Sleep is even more important than diet! You can live a week without eating but no more than a few days without sleep!
No doubt about it, sleep is vitally important for a productive day, it’s not a waste of time as many marketers or success gurus preach!
What happens during sleep?
During the sleeping process, your body essentially goes into overdrive! Your brain is actually busier when you are sleeping than when you are awake! All of the days knowledge is reviewed (which some people think may be the origins of dreams), the muscles, skeletal and nervous systems all get fixed, optimized and polished for another grueling day in addition to a complete “oiling” of your joints. Basically, sleep is the one time of the day in which your entire body undergoes a makeover… and it doesn’t cost a thing!
Why is sleep so vital to a healthy, successful lifestyle?
Sleep deprevation studies have shown that somebody who hasn’t slept for more than 24 hours acts as if they had a few too many beers. They would fail a sobriety test and would be even considered legally drunk! This should give you a very big hint at why sleep is so vital towards turning your hopes and aspirations into reality! If you aren’t getting enough sleep, you are working under a deprived state which will catch-up to you… either in the form of micro-sleeps during the day (which may happen anytime, including while driving) or difficulty concentrating and even forgetting key bits of information vital to your career. You want to become successful? SLEEP!
How much sleep is enough?
Most scientists say about 8 hours is enough, as for me, I wake-up when my body tells me to… today I slept for 10 hours, yesterday 9 and my average is usually higher than 8. Why? I haven’t a clue but I believe the amount of sleep is dependent on what you did during the day. If you had an amazing workout, did lots of studies and pushed yourself to the limit, I am sure you will sleep far more than if you just watch television. There is also such a thing a quality, for me, I usually fall asleep within 10-15 minutes of touching the pillow but if I did nothing during the day, I noticed this number can be doubled or tripled. I have no set schedule to live by, if my body needs 10 hours, I give it 10 hours… and I believe this is a far healthier method of keeping yourself in a ready state to conquer the coming day!
Sleeping is like a bank
I have also ready several times that sleep is like a bank, if your body doesn’t get enough one day, the amount of deprevation builds-up and is taken at other times. Say your body needs 7 hours of sleep a night, if you give it only 6, your body keeps track and will get that extra hour out somewhere, either in the form of micro-sleeps during the day or, like most people, over the weekend. You can’t escape from sleep, you can’t negotiate with it nor can you predict how much you need. In general, we require less sleep the older we get, some scientists believe this is due to efficiency but I believe it’s more due to a lack of stimulation. If you aren’t constantly challenging yourself in some way, physically and mentally, your body and mind will go into stagnation… avoid this at all costs!
Effects of sleeping on aging
Our bodies are built to last a very long time, but nothing makes you age more than a stressful life as, you guessed it, it leads to an abundant quantity of bad sleep! If you aren’t sleeping well, your body isn’t as efficient fixing you up for the next day, the result, sped up aging! All the creams and diets in the world cannot replace what you get for free while sleeping.
How to sleep easily
Your body can only adapt to about an hour change of sleep a day, so if you normally go to bed at 10pm but decided to go at 9pm instead, it may take a few days but you would quickly adapt to the new circumstances. If you, instead, switch from a night to a day shift, you are doing yourself incredible harm as it’s just too much of a change, sleeping during the day is difficult already, changing this every two weeks or month is beyond horrible. I actually did this for a few months and I can attest first hand, to the effects it has on you mentally and physically. Do whatever you can to avoid any job that has rotating shifts, the money you make isn’t worth the toll it puts on your body. Try to get to bed at about the same time every night, plus or minus an hour is no big deal and try to maintain a set routine about an hour or two before going to bed so you can relax into your sleep instead of speeding-up into it, which is far more difficult.
The Bottom Line
Dreams are the cheapest form of entertainment out there… enjoy them!
Buzvia: DreamClue.com
Anyways, I can’t really do much animation work, forget capturing building processes or music production but guess what… 2GB is just enough space to begin working on my next book! The way I see it, I was meant to run out of HD space to give me enough “off-time” to begin and hopefully finish my first motivational book draft!
I am an active subscriber to TEDTalks, if you never heard of this, you need to subscribe ASAP. Basically, every week, there is a speech given by a leading person in any given field of study. One week it may be Anthony (Tony) Robbins, another Richard Branson… Al Gore or other well known individuals. It’s guaranteed the few minutes you spend listening to these incredible individuals is worth its weight in gold.
