Lately, I’ve been realizing that, or perhaps more accurately, I am finally coming to terms with the fact that I am stressed and I need to do something about it. After doing some checking around on how to reduce stress, I found lots of websites and articles recommending that I pinpoint the cause of my stress so that I could change or eliminate it. But the problem is that I don’t have one specific area in my life that is stressing me out. I have a whole lot of somethings combined with not a whole lot of time that are all adding up me basically walking around in a fog 24/7.
So I started evaluating. I realized that I was basically only getting about six to six and a half hours of sleep a night! It really surprised me when I figured that out, because I honestly thought it was more! So the solution seems really simple. Get more sleep, right?
But the problem with this oversimplified solution is HOW?!! I have a lot to get done in a day and only a certain number of hours to do them in! I ended up making some pretty drastic changes to my daily routine in order to get more z’s in. Here’s what I changed and why.
1) Shower at night. This is a big one and the one that has been the biggest adjustment for me, because I have always been a “need my morning shower to get going” kind of girl. But I have to leave for work by 7:15 to get to work on time and it takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to get ready. Admittedly, I do tend to be a bit of dawdler, which I am working on, but I didn’t want to just be rushing around like a madwoman every morning trying to get out the door. Rushing makes me stressed and that’s the whole point of this little endeavor. To stress less. So I eliminated a big time drain on my morning routine, by moving it to the evening before allowing me to wake up later the morning. Bonus points that I am now primarily air drying my hair which helps keep it healthy!
2) Quiet time in the afternoon or evening. I hate to admit this, but I kinda got sucked in by some people telling me that I needed to have my quiet time in the morning. I don’t know why. I’m not usually such a follower. So in addition to the hour + that I was spending getting ready in the morning I was also getting up an extra 30 minutes early to have my quiet time. Don’t get me wrong, I think the morning is a great time to get alone with God. Maybe it’s even the best time. But in this season of my life, it’s just not working. I felt like I was squeezing God in to my ever so packed schedule. I would look up from reading to make sure I wasn’t going over my 30 minutes so I wouldn’t be late for work! Not good. In college I almost always had my quiet time in the afternoon outside. I loved it. I’m going to try this again. I plan to use my lunch hour at work or just do it in the evening depending on the day. I do still plan to offer a short prayer to my Savior upon waking, I’m just going to save my bible time and longer prayer time for later. ;-)
3) Set a regular bedtime. This one is hard for me, because my husband can be a bit of a night owl and I hate going to bed before he does. We have such a small amount of time together on weekdays and I felt like I was wasting it by going to bed while he was still awake. But here’s what was happening. We would settle into the living room after dinner and watch tv together and within about 30 minutes, I would be asleep at like 8:00! Yeah, my body was definitely trying to tell me that it needed rest! My husband actually said something to me about this and suggested that I need to go to bed earlier. So the new “rule” is that I go to bed at 10:00 and try to be asleep by 10:30 which will give me a nice 8 hours of sleep. My husband is so sweet that he has actually been going to bed with me at 10! Granted he is usually not asleep as soon as me, but I think we have both benefitted from the extra sleep we have been getting this last week!
There are a lot of things you can try if you feel like you’re not getting a good quality sleep, or have trouble falling asleep, but that has never been my issue. I pretty much pass out as soon as my head hits the pillow! So for now this is what I’m doing to help give my body the sleep it needs. Hopefully it helps and I am able to keep it up!
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