The strength of sleep

Sleep really is the root of everything.

It doesn't matter what health and well-being practices you participate in if you're not experiencing supportive sleep.

It's easy to notice the difference when you have been sleeping well and feeling refreshed each morning, and then experience the contrast of a 'bad' night's sleep and how much it impacts you.

I have found it impacts your mood and feelings around the day in general. It can also impact more specific situations and interactions, clouding them through a sleep-deprived lens, where you experience them in a completely different way than if you had gotten a 'good' night's sleep.

It can have you craving sugary and ultra-processed foods, feeling the need to fill a hole that has been left by sleep deprivation that cannot be filled by anything but sleep, but you'll try and find it in that packet of biscuits anyway.

You can feel the difference physically. Sluggish, slow, sore, achy, stiff, uncomfortable, disconnected from your body. Even when just the day before, you were feeling the opposite, and you hadn't done anything to trigger physical symptoms other than not sleeping well enough.

You can end up making choices or responding to things in ways you never would have otherwise. Becoming impulsive with purchases or decisions. Snappy and short with replies. All because you didn't sleep well enough and you don't have the capacity to cope with life the way you usually would.

Isn't it amazing!

And also kinda scary.

Because when you are in a permanent state of lacking sleep, you don't have the night and day, side-by-side comparison.

You just accept it as part of who you are and how you have to exist in your life and you keep on keeping on despite it all.

Which in some regard is impressive, proud of you for keeping on keeping on, BUT it is also absolutely not sustainable or conducive to a genuinely happy and healthy life.

Unfortunately, it is one of those things that you don't realise until either someone points it out to you (which might really piss you off at the time) or you have the opportunity to actually sleep enough and then you have the ability for comparison.

However, that won't make any difference unless you then make different choices. It's very easy to slip into the mentality of "well I can't make different choices this is my life". Believe me I've been there.

But it is possible, and your choices are your responsibility.

No one else can make the choices for you to improve your sleep!

No matter what you read or listen to, who's advice you take on board, at the end of the day (quite literally) it is only you who can choose differently.

I promise when you begin to choose differently and prioritise yourself, your life will never feel the same again and the sometimes difficult feeling choices will feel so so worth it!

Much Love,

Matilda 💚