching enough zzzs? I’ve had many days where I’ve struggled with getting enough and it pretty much sets the tone (unfortunately) for the next day. Sometimes we can let our days run on so long that our sleep is compromised. However, that nightly drift off is more crucial than we think.
Quality & Quantity
It’s a delicate balancing act between quality and quantity when it comes to sleep. The recommended quantity of sleep for adults is 7-9 hours, but how long did it take to drift into that sleep and was it uninterrupted? – that determines quality. Our quality of sleep is often based on how we set the tone before our sleep. Excessive screen time during this period can stimulate our brains, keeping us awake longer and straining our eyes. Similarly, our minds can sometimes feel like they’re running a marathon with the day’s thoughts. With the Covid situation, many of us have different sleeping patterns to what we had pre-Covid. Personally, remotely working and doing my full-time job has enabled me to have relatively longer sleeps as I no longer have the commute time in the morning. However I’ve noticed longer sleeps don’t always leave me feeling refreshed and awake. Sleep quality is just as important as quantity.
Top tips
If you feel your mind is racing with thoughts before you sleep, mentally catch them and write them out in a notebook. Offload any worries or concerns from the day in a notebook an hour before sleeping to help get your mind into a more lighter state, so you’re prepped to drift off. Pop that phone away and try to avoid the late night scrolls. As tempting as it can feel to scroll, it’s just that much more damaging to the quality of our sleeps. Switch out the late night screen time for unwinding through taking a hot bath or reading an hour before sleeping.
Always remember, quality of sleep is just as important as quantity. Giving yourself sufficient rest at night is a form of self-love. Allowing your mind to relax and drift off after a long day is exactly the TLC your body needs, it’ll thank you for it ❤
Tune in every day of this week for inspo and encouragement on self-love.
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