Quick disclaimer: I haven’t finished Emily Fletcher’s Stress Less, Accomplish More, BUT as I read, I had to share some details about her chapter on sleep.
There are two big take aways for me. One, how your body rids itself of stress and two, how meditation compares and contrasts to sleep.
First, I like the way she explains how the body rids itself of stress through sleep.
Throughout the day we build up stress with all the normal day-to-day events that life throws our way. By the end of the day we’ve filled our cups with stress. Sometimes, we’ve filled multiple cups full to the brim.
To counteract and empty our cups of all our accumulated stresses, we need sleep. Lots of it. The more we sleep, the more our cups are emptied.
However, for many of us, we’re not getting enough sleep to completely empty that stress filled cup. That leads our stress cups constantly being full, and more importantly, we’re unable to rid our bodies of all our stresses through our one natural form of stress relief.
Emily’s way of looking at it is in stress ‘units.’ If we build 10 stress units by the end of the day, but only get enough sleep to rid ourselves of 8 of those stress units, we start the following day with 2 stress units. We add another 10 by the end of the day and we’re going to bed with 12 stress units. We sleep off 8 and we’re left with 4. We’re basically never catching up.
I like her take on this because it’s perfectly describing how many of us feel. We can’t catch up, tired by 3pm, and driven by caffeine.
It’s because of this deficit that many people turn to meditation as a way to rid our bodies of that excess stress.
Emily summarizes it as this…sleep is the rest for our brain, meditation is rest for your body.
To me, this is such a strong argument to incorporate meditation into your day.
Quick disclaimer: I haven’t finished Emily Fletcher’s Stress Less, Accomplish More, BUT as I read, I had to share some details about her chapter on sleep.
There are two big take aways for me. One, how your body rids itself of stress and two, how meditation compares and contrasts to sleep.
First, I like the way she explains how the body rids itself of stress through sleep.
Throughout the day we build up stress with all the normal day-to-day events that life throws our way. By the end of the day we’ve filled our cups with stress. Sometimes, we’ve filled multiple cups full to the brim.
To counteract and empty our cups of all our accumulated stresses, we need sleep. Lots of it. The more we sleep, the more our cups are emptied.
However, for many of us, we’re not getting enough sleep to completely empty that stress filled cup. That leads our stress cups constantly being full, and more importantly, we’re unable to rid our bodies of all our stresses through our one natural form of stress relief.
Emily’s way of looking at it is in stress ‘units.’ If we build 10 stress units by the end of the day, but only get enough sleep to rid ourselves of 8 of those stress units, we start the following day with 2 stress units. We add another 10 by the end of the day and we’re going to bed with 12 stress units. We sleep off 8 and we’re left with 4. We’re basically never catching up.
I like her take on this because it’s perfectly describing how many of us feel. We can’t catch up, tired by 3pm, and driven by caffeine.
How do we get to meditation from here? It’s because of this deficit that many people turn to meditation as a way to rid our bodies of that excess stress.
Emily summarizes it as this…sleep is the rest for our brain, meditation is rest for your body. And we need both.
To me, this is such a strong argument to incorporate meditation into your day.
Even if it’s just a few minutes of quiet time with no computers and deep breathing, it’s going to benefit.
In the hectic days of running a business and day-to-day life, I’ve gotten away from spending a few minutes meditating during the day.
But somehow I find time to scroll through Instagram?
So, one of my new goals is to take 5-10 minutes in the afternoon to step away from my computer, stop thinking about business and life and meditate.
Will I feel more rested? Will my sleep patterns improve? Maybe you’ll do this with me, too?
I’ll be sure to report back. And if you’re doing the same, please share your experience.
