It’s 7.30am as I write this and I’ve already been working for 2 hours. I had a client at 5.30am (it was 8.30pm on his side of the planet) and I have an hour to write & send some emails before I head out for a SUP.
Luckily for me, I’m an early bird… which means that I would much rather work at 5.30am than at 10 pm. In fact, one of my super conditions is that I never work past 9 pm and rarely past 6 pm. It works for me ☺
But this last week hasn’t been that easy. It’s been fun, but not easy. You see, I just flew out to Australia for a 7-week consultancy role. I left home last Thursday and 4 flights and one bus ride later, I arrived to a very muggy, rainy Cairns. 30+ hours of travel is enough to make anyone feel a little tweaked, but I particularly suck at functioning when I’m tired.
Yes, I’m an early bird, but it only works because I go to bed at 10 pm (haha earlier sometimes… such a grandma). So when I got here and had to deal with icky combo of travel sleepiness & jet lag, I struggled.
And that’s what I want to talk to you about today. Tiredness. And more specifically, what being tired does to your brain. Researchers have proven that lack of sleep actually plays a key role in firing up the regions of your brain that are linked to excessive worrying. Makes sense huh? Sleep is essential to good mental health.
But when you’re working crazy hours on a project or juggling a zillion different roles or just plain jet lagged like I was, it’s something you can easily forget. The negative thoughts that show up for you take over and before you know it you’re stressing out about a whole bunch of stuff and you’ve totally lost perspective.
Thankfully, I have a simple mantra that I can fall back on whenever I’m in that icky place. This little gem of wisdom came from Lucy, a friend in the live events industry. I’ll always remember the day she told me about it. She was working as our event manager, and we’d just run a kick-ass festival.
It was the day after show day, when the adrenaline buzz has worn off and you’re left with an overwhelming sense of exhaustion, mentally & physically. We were eating lunch and talking about the event. I was questioning everything… Was it good enough? Did anyone even like it? Maybe we could have done better?
She looked at me, smiled, and said ‘Linz, tired thoughts are bad thoughts‘.
So logical, so true but somehow so easy to forget. When you’re tired, everything feels more pressured, problems seem more complex and our thoughts go into a negative overdrive. From that day onwards, whenever I feel run down or stressed out, and my mind starts shifting to a negative place, I remember those words.
And so it brings me back to today and the last few nights of messed up jet-lagged sleep. It got me thinking about those wise words, and how we can so easily start believing the bad thoughts that show up when we’re feeling tired. So I wanted to write this post for me as well as you. To remember those smart words, and to store them somewhere safe.
I like to think about it like this: When the negative thoughts rush in, imagine that they are a little bunch of gremlins.
Mine show up and say stuff like this: Holy smokes, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew this time Linz. How on earth are you going to work on this project and coach and work on your online program all at the same time? And what about that almighty decision you need to make? Let’s sit up late at night and just fret about that shall we ?! (urghh.. my gremlins are horrible little guys).
Then, take a big deep breath and recognise that they are gremlins. Remind yourself, tired thoughts are bad thoughts. Let them go. The more often you do this, the quicker you’ll be at recognising tired thoughts.
Those problems you were stressing about? When you’re in a good place in your body & mind (enough sleep, getting heaps of exercise & eating clean), they are totally figure-outable. In fact, chances are, when you see them in a different light, you’ll realise that they’re not even problems at all.
So my advice to you? Go scribble this mantra down somewhere. Bookmark this article. Share it with the people you love. Ask them to remind you of it when you’re struggling. And then go take a nap .