How To Master Your Sleep And Feel Energized, Refreshed, and Alert?
Take control over your sleep and achieve extraordinary development
Are you sick of being awake as a night owl and feeling drained of energy the whole day?
Sleep, A simple word.
“For the human operating system, downtime is a feature, Not a bug.”
-Arianna Huffington-
The perceived nature of seeing someone sleeping contributes to the fact that sleep is a simple act. It magnifies the belief as you want. Nonetheless, there are so many people around the globe struggling to obtain a great consistent sleep performance.
If you’re impatient and want to sleep rapidly, I’ll let you off the hook early. Reading this should get you to sleep faster than reading the entire post:
But to master your sleep well, I suggest to follow me a bit further.
Why sleep caught my attention so badly is the fact that it is a long-term health investment. An investment that makes you perform optimally in unimaginary ways.
Muscle mass is a great indicator of longevity. You’ll benefit greatly when you obtain a certain amount of muscle mass when getting older.
Perhaps, sleep deprivation is the biggest cause of muscle loss. When you don’t get enough sleep, your cortisol levels tend to rise, which acts catabolic on your muscles. Therefore, sleep is an important long-term investment, as diet and exercise are long-term investments for your health.
However, there is one exception when it boils down to sleep.
Unlike diet and exercise, a flexible diet for sleep doesn’t exist. You want to complete a minimum of sleep cycles each night. A mental lever can be counting weekly sleep cycles.
Something many of us struggles to reach without a doubt.
Still, all of them walk hand in hand.
- A reasonable activity level
- A balanced diet
- Sleep
They are the master key to creating mental and physical balance. I would even dare to blend in “financial stability” to keep the subconscious stress from your backbone. Reduced mental rest fades from tiredness into accidents, depression, and can even lead to destructive acts like suicide over time…
The alarming factor is that there are millions of people around the globe struggling with this sneaky problem, of which most of them are not even aware of the hidden threats.
Important to know is that missing out on sleep comes with both short-term and long-term issues. There’s no significant underlying required to tell that sleep inhibits your alertness, productivity, creativity, positivity, and overall health.
Missing out on sleep will undermine your entire state of being significant.
Ultimately, this doesn’t matter as long as you master your sleep! You’re reading this to regain momentum. Build a rock-solid foundation to achieve remarkable heights in life.
With sleep, the solutions are exposed within their art of problems.
Let’s address a few more important reasons why you want to master your sleep.
- Great sleep performance significantly improves your cognitive functions
- Increases the quality of your life and those around you
- High-quality sleep boosts your productivity
- Emotional stability and positivity
Additionally, Sleep optimization is one of the most underestimated natural performance enhancers in sports, whether it’s to prevent sickness and injury, to recover for your next day, give you a mental edge over your competition, or to grow muscle tissue.
Actual growth and maintenance of muscles happen during sleep time, especially in deep sleep. All phases of sleep contribute to anabolism.
-Dr. Mehmet Yildiz-
Pick your reason, and make that your “Master reason” to acquire magnificent sleep.
To master your sleep, you want to master your daily routine.
Here’s such a death-simple daily schedule that can help you prime great sleep
- Wake up early and hydrate (What’s early for you)
- Move around/ Exercise early (Try to combine with outside exposure)
- Cold shower
- Hygiene maintenance (Small positive habits)
- No Coffee within at least 90 minutes of waking (Use caffeine as a tool)
- Journal (about sleep, note your reason why you want to sleep well)
- Family time before school (Positive social interaction)
- High protein/ High fat nutrition (depending on diet)
- Work/Brain break/Work (Hunt for flow states)
- Meditation practice
- Work/Brain break/ Work (Hunt for flow states)
- Family time (preferably with outside light exposure)
- Dinner (Protein rich & Complex carb-rich)
- Reading/loving/writing (Low artificial light intensity)
- Hot shower
- Dark room with a cool temperature
Steal this routine and carefully adjust it to your own needs. Until you’ll notice a difference in your sleep ability.
Remember, “Aim to complete full 90-minute-sleep cycles.”
Your brain benefits best from completing full cycles when you want to feel energized, refreshed, and alert.
That being said,
when we follow the base rule of physiologic adaptation, this could depend on what you demand from your body throughout your waking days.
I don’t need to explain that if you lay on your couch the whole day, you’d likely start to grow sleep problems…
How to feel energized?
Before going further, There’s such a thing as personality traits that can play an important factor in your sleep approach. Sleep has a sharp mental edge to it.
Sleep rebuilds and recharges you with energy to thrive for another intensive day. Although, this depends on the exact moment within your sleep cycle you’ve woken. Waking up during a light sleep period, for instance, will have you more energized until you reach your midday dip.
Nevertheless, deep sleep contributes to rebuilding and reenergizing your physical body.
When your deep sleep is interrupted, it will make you feel less energized than waking up during a light sleep period. Still, your state of being and rechargeability level will depend on your hormonal state.
A balance between activity and intensity level, diet, and sleep performance (depth and duration) will tremendously affect your ability to use your energy.
The consistency in your Week/Month/Year routine will contribute to your energy level.
Some other factors are:
- Seasonal shifts
- Location on earth
- The temperature at certain times of the day
There is no need to emphasize the fact that sunlight is somewhat the greatest and most reliable natural source to energize the human body.
Look at your surroundings. Wherever you spot imbalances, you’ll discover that sunlight absorption also tends to diminish.
Lack of sunlight or just getting in touch with nature is one of the greatest inhibitors of sleep performance. Make sure to master this easy-to-acquire habit.
“An introvert starts the day fully loaded as for an extravert he receives more energy from every task he performs.”
-Simon Sinek –
How to feel refreshed?
Now that you know how to energize yourself, you’ll use that energy throughout your waking hours. Sleeping is somewhat the most anabolic thing you can do.
Physiologic repair and replenishment take place during sleep. During sleep, your digestive system is reduced to a bare minimum, but your body is still working. Therefore, you want to keep it hydrated at all times. Especially upon waking, this will make you feel refreshed.
Drink about 0.5–1 liter upon waking instead of coffee, and check what it does! You also want to ensure you’re not dehydrated before sleep. For instance, dry lips and yellow pee color can be a simple indicator for you.
Reach your minimum amount of full sleep cycles, and aim for daily satisfaction. Never wake up by disturbers. No alarms.
Need to be on time for your work? Me too, still I never use an alarm. I’m not afraid of using an alarm because I “Follow a strict sleep time.”
It’s OK to set the alarm to go to sleep, not to wake up.
People will argue with this. They will say they are different and that waking up with an alarm doesn’t affect them. Perhaps. Nevertheless, as a difficult sleeper, you difficult sleeper, want to “eliminate all negative elements within the first moment you wake up.”
As said earlier, “flexible sleep doesn’t work well.” Stick to a regular sleep routine and go to bed simultaneously. This will also make you fall asleep faster, help you dream magnificently, and wake you up more refreshed. Make sure to master this.
How to feel alert?
Don’t wake up with negativity or hyperconnectivity!
Many people take their phones or tablets with them. It strains the eyes significantly. It stresses you out and inhibits your falling asleep time. These are not the ingredients that will have you feel alert in the morning.
To feel alert, you want to have reached REM sleep. The latter phase within a sleep cycle. This part is what most miss out on, or don’t achieve enough, because they woke up too soon or don’t achieve enough from, or didn’t reach and completed enough sleep cycles that night.
“The dumbest thing smart people do is sleep with their phones.”
-Arianna Huffington-
Waking up in the middle of your deep sleep stage will make you feel worse. Frankly, you’ll wake up partly dreaming, far from alertness.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
The key ingredient to mastering your sleep is your day structure.
- Hydrate early
- Complete small tasks early
- Exercise or move around Early
- Hunt for positive vibes throughout your day
- Play with natural elements like light and temperature
- Wind down near the evening. Don’t engage in intensive actions
Your daily actions, how those actions impact your physiology and make you feel all contribute to your sleep quality.
Sleep deprivation leads to underperformance in all fields. There’s nothing more to say. Nobody benefits from poor sleep, not you, not your family.
But when you follow these guidelines, as stated above, you’ll have a huge advantage over your previous non-sleeping version.
When you master your sleep, your possibilities for development will be endless.
You’ll find it easier to recall and retain memories, your learning rate will increase, and everything will become easier to manage.
Moreover, when you master your sleep, you’ll be able to help others to master their sleep too.
Master your sleep and thrive through life!
As a bonus, here are some “atomic sleep habits” if you want:
Absorb, Read, Write, Sleep, Exercise, Thrive!
Thanks for reading this post!
P.S.:
I’m a firm believer in building a prosilient mind.
I like to write about: Sleep & Dreams/Writing tips/Life lessons/Mental Health/Circadian Rhythm/Submarine Power Cables.
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