How quality sleep helps you have a sound mind and a happy life  - World Sleep Day 2022

Tomorrow, 18th March 2022 is World Sleep Day and this year's theme is Quality Sleep, Sound Mind, Happy World. 

If that sounds like something you’d love to have but it’s quite far out of reach, then I’d like to help redirect your focus. When you focus on a practical approach, you can have good quality sleep consistently, have a clearer, more focussed mind and feel happier in your life.

Every day in my practice working with clients who have been struggling with long-term sleep problems or insomnia, I can see how good quality sleep and feeling happy relate to each other.

On the other hand, when you’re tired and struggling with long-term insomnia and sleep problems, feeling truly happy rarely happens and can feel very forced at times. 

Naturally, when you don't have much energy, it's much harder to concentrate and feel happy. This can create a vicious cycle leading to more sleep problems day after day.

Our sleep influences our mental health and capacity on a daily basis. Waking up tired means that we're less likely to be able to focus properly during the day and can also lead to more mental health problems. This bidirectional relationship between lack of quality sleep and mental health conditions are well documented.

So let’s look at this in more depth, and I will give you some practical guidance you can use in your own life.

Level of tiredness in the morning 

Waking up in the morning constantly tired or even exhausted isn't going to help you to lead a really good quality life. Tiredness really does affect all areas too, from productivity and focus to how happy you do or don’t feel. 

When I work with clients on this, you know, one of the first things we talk about is their level of tiredness or exhaustion. It’s always at the forefront of people’s minds when they come to me for help.

This can affect all of us at any point in our life. Then how can we expect to have a good quality of life when this is the way we kick off each day, feeling exhausted?

It is often the physical tiredness that affects us first, not having the energy to do everything we want and need to do. Then we need to consider how it’s unbalancing our emotions and creating further problems.

This is why learning the practical skills to ensure you can sleep well consistently is really important and will help you to overcome your long-term insomnia and sleep problems.

Mental capacity and mental health

From exhaustion and not being able to achieve all you want to, this feeds into your mental wellbeing. Of course, being so tired will also affect your mental capacity to think, plan and focus. After a while of carrying on with this level of tiredness, it can really cloud your thinking.

I’ve seen time and time again that people slip into low mood and negativity. From that mindset, it’s hard to motivate yourself to keep trying to overcome your sleep problems or insomnia. 

You can start to give up...

Are you someone who overthinks at night, plays scenarios over and over in your mind, or even wakes up with a racing mind?

It is not an uncommon problem.

By taking the practical steps to overcome these problems at night, you can work your way back to getting consistently good sleep again.

When you are sleeping consistently well, you are going to be able to wake up in the morning with a lot more of the mental power and focus that you want.

This again is one of the things that I see in my practice. We don't really have those practicalities in our life.  I work with clients all the time who have not really thought about sleep as a practical skillset. Maybe they approach it from more of a scientific perspective because those were the articles that they've read. But that can over-complicate things.

Getting good quality sleep is about taking practical steps consistently.

Enjoying the happy life

What would you like to achieve in life that would feel more possible if you overcome your sleep problems? 

This is something I ask my clients, and often their answers come in straight away. They don’t have to think too much about what their life is missing, or what they are held back from by their constant tiredness and inability to sleep well consistently.

It’s not that they necessarily cannot achieve what they want to right now. But with long term sleep problems and insomnia, we go back to that physical tiredness first. Then mental and emotional tiredness follow, and people become unmotivated and unfocussed. They might not have the physical energy to work towards a fitness goal, or they might not have the mental capacity to study, or whatever they truly want to do.

So in summary, this is not talking about forcing yourself to be positive or find extra motivation from somewhere. This is about overcoming your sleep problems and subsequent tiredness to allow yourself more energy, focus and happiness.

It is about living those experiences that really recharge you and keep you fulfilled and happy in life. 

This all begins with your good quality sleep, so it’s truly worth investing time into developing those practical sleep skills that we all need.

My practical guidance to get you started

I’ve talked a lot about the importance of the practicalities when it comes to sleep. So it’s time I gave you a couple of things you can start with, and these are things that I use with my clients all the time.

Getting a sleep assessment is crucial, as much of what you implement later down the track will be informed by what you notice when going through your assessment.

In our tired state, we are often negatively biassed and don’t notice the good things we do that actually work for us. 

It’s important to know what are the things that are helping, even if they’re helping just a little bit, it will still help you to then have that good baseline to build on. So that's the first part.

Straightaway, when you start noticing some good, it's going to start helping you to have a better mental approach. 

Another important step is to cheerlead yourself.

Overcoming your sleep problems and insomnia is not a short process. It takes an investment of your time and your commitment.

Making real improvement comes from practising different things, learning new things that actually help you to have a better emotional balance as well, even if you don't yet sleep really consistently well.

When your emotions are more balanced and your mind is calmer, often the better sleep quality will follow in due course.

Finally, I would like to remind you that overcoming your sleep problems and insomnia, and ultimately living a happier life is all possible. Even sleep disorders are actually preventable and treatable within the appropriate treatment path.

So don't suffer in silence, reach out for that support today.

Have a question about sleep problems and insomnia?

Submit your questions via the #askBeatrix page here