Latest / The Bridges and Beacons Podcast / Get Your Best Sleep Episode 1: What's so important about sleep anyway?

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Get Your Best Sleep Episode 1: What's so important about sleep anyway? · The Bridges and Beacons Podcast

• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Mystic Nerd Squad Podcast.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Kelly Myerson, here after quite a bit of an interlude, a little break, some rest, if you will, and I highly recommend anybody who hasn't taken an extended period of rest just run that experiment and see what that feels like.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty amazing.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So as I was thinking about coming back to podcasting and having really special and unique guests on my show, I thought about, you know, one thing I haven't really done is any individual episodes focusing on myself and the things that I do.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um besides being a podcaster, I'm a huge uh enthusiast of self-care and especially sleep.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it landed me to the question: what's so important about sleep anyway?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And why would you get excited about getting a great night of sleep?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So call out to all the new parents or parents of young children out there.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you're with me in that sleep when you're a parent can be something quite elusive.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so immediately what I think about when why sleep is so important, you don't feel the lack of sleep or that importance of sleep until the sleep is missing from your life.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is so important about sleep anyway?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, sleep is a life imperative, which basically means if you don't sleep, you don't live.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Even so, there are so many instances in our society and in this age of social media and 24-hour access to the world, people will choose other activities over going to bed.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're an adult, typically there's not somebody who's coming in and saying, All right, time to go to bed, shut off the lights, put down your uh phone, turn off the TV, all those things.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it can be a really big challenge to turn things off.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're an overwhelmed new parent, for example, that might be the first time during the day that bedtime when you get some time to yourself.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you may find yourself procrastinating sleep, which is one of the huge issues that I tend to see with people and their difficulties with sleep.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: So learning how to stop sleep procrastination, prioritizing sleep.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I really like to look at this from the angle of three particular areas in which we may have some deficits in sleep.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the first of those is your environment, the second is your mindset, and the third is habits.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my background is in occupational therapy, and so I'm drawing upon the person environment occupation um framework, which if you're an occupational therapist, makes sense to you.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: If not, it probably doesn't, but that's okay.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, it's looking at all of the contributing factors to great sleep or not such great sleep.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the first that I like to tackle with people is the environment.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: So quite literally, where you're sleeping, your bedroom.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And things that can impact your sleep in your environment may include light, um, sounds, other people, animals in your bed disrupting your sleep.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: So um it can be the temperature in your bedroom that can be interrupting your sleep if it's too warm.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, fun fact our body temperature needs to drop a couple degrees in order to fall asleep.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if your bedroom is too warm, that may be hard for you to do.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the second area that I like to talk about with people is your mindset.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I like to call people who struggle with um their minds at bedtime busy brains.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this could be people who fall into the category of suffering from anxiety or stress, whether it's situational, whether it's long-term, um, and also people who are creatives, who are entrepreneurs, who have so many things on their plate, it's really hard to slow down at the end of the day.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so putting into practice some mindset strategies that I recommend can be helpful to help that busy brain slow down.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then the final category, which is probably the most well known to people, is your habits, the things that you're doing not only before bedtime or at bedtime, but throughout your whole day that may or may not be contributing to great sleep.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the three areas, and if you imagine them as three overlapping circles where they all overlap together in the middle, you get the quality and quantity of your sleep.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we use those areas to improve upon our sleep?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Great question.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: The place that I always invite people to start is either you can go one or two ways, choose your own adventure.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: The first way you could go is to pick the low-hanging fruit.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: What is the area where you need just a little bit of tweak to have some better sleep and go there.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: However, you can also choose your own adventure and you can deep dive into the area where you have the most trouble.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're someone whose bedroom is very disorganized and full of a lot of clutter, that may be the circle that you want to start with your environment.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're someone who relates to having a busy brain, as I called it, and of course, those are my people, I am also a busy brain, so I need to practice the mindset habits myself in order to fall asleep, then you're gonna start with practices for your mindset.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know that you're making some choices during the day that are not necessarily contributing to great sleep, then that might be the area in which you want to start your journey and improving upon your habits.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So your question might be, well, Kelly, okay, so you told me these three areas, you told me where I need to start, what do I do next?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Great question.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell you the answer.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I want you to do after you finish listening to this episode, I want you to hop on.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have a little series and I'm gonna target each area.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the great thing about splitting it up is if you're a busy person like me, whether you have too much on your plate or lots of other people to care for, these are episodes that you can just dive into and get those quick bites of information to take and use.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as always, if you hop into the show notes, I'm gonna have lots of ways for you to one connect with me and two get resources to support you in your self-care journey and where you can find me.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: So stay tuned for the next three episodes in this series where I'm gonna deep dive into your environment, into your mindset, and into your habits.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And please, if you have a chance, go ahead, like, rate, and review the show, and bonus points if you can share this with other people for whom you think this content would be tremendously helpful.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great one, everyone, and I hope you get your best sleep ever.