If you missed Principle One, it is here.
WHAT IT MEANS
I have to admit that I love to sleep. I love the rest and I love the dreams. I love how my brain cannot stop thinking and processing the ideas I get when I am awake. Ahh! and those ideas I get when asleep are incredible. Sleep is so therapeutic at so many levels, what is not there to like about it?!
Getting your sleep means a number of things:
1. Getting mental rest
2. Getting physical rest
3. Getting the right amount of sleep.
4. Getting sleep at the right time.
5. Maintaining more or less regular timings for sleep and wake times.
6. Responding to your mind’s and body’s requests for rest quickly and appropriately.
7. Ideally, you have a calming and refreshing nighttime and morning hours routine.
Learning when you need sleep and how much sleep you need on a regular basis is a learning process. Like everything else you have to go through iterations and figure out what sleep times, wake up times and how many hours leave you feeling refreshed and productive during the day. The very physical constraints and responsibilities people that make it hard for people to “get their sleep” are also what make it essential for people to “get their sleep”.
WHY IT WORKS
We are all thinking machines. We lead busy and demanding lives, each of us ambitious in our own ways. Busy lives make personal lives harder. We seem to over-think our lives. We can often hear ourselves saying to people …”Oh, Belated bday wishes to you …I did think about you” or justify to ourselves – “He knows I love him and care for him”. We never really take the time out to communicate our thoughts and emotions to even the most important people in our lives. We start to find excuses to justify our actions (or lack thereof) to ourselves and that is when our internal communication system breaks down. We started out on this path seeking satisfaction and happiness but by not calling ourselves out on what we think is inexcusable behavior we start to massively deviate from our life goals. On the very negative end of the spectrum, we get delusional and exhausted without physical and mental rest. Relationships sour and/or die.
Am I simplifying it too much? Indeed I am. And with a reason. All problems, issues and situations in life have different causes. Happiness is all about solving a problem or coming to terms with our situations and making the best of life. If that is so easy to understand then why aren’t more people happy. And why do people with some amazing problems in life seem so happy?
I honestly believe that what differentiates happy people from the unhappy ones is the internal communication system of happy/content people. Happiness is a state within us. There is a lot that the factors outside can do make us happy or unhappy but long term and steadfast happiness is only a product of the joys deep inside of us.
Giving our bodies and minds the required rest helps us communicate within ourselves and constantly re-evaluate our priorities. It allows for more honest introspection thus preventing us from falling into the hole of lies and getting stuck in the world of make-believe happiness.
IN MY EXPERIENCE
It was almost 10 years ago. We had 5 deaths in my extended family within about 5 months. My dad flew to the US for my uncle’s funeral and he suffered a heart attack on the flight back to India. My dad made it but two of my maternal uncles did not. I had been in the US less than a year … far far away from the only family I had and knew. It was a hard time for me … I wept for me and I wept for my cousins. Pictures, memories and thoughts would not leave my mind ….
I knew things were getting out of hand when this continued for a month or more. Summer of 98. I remember I told my advisor I needed a break. A real break. And then I went to a friend’s place. And there I slept. And slept. For a whole week. I remember she would come home around noon just to get me some lunch. And then I would sleep right back. And then she’d get me dinner at the end of the day and I slept right back. It was the most amazing recovery I have ever had. I was a new person at the end of a week. I still grieved for the losses but life had new hope.
I am still amazed at how I slept for that long but I guess my mind and body needed that rest. Over the years I have starting to recognize my body/mind’s request for rest … physical exhaustion, recurring cycle of thoughts, a shorter temper …
Learning to respond to our body’s and mind’s cues for rest is critically important in my perspective. We all read about how to be happy but executing anything becomes really hard when we are in a true life crisis. Those are the times when I hope people are able to apply my principles and get on their road to recovery.
To Recap, the principles so far:
2. Get your sleep.
More to come in the near future …
This is one of the first few posts in my blog and I am not expecting hundreds on comments. But if you do happen to stop by here, please share your thoughts! I look forward to learning from everyone. Please let me know what you think. And thank you!
