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How Lack Of Sleep Affects Your Mind, Body, and Leadership · Harder Than Life

• 0:00
  For years, I treated sleep like a weakness.
• 0:03
  And it was costing me everything I thought I was buying and working towards.
• 0:07
  I even bragged about it.
• 0:10
  Four hours.
• 0:11
  Five if I was lazy.
• 0:14
  Up before everybody.
• 0:16
  Down after everybody.
• 0:18
  Running on caffeine, protein, and anger.
• 0:22
  As well as telling everybody who'd listen that I'd sleep when I'm dead.
• 0:26
  Oh.
• 0:27
  Said that in the last episode, I'll sleep when I'm dead.
• 0:31
  What I was doing was putting myself in the grave faster.
• 0:36
  I wore this like a medal.
• 0:37
  Guys would say, man, I don't know how you do it.
• 0:41
  And I love that sentence more than I love my own kid's face some mornings.
• 0:46
  Because I was too fried to see it.
• 0:50
  I can remember back the blotchy, puffy skin.
• 0:54
  But I'm going to walk you through exactly what.
• 0:57
  what I believed about sleep.
• 0:59
  Because if you wear your short nights like a medal, I used to be you.
• 1:04
  And I'm gonna tell you why not to do it.
• 1:07
  This is only my experience.
• 1:08
  What running on empty did to my energy, to my temper, my anxiety, and my decisions.
• 1:19
  from a guy who bragged about it.
• 1:20
  So I'm not a doctor.
• 1:22
  I'm the guy who needed one and didn't go.
• 1:25
  I wouldn't have listened to anybody anyways.
• 1:27
  I thought I knew everything.
• 1:28
  I still do.
• 1:30
  But now I have research and statistics.
• 1:33
  So here's the correction.
• 1:35
  Sleep was never the thing I was sacrificing for business.
• 1:39
  Sleep was the thing the business was running on.
• 1:42
  And I was starving it and calling it work ethic.
• 1:46
  Ooh.
• 1:47
  I also call it discipline and grit.
• 1:50
  That's the worst one.
• 1:52
  Grit.
• 1:52
  Ooh, stay to the end.
• 1:55
  You'll hear the three things that changed when I fixed it.
• 1:59
  And then you're going to talk to your doctor about your own situation because I'm not telling you what to do.
• 2:05
  I'm telling you what I did.
• 2:07
  I was proud of this.
• 2:09
  That's the whole problem.
• 2:10
  So let's go.
• 2:11
  I'm Kelly Siegel and this is Harder Than Life.
• 2:15
  All right, story time.
• 2:17
  Caffeine, protein, and anger.
• 2:22
  That was what defined Kelly Siegel for 49 years.
• 2:29
  Four to five broken hours, up before the fire drills started at work, grabbing the phone before my feet hit the floor and reacting to whatever was burning.
• 2:39
  That was my life.
• 2:41
  Anxiety, shame, guilt, and I thought I could just outwork it.
• 2:48
  probably is why I couldn't sleep in the first place.
• 2:52
  I was literally on life's merry-go-round.
• 2:54
  Too much caffeine, too much stress, too much work, too much pushing to shut my mind off to be able to sleep.
• 3:02
  But plain and simple, I believe sleep was for people who aren't hungry enough.
• 3:09
  Saying that out loud is wild.
• 3:12
  Where that came from was a kid who learned safety meant staying awake and staying busy and staying out of the house and staying out of harm's way of the beatings of my parents.
• 3:26
  And it worked exactly as long as it worked.
• 3:30
  It got me off of eight miles.
• 3:33
  It got me to Western Michigan University, graduated, built a company, and then it started charging interest and compounding.
• 3:42
  It's not a way to go, my friends.
• 3:43
  It's not a way to go.
• 3:44
  Let me talk about my temperament.
• 3:47
  I used to slam doors at the office.
• 3:51
  I used to snap at people who didn't deserve it.
• 3:53
  I can't unsee these things.
• 3:55
  I had a short fuse, decisions at threat speed, apologies if at all would come later, but
• 4:02
  And the second someone said it can't be done, my voice went up and I was like, are you kidding me?
• 4:08
  Impossible only describes a degree of difficulty.
• 4:11
  The same voice that built the body in the business bulldozed everybody, including my daughter, many of my girlfriends, a few COOs.
• 4:22
  It doesn't work.
• 4:25
  A tired man isn't a tough man.
• 4:29
  He's a beaten man, a threatened man.
• 4:32
  And everything looks and feels like an attack when that tank is empty.
• 4:38
  And guess who pays the price the most?
• 4:42
  The people who are closest to you and the ones that love you the most.
• 4:46
  Because they're the ones in the room.
• 4:48
  And they're in firing distance.
• 4:51
  None of them, including my daughter, doesn't remember any deals that I close.
• 4:56
  She remembers as my short temper.
• 4:59
  My tone, my tonality.
• 5:04
  Fellas, you don't want to live this.
• 5:05
  Not even once.
• 5:07
  But I'm going to keep going.
• 5:09
  Another story, guys.
• 5:10
  Eight 80-hour work weeks and the mirror.
• 5:15
  I was the bottleneck in every decision at NTM because I didn't trust myself enough to trust anyone else.
• 5:23
  One morning I looked in the mirror and I said, I don't got this.
• 5:28
  Not like this.
• 5:30
  And then I implemented EOS, Entrepreneur Operating System, put the bottleneck on a whiteboard with my name on it.
• 5:38
  And boy, was that eye opening.
• 5:41
  You can't unsee these things, my friends.
• 5:43
  And literally, majority of the stuff had to do with not sleeping.
• 5:47
  Yeah.
• 5:47
  There was alcohol, there was core wounds, but I've done enough about that.
• 5:53
  So I'm just literally gonna talk about sleep on this episode.
• 5:57
  Bad sleep doesn't make you slow, doesn't make you lazy.
• 5:59
  It makes you certain, it makes you rested, it makes you recharged, energized.
• 6:05
  You stop asking questions and you start bulldozing if you're tired.
• 6:11
  Every decision feels urgent because your body thinks it's in danger, it is in literal.
• 6:17
  Fight or flight mode all of the time.
• 6:21
  I've said it once, I've said it again.
• 6:22
  Weak body creates a noisy mind and a noisy mind creates chaos and drama.
• 6:29
  And it'll run a company into the ground.
• 6:32
  It'll run any significant other away.
• 6:35
  And it's death by a thousand cuts, my friends.
• 6:38
  One after another after another.
• 6:41
  If you don't address your sleep, it will come back.
• 6:45
  If any of you are still even dabbling, and I don't even know how many people are doing this anymore, are dabbling in alcohol, I waited till 43 to stop.
• 6:55
  I'm going to tell you right now, before I get on my soapbox, I never got deep renewable sleep for 20 plus years because I went to bed right after I finished a scotch and called it winding down.
• 7:10
  My liver was fat, sleep shot,
• 7:14
  And I still was the hardest worker in the gym and at the office.
• 7:19
  It's how I hit it.
• 7:20
  It's the bullshit blueprint that I kept telling myself.
• 7:23
  the receipt that it never really stopped that the two panic attacks in two weeks the couch in my office i never used once until dry heating in the bathroom with a stomach ache running on caffeine and protein as usual because i tried to out train this out run this poison but you can't and the funny thing about it
• 7:47
  I started drinking more alcohol to try to get to sleep because it was at the only time I could get any sleep is to drink myself to a pass out.
• 7:56
  But that's poison.
• 7:59
  I'll do other episodes about what that was.
• 8:01
  I've talked about the core wounds of shame and victim and not good enoughness.
• 8:08
  I know some of you fellas are listening to me right now.
• 8:11
  So the body keeps your seats even when the mirror still looks good.
• 8:15
  Exhaustion is data.
• 8:18
  Pay attention to it.
• 8:20
  It is not a weakness, my friends.
• 8:21
  It's kind of like reminds me of vulnerability.
• 8:24
  Mike came due at 50.
• 8:26
  with a nervous system that had never been allowed to calm down.
• 8:31
  And boy, did it go into overdrive.
• 8:34
  If you've listened to any of these episodes or watch my social media, you know I did, I think it was like 15 to 17 days straight of anxiety as I was working through therapy to address the core wounds of why I wasn't sleeping.
• 8:48
  So if you're not sleeping, this is a Batman beacon.
• 8:53
  that something is going on underneath that needs to be addressed.
• 8:56
  If you do not address it, my friends, it will address you.
• 8:59
  So I want you to track sleep like it's revenue, literally, like your life depends on it because it does.
• 9:05
  During the pandemic is when I got serious.
• 9:07
  I started tracking sleep the way I track my company's numbers.
• 9:12
  I plan meals like nobody's business.
• 9:16
  I treated water like it was a steroid, because it was.
• 9:23
  And keep in mind, too, there's other little things for sleep.
• 9:27
  Make sure that you start winding down about 30 minutes before you want to go to sleep.
• 9:31
  Put your phone away, not in the bedroom.
• 9:36
  Put your gym clothes out so you don't have to think.
• 9:38
  Have your meals prepped.
• 9:40
  Priorities written in your journal.
• 9:42
  And sometimes...
• 9:44
  Don't watch your favorite sporting event.
• 9:47
  That's a funny one that I just do that.
• 9:48
  I just thought about it.
• 9:49
  Sometimes I'll watch any of my Detroit sports teams.
• 9:56
  And whether they win and I'm all excited and can't fall asleep or they lose, they lose.
• 10:01
  because they didn't give a full effort, sometimes you just got to put sleep first.
• 10:06
  And truthfully, I shut off a lot of games.
• 10:11
  Still can't shut those Lions off, though, man.
• 10:13
  But they're getting better and better and better.
• 10:15
  So I have confidence that they are going to win.
• 10:17
  Sorry to any of my other football fans, but you Lions fans.
• 10:20
  We've been suffering long enough.
• 10:22
  Let's get a Super Bowl this year.
• 10:26
  I didn't fix this sleep with willpower.
• 10:29
  not with being harder than life.
• 10:32
  I fixed it with a system that I could keep when I was tired because tired is exactly when willpower quits.
• 10:39
  Remember what system is.
• 10:41
  Save yourself time, energy, money, and stress.
• 10:45
  So I have done countless episodes on my sleep routine.
• 10:50
  I'm glossing over it and just telling you what it costs you.
• 10:53
  Win the evening and the morning is an automatic win.
• 10:58
  Seven hours isn't a goal.
• 11:01
  It's a standard that I don't negotiate with.
• 11:03
  Same as the gym, same as my personal development, the same as bringing you guys every experience, good and bad, that I experience.
• 11:12
  This is to pay it forward.
• 11:14
  Smart people learn from their mistakes.
• 11:16
  Wise people learn from other people's mistakes.
• 11:18
  Learn from my mistakes, guys.
• 11:19
  I made them all, every single one of them.
• 11:20
  Here's the payoff, the three things that I promised you at the very beginning that changed.
• 11:24
  Okay.
• 11:26
  I'm literally in the best mental and physical shape of my life at 50, and we're getting very close to me being 51.
• 11:33
  The number one thing I changed, besides personal development and the no drinking, was getting good sleep.
• 11:43
  If you're still having a little bit of alcohol, you're still doing a few things that aren't in alignment with you living your best life, the number one thing I expect you to do is to sleep better.
• 11:55
  Here's what else, I wanna go back to the opener and talk about my temper.
• 12:01
  The number one thing that makes me feel better about this sleep is my temper is way calmed down, way more calmed down.
• 12:06
  I respond instead of reacting.
• 12:09
  The threat voice went quiet.
• 12:11
  I still feel things deeply, but I know how to process them.
• 12:14
  I have patience.
• 12:16
  I don't lead with it anymore.
• 12:17
  And the people in my house noticed it before I did.
• 12:21
  So did all my MTM people.
• 12:23
  Even lately, I'm even better now.
• 12:26
  My tone is pretty even keeled.
• 12:29
  I'm at peace.
• 12:30
  And it has a lot to do with me sleeping more.
• 12:33
  The second thing that changed is my decisions.
• 12:36
  I have a lot fewer fires, absolutely zero drama and chaos in my life.
• 12:42
  It requires me to rescue nobody, especially myself, so I don't have to apologize over and over.
• 12:48
  I ask questions now where I used to give an order or give immediate advice.
• 12:55
  And then the third big payoff for me is my body.
• 12:59
  30 years of training, and I'm in the best shape of my life at 50.
• 13:03
  And the difference wasn't a rep, it was sleep, seven hours.
• 13:07
  That's my experience, man, not your prescription.
• 13:11
  If you've been proud of your short nights, go get your numbers checked, sleep obviously, let the doctor tell you what your body has been trying to.
• 13:21
  And there is a number for this.
• 13:23
  It's cortisol, my friends.
• 13:25
  So have them check your cortisol.
• 13:27
  And then I hate when they tell you this, you gotta reduce stress.
• 13:32
  side note besides the sleeping meditation helps me sauna helps me the workouts help me it all flows together so here's your challenge my friends for seven nights the next seven nights please start today pick a shutdown time and keep it like a meeting with your best client phone out of the room log the hours don't change anything else then look at your temper on day seven
• 14:01
  Pro tip, still sleep seven hours on the weekend.
• 14:05
  Sometimes you're out late and you get up at the same time, sleep seven hours.
• 14:11
  Do not do what I did.
• 14:13
  I mistook exhaustion for work ethic for a long time, for being harder than life.
• 14:20
  What did you believe about the sleep that turned out wrong?
• 14:23
  Put it in the comments.
• 14:25
  I read them or email me where you think you're stuck.
• 14:28
  Kelly at harder than life.com.
• 14:31
  And as always, guys, face your fears, live your dreams.
• 14:34
  This is Harder Than Life.
• 14:35
  I'll see you next Thursday.
• 14:36
  Love you all.
• 14:38
  Please rate and share this podcast.
• 14:39
  I'm active on all social platforms and love to hear from my Seagull supporters.
• 14:43
  Each and every episode is sponsored by my company, National Technology Management, the easiest and best IT company to do business with, delivering peace of mind with technology every day, even simplifying cybersecurity.
• 14:55
  Visit TrustNTM.com for more info.
• 14:58
  Until next week, be harder than life.