Do you sleep enough? Probably not.
I can remember my high school wrestling coach putting up a sign in the locker room. It read Perfect Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
That means pushing yourself in practice so you are ready to go come match time. That means staying on top of your weight so that you did not have to do a major cut a day or two before the match and blow your energy on the weight cut with nothing left come match time.
Basically, the sign was telling us to be disciplined. Be disciplined in your training, disciplined in your diet. I think the single best thing we can do as adults to live a disciplined and productive life is to sleep.
Sometimes, as I recall Mike Cernovich once pointing out it is often portrayed as cool to be able to overcome a lack of sleep. Babe Ruth partied all night and was still the best baseball player of all time.
Legitimate President Donald J. Trump said in Art of The Deal that he only sleeps about 4 hours per night. As fitness expert Alexander Juan Antionio Cortes recently pointed out, these are exceptional people.
Most of us are not exceptional, hence the root word exception. Trying to operate like this just creates more unnecessary Adversity for us.
We have a lot of control over how much sleep we get. 8 hours is really the minimum we should get to stay productive, especially if you do physical things.
BTW-if you are not working a seriously physically demanding job, you must work out. If you don’t, you will look and feel terrible in today’s toxic society.
Well I don’t get tired enough to sleep 8 hours. Maybe you are not pushing yourself hard enough then. If you work a truly physical job or train hard in the gym for a serious level of fitness you will be exhausted by 8-9-10 o’clock.
Every so often, I get a poor night’s sleep. Maybe I let something negative get in my head.
Maybe I lack the discipline to get away from the eye frying blue light screens at least an hour before I sleep. Reading is good for going to sleep if you read an actual book or magazine.
You relax more. Reading on a screen or watching TV does the opposite.
When I get a poor night’s sleep my workout is torture. I don’t want to go to the gym. I know I have added to my workload by not preparing through proper rest.
I will push through it, but it aint fun. Usually when this happens I will get like 10-plus hours of sleep the following night.
I feel dynamic when I wake up from that. Daily difficulties are not as hard to deal with.
You look forward to tackling the tasks of the day, even the unpleasant ones because you are rested and ready to perform at a high level.
Have you ever noticed that you are irritable when hungover? What makes a hangover really bad? Sleep deprivation.
Life is full of adversities that we cannot control. We do have control over how prepared we are for them.
Step one is getting proper sleep. Talk soon.
-Marksman