I stayed up late last night hanging out with my boyfriend and good friend (also a fellow actor) at a pub in downtown Vancouver. We enjoyed some fantastic and inspiring conversation about the importance of believing that you are capable of success before that success can materialize into your life. Even though it was late, I felt so awake. By the time we got home and settled down, it was 3:00am. I still wasn’t very tired, and since I had gotten so much sleep the night before, I decided to set my alarm for 8:00am (without actually counting to see how much sleep that would give me). At 8am the next morning my alarm went off and I jumped out of bed. I immediately put on my gym gear and had a light breakfast. I had an hour before I had to leave to go to my step class, so I read a chapter in my book (“Self-Management for Actors” by Bonnie Gillespie) and organized my desk a little bit. It was almost 6pm before I even thought about how much sleep I had actually gotten: 5 hours. That’s it. I feel like if I had been aware of this fact, I would have spent my day feeling a lot more tired. Because I was unaware of the amount of sleep I had gotten, and so only relied on the information that my body was telling me (you’ve gotten enough sleep and you are awake and alert), it never occurred to me to contradict my physical self. In a sense, I tricked my mind today. I think that’s pretty cool.

Today I also proved to myself  that I can control my experience by controlling my mind. By concentrating on feeling good, and therefore eliminating stress and worry from my life, I can virtually eliminate any feelings of fatigue – no matter how much sleep I’ve gotten.

Maybe I don’t even need as much sleep as I previously thought. What if being tired is not even an option. What would happen if I didn’t even allow my mind to entertain the idea that it needed more sleep?

CHALLENGE: What if every time I start to feel tired, I stop whatever I’m doing and repeat “I am well rested, awake, alert, and excited about life.” What would happen? How about I try this little experiment tomorrow and update you on the result.

How does this relate to my internal comfort zone? Well, I have both become very comfortable with the idea of being tired, and with the idea that I need a certain amount of sleep to function. I am blasting that supposed self-knowledge today and declaring it false and invalid. Let’s see if I can replace this paradigm with a new one over the next few days.