Have you ever had the thought that “whoever came up with that statement didn’t have a baby”?!!
I certainly had during the infant years. Now that my kiddos are much older, except for the occasional “I’m scared” nighttime visit from my 11 year old, we don’t usually get disturbed at night.
But I still have a hard time getting up in the morning. I have good intentions. But when my alarm goes off at 6:05 in the morning, I am just not ready to get up. I remember reading a line in a book (not sure who or where though) where the author said that we need to catch up on our sleep- on the other side of the night. Instead of sleeping in, in the morning, “sleep in” by getting to bed earlier.
I know that this is what I struggle with. I know many mums who say that once everyone is in bed and they have the silent house to themselves, they just want to stay in that and enjoy it.
The reality is though, with so much talk about self care- one of the absolute best ways we can take care of our skin, our body, our mental, physical and emotional health is get enough sleep. Some of the great things about this are it’s free, it requires no babysitters, and the reality is that we are anyway tired. When I finally get to my room and lie down on my bed, I let out a sigh (usually inaudible since my husband is already asleep!) Aaaah, it feels so good just to lie down.
So why do we have such a hard time getting to bed early enough to get the recommended 8 hours of sleep that has been found to be the amount of sleep that our bodies actually do need? (If you are in the season of little ones who do get you up in the night though, I know it’s hard. 8 hours may feel like an elusive dream. It does get better though- mostly!)
I just realized last night, that in order to get that 8 hours of sleep and get up at 6:00, I actually need to be asleep by 10:00.
Oh goodness! That really feels like it’s cramping my evening!
Doing the math: asleep by 10:00, so stop reading and close eyes to sleep by 9:50, so get into bed and start reading by 9:30! That means I need to start my “pre-sleep” routine by 9:10. What? Get off the couch by 9:10? Noooooooo!!! And that is THE KEY- the ONE THING.
James Clear in his book Atomic Habits talks the ONE THING. Instead of focusing on all the things you need to do, often there is a ONE THING that if you do that, all the others fall in step. In my case it is “get off the couch”! It’s the “button” that gets the sequence going.
This month, this will be my focus. Getting off the couch between 9 and 9:10. During weeknights. The days when the kiddos have late activities, I know this is going to be ultra challenging. But perhaps, I need not be too concerned about all those details just yet. This is my month to experiment with this ONE THING, and then go on to repeat it day after day after day. While I’m usually an optimist, I can’t imagine that this will ever get easier, but at least in the process, I will hopefully be getting more sleep and thus finding it easier to get up when my alarm goes off at 6:05.
I’ll keep you posted.
How about you? Are you able to get the recommended 8 hours of sleep? If so, I would love to hear what you do to make it happen.
If not, what is the ONE THING that will help you?
May 10th 2022
Photo by Bastien Jaillot on Unsplash