Its Monday, marking the start of a new working week. I won’t lie, I have felt quite anxious this past week. For no reason other than a few bad nights sleep...
I may be stating the obvious here but sleep is super important, and vital to keeping your mind healthy and happy. Not only does sleep help refresh and reenergise the body and your physical health, it does the same for your mind. I'm sure we all love that feeling you get after waking up from a really solid night sleep, feeling 100% ready to tackle the day ahead! On the other hand, I’m sure we have all had those days where we wake up and realise we are just as exhausted as we were when we got into bed.
As we know everyone is different! For me, sleep is essential for a happy mind. In fact, lack of sleep can trigger my anxiety more than anything. I find on weeks where I have less sleep my mental health is always worse. I get anxious easier and spend my days in a stressful mess for no reason. It also means I find it much harder to catch up on sleep in the days that follow. Stress and sleep are a horrible vicious cycle where by when you stress you can’t sleep, but being tired leads to more stress and in turn more sleepless nights. Catch my drift?
When I first moved to London, I had just finished my degree and I was still on Uni sleep time, e.g going to bed at 1am and getting up at 7am. When I started working I felt exhausted and in turn stressed. I just assumed it was new job nerves and because I wasn’t used to the working life yet (which part of it may have been) but it wasn’t until I changed my sleep routine that I realised so much of my stress was caused from my lack of sleep…
I began going to bed at 10pm. I turned my tv off an hour before sleep, turned my phone to night mode (where the colours go a bit orange but it’s meant to be better for your eyes before bed) and avoided tea and coffee when I got home from work. It wasn’t a massive change to my routine but those few little things really had a massive impact on the quality of my sleep and in turn made me feel much happier and less stressed. Yes maybe I was going to bed earlier but I was waking up feeling awake and refreshed, rather than exhausted and emotional. My overall stress levels felt much lower, and in turn I was so much more productive at work! It also meant in those moments where I was stressed I felt much more equipped to be able to deal with the situation at hand. Those few little changes had nothing but a positive impact on my mental health and the effects of it made me really value the power of sleep on the mind.
You may be one of those people who can live of little sleep, however a lot of us are not so lucky! So next time you feel stressed out, have a think about your sleep patterns. Are you sleeping enough? Is your quality of sleep good? And if the answers are no I can guarantee changing your sleep routine will really benefit your mind and in turn your overall health.
You might be able to identify certain aspects of your routine that may be stopping you sleeping well. For example, if you drinking tea before bed why not switch to decaf? Or if you watch tv before bed why not take a break from your screen and read a book instead? Or plan ahead - If you know you have a busy, stressful day ahead then you may be better off getting a good sleep the night before because that a solid long sleep will likely eliminate some stress for you for the following day and allow you to be more mentally prepared for whatever the day throws at you.
The power of a good sleep on your mental health is truly magical and one that should never be overlooked! I wish you all the sweetest of dreams and the best of sleeps for the week ahead.
Until next week…
Kirsty x