Professional Sleeper
“Proper sleep has helped me get to where I am today as an athlete, and it’s something I continue to rely on every day.”
– Tom Brady
Whether you realize it or not, how you sleep will determine the impact of your day! The older I get, I’m realizing that my recovery and sleep are crazy important!
When I was young, I had a false narrative in my mind that I could cheat myself out of sleep and bounce right back. However, what is true today was the same for me when I was 22, if I don’t get enough sleep, I will feel and experience a lack of recovery, energy, strength, and focus the next day.
Which equals me, NOT being at my best!
And the same is true for you!
This was brought into the forefront of my mind a few weeks ago. I was returning from a work trip from Colorado with my family and I was smacked in the face about the importance of sleep and recovery.
To save a little cash, we decided to take the red-eye home from Denver back to North Carolina. After two flights and about 3 hours of sleep, we arrived home.
I did my best that day to stay awake and function, at least close to normal, but it was far from it, let alone living and being at my best. I ended up taking a 3-hour nap later in the morning, I was sleepy and sluggish for most of the day, my mind was foggy, and I struggled to put more than two thoughts together!
I want to share 3 realizations from that red-eye flight.
First, just because you don’t feel tired in the moment, doesn’t mean you are able to sustain your pace all day.
Short-term vs. Long-term. I got a few hours of sleep and when we landed, I was feeling ok and I thought, “I got this, I will stay awake and I’m good for the day.”
What I experienced the rest of the day was fatigue, many naps as well as a residual effect that spilled over into the next few days. It was 2 days after arriving home that I began to feel like myself again, top form! One poor night of sleep negatively affected 3 full days of living, being present, and focused energy.
Secondly, lack of sleep grinds any momentum to a halt!
The time my family and I spent in Colorado was fantastic. We were building into athletes’ lives, mentoring, and serving others together as a family. Any sort of excitement, energy, and momentum that was created from the trip was gone for the next few days due to fatigue. And restarting individually and collectively as a family was hard work, it was an uphill climb to get the momentum flowing again!
Finally, sleep can cover and help you navigate a multitude of unknowns, chaos, missteps, and failure.
When you get tired, your focus, patience with others, cognitive processing, and emotional capacity all become capped and limited. However, when you get a proper amount of sleep it feels like your capacity exponentially increases. I was a bear, tough to be around the first day home. I was short with my girls, foggy in thought, and wasn’t even close to being fully present in the moment.
The reality though and the beauty of sleep isn’t that it increases your capacity, even though it feels that way, what it does is actualizes what is already there wholistically for you as an athlete and person: emotionally, mentally, spiritually, relationally, psychologically, and cognitively.
You are living out, experiencing, and revealing your best to yourself and the world. Sleep affords you the opportunity to be on full display for all to see you at your best. Remember, your day begins the night before. How you prepare to sleep and the amount of sleep will impact your day and present. Start Now and be a professional sleeper, and seize every transition as an opportunity to impact your world!
Jonathan