Sleep — A superpower
I write this story, ironically, after a night of not-so-great sleep. However, I have fixed it with a nap in the afternoon (edit)
Over the past few years, I haven’t been sleeping so well. What does that mean. It means I go to bed at the correct times, rest for the recommended 6–7 hours, and wake up groggy and unrested. I was letting it slide for many years till I realized that what I had was sleep apnea. Long story short, I fixed this problem with a CPAP machine and here I am to tell you about the joys of sleeping well.
Sleeping well just clears your mind in various different ways.
One it increases clarity. Your thoughts and emotions are way clearer than what they were before sleep. I always use sleep as a tool to help me make better decisions both in my personal and professional life.
Second, sleep increases willpower. Sleep helps you give more stamina for sports, for working out, and for resisting any urges that you might have. Khabib Nurmagadov, arguably, the greatest MMA fighter in his weight class, famously naps before his fights. How he manages to do that is beyond me, but he vouches for it. He says it gives him more power and is great as a stress relief before the fight.
Many other sports personalities vouch for the power of good sleep. Federer has on record stated that he sleeps upwards of 9 hours a day, especially during the time he would be training for a competition. I think Cristiano Ronaldo is also among the list of famous athletes who live by this mantra too.
Sleep is powerful, back when I was in my adolescence, in the 2000s. We were living through a time when sleeping less was considered efficient. Sleeping less was considered a sign of being hard-working. Sleeping more was equated to laziness. Lately, though, a positive development I have seen in the world is that we are re-emphasizing the need for adequate sleep in our lives. I believe this is a positive development and would greatly feed into well-being and longevity in people's lives.
From a biological standpoint, I think sleep is also the time when our brain replenishes its store of various neurotransmitters. This is essential for brain health and for our emotional and cognitive well-being. Being sleep deprived for too long can make you vulnerable to depression, anxiety, and Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s in the long run.
A lot has been said about sleep hygiene and I won’t repeat everything here because I think it would be repetitive and too extensive. One hack that I use to get a better night’s sleep is to go to sleep listening to an audiobook. I use Scrib’d for my source of audiobooks and usually listen to either some novel or some light philosophy book as I go to sleep. It hardly takes me 10 minutes from the time that I put this on to the time I am dosing off. This helps me put my thinking brain to sleep. Other than this I am careful about minimizing sound and light in my surroundings and also keep the temperature in a comfortable range.
After having not slept well for the past 5 or so years, I greatly value a good nights sleep. I believe it holds the secret to many of life’s challenges. A good sleeping routine and schedule would keep you emotionally balanced, physically active, and cognitively at your peak and would delay aging to within reasonable limits. Lack of sleep ages your body and mind really fast. You don’t see these things in your 20s but by your 30s you can experience these changes quite palpably.
In this world of digital connection and constant stimuli, our need for good sleep is even more than it ever was. There are lots of gurus out there trying to market many different ‘secrets’ to well-being. One of the easiest ones in my opinion is listening to your body when it tells you it needs sleep. In the afternoon if your body says take a nap just put your head down and take a quick ten-minute shut-eye. If on the weekends you feel like napping in the afternoon go ahead and do it. At night make sure you get at least six if not more. Do what animals do, eat good food, sleep when you feel like it and you will be happy for it.
Nature is smart, trust it.
