Yesterday I was running on the treadmill listening to a Kyle Cease podcast, when something that was said caught my attention. While talking about sleep, comedian Diego Attanasio made an excellent point: sleep is something that our body does naturally, and yet many of us feel as though we know better than our bodies how much sleep we need. We’re told that we need 8 hours of sleep a night, and when we don’t get that amount many of us (myself included) immediately conclude that we’re going to be tired all day. This was totally eye opening for me, as I have previously suffered from excessive tiredness. I consistently experienced fatigue throughout the day, and as a result I rarely felt completely alert, and always felt a little bit cloudy. Meanwhile, I regularly get between 7 1/2 to 8 hours of sleep a night…so what’s the problem?

The problem is my mind. I’ve become so used to being tired, that I actually expect to be tired before my day has even started. I mulled over this idea as I took my morning shower. What would happen if I changed my self-talk? Can I train my mind to become more alert during the day without changing anything else? I began repeating to myself the following phrase:

I am awake and alert, ecstatic to be alive, and excited for all of the possibilities that this day has to offer.

I repeated this to myself as I walked to catch the bus, I repeated this to myself as I sat in my Voice Over Class, I repeated this to myself as I read a play (Five Women  Wearing the Same Dress by Alan Ball) at a local Blenz Coffee shop, and I repeated this to myself as I completed almost all my homework for that week and started work on a monologue. My conclusion: although there were times where I definitely felt my eyes start to droop, the repetition combined with my belief in what I was saying kept me alert all day. How refreshing, and I got so much done.

Today in Business class I felt absolutely exhausted. My head was pounding and I felt all sorts of pressure between my eyebrows. My eyes were beginning to droop when I stopped and said to myself “my head feels clear and alert. My life is amazing and I don’t want to miss one single minute of it.” Within seconds the fatigue completely vanished, the tension in my forehead released, and I was able to concentrate and enjoy the rest of the class.

If I can control my alertness with internal self-talk, what else can I control/change? I find this whole process to be extraordinarily awesome – it really fills me full of curiosity. If I eliminate the reactive phrases in other areas of my life, what else might I realize I can do or experience that I previously thought I couldn’t.

To check out Kyle Cease’s podcast on sleep, please click on the below picture:

Tomorrow I’m going to try repeating the following phrase to myself: “There is more than enough time in the day to accomplish everything that I want to accomplish.” I’ll expand on what this assertion means to me on tomorrows post.

Thank you for reading.