Fill Your Bank Account

October 31, 2020

Do you wish you could go to bed earlier, but end up staying up way past your bedtime due to “FOMO” (Fear of Missing Out)?

A lack of sleep can be linked to:

-A decrease in productivity
-Mental, physical and emotional health issues
-Inflammation
-Weight Gain
-Diminished Cognition
-and a whole host of other issues!

After a summer of late nights and early mornings so that I could complete a big art project, I’ve finally been working on prioritizing sleep, and boy do I feel good! I wanted to use this post to share some of the things that have been working for me. If you’re someone who also wants to prioritize sleep, read on to see if any of these tips may inspire you.

1. Set at alert you’ll actually pay attention to. For about 2 years, I had an alert on my phone set for 9:30pm to “prep for bed”. Every night it would come on, I’d roll my eyes, as I was usually doing something far more important like walking my dog, cleaning, watching Netflix, writing a blog post, or doing something else that I could justify staying up for. Needless to say, I NEVER started to prep for bed at 9:30pm….until this. When I was talking to my Functional Medicine doctor about my sleep habits, she said that it was like trying to draw money from an over-drawn bank account. Your body cannot repair itself if it’s running on empty. A light bulb went off in my mind, and I changed the alert from “prep for bed” to “Fill my bank account” (plus I added some cute emoji’s). So now, when that alert goes off, I feel much more incentivized to hop into bed on time.
2. Get an Oura Ring. Years ago during my health coach certification, I met sleep coach, Mag Secretario, and his wife, Ariana. They both showed me their Oura Rings and talked about how great they were for tracking sleep. Two other friends, one a competitive Cross-Fit athlete, and another- a two-time Olympian, both have Oura Rings too. After hearing such great testimonials by people I deeply respect, experts in the field of health, I decided to get one too. The Oura Ring is my visual anchor to remember to get to bed on time. It does a fantastic job of tracking your rest. Plus, it gives you a “readiness score”, so you can see which days you really do need to take it easy, and which days are optimal for pushing yourself. It’s awesome!
3. Put Your Phone On Airplane Mode. Isn’t it tempting to go to bed with your phone next to you? If you really can’t break the habit, try putting it on Airplane Mode. Some people say this reduces the electro-magnetic waves coming from your phone. Whether or not that’s true, I’ve found psycho-somatic benefits in doing this. Here’s an article I liked that talks about how the habit of putting your phone on Airplane Mode can help you break your cell-phone addiction.
4. Re-arrange Your Bedroom. Energy sensitives, listen up. When you rearrange your room, even if you put everything back where it was (which you probably won’t), you’re bound to come across some of the perpetrators of your less-than-relaxed energy field. I love crystals, and I have a lot of them. They’re not all good for sleep though! One thing I realized is that I had some sticks of selenite that were going in different directions. I will sometimes intentionally place selenite in a similar fashion, when I’m creating a vortex, like I do when I’m energetically cleansing a space, but NEVER for sleeping in. I hadn’t realized that if I had one selenite stick lying flat in another room, and another lying flat in another room that would cause any disruption. It did. I now have all my selenite sticks stored vertically, and things are much better!
5. Trigger autophagy. “The term ‘autophagy’, derived from the Greek meaning ‘eating of self’, was first coined by Christian de Duve over 40 years ago.” Source. To summarize this very simply, intermittent fasting can trigger autophagy. The length of time that someone needs to fast will vary person to person. So if you can eat dinner early, and then not eat breakfast too early, you may be able to trigger autophagy. New cells = a new you! New thoughts, new perspectives, new ways of thinking, new people in your life. It’s pretty amazing how you can instigate so much change in your world by focusing on the change at the cellular level. Talk to your nutritionist, naturopath or functional medicine doctor before trying this.
6. Support Your Pets. I absolutely cherish my sweet dog through and through. She is like my personal trainer. When she knows I need to get up because I have a big project I’m working on, she makes sure to get me up. Over the summer, she also was kind enough to wake me up in the middle of the night to go see how beautiful Saturn, Jupitar, Venus and Mars were. She knows I love to exercise, so there were many nights that she thought I’d love to go out for a 20 minute walk at 4am. She is just the best. One of the ways I’ve been able to get the memo across to her that I’d actually like to sleep through the night was by spraying Adaptil Calm on her bed before we go to “sleepers”. This was first introduced to me by the vet, who suggested it for vet appointments, and for fireworks. It really does help her a lot! If you are having trouble communicating to your dog that you’d like to sleep through the night, try Adaptil!
7. Use an air purifier and vacuum. I’ve found that when I reduce the dust in the air as much as possible, I feel so much more rested in the morning. It also helps me wake up feeling a little more cheerful! I have a very sensitive nose, so I don’t want my first conscious morning sniff to smell like stale air. At the beginning of the Pandemic, I got a cordless Dyson vacuum from Costco. I new I would be cleaning a lot more than usual. This has been one of the best purchases I’ve made! I love it!