Get Your Sleep Every Day This Week
Simple Instructions:
- Get 7 hours of sleep every day, beginning with your Friday night to Saturday morning sleep.
- You need not be asleep to begin counting your hours of sleep for this practice. Your sleep “clock” begins when you turn out the lights and shut your eyes.
- If you are unable to get to 7 hours during the night, you may complete your 7 hours during the day with a nap.
- You will score yourself in this practice for the sleep you got the night before the score you are recording.
- i.e., if you are recording Saturday’s score on Saturday evening, you will be scoring the sleep you got from Friday night to Saturday morning (and perhaps completed during the day on Saturday). If you are recording Saturday’s score on Sunday, you are still scoring yourself on the sleep you got from Friday night to Saturday morning, not the sleep you got from Saturday night to Sunday morning.
Why Is This Practice Important?
Altering your sleep habits may be one of the most challenging practices you undertake, particularly if there are real, practical barriers to making the change – things like work schedule or family obligations. Its difficulty, however, does not affect how important it is.
Sleep is perhaps the most underrated and underappreciated practice in the health and well-being game. Beyond the basic benefit of feeling awake, aware, and fresh, getting adequate sleep reduces your stress, regulates your hormones, helps curb cravings for sugary food, and increases your willpower to resist the various temptations that arise every day.
Weight gain, increased risk of accidents, depression, diabetes, and heart disease, as well as diminished cognitive function and libido, have all been linked to lack of proper sleep. People who fail to get adequate sleep over time may also begin to suffer from impaired judgement – particularly about their lack of sleep! Studies have shown that sleep-deprived individuals begin to perceive they have adapted to their sleep schedule even when tests of their alertness and attention show otherwise.
Equally important, though, is that adequate sleep improves your mood. Your perception of what is happening around you, what you’re capable of, and even your level of happiness can change depending on how much sleep you are getting.
