Sleep is the best meditation.- Dalai Lama
I鈥檓 most likely going to be that one friend of yours who has a sleep schedule and follows it strictly. For me, my sleep is very important as it plays a crucial role in my everyday life. Having enough sleep means I鈥檓 going to have a good day ahead. On days when I run on two to three hours of sleep, no one needs to tell you not to cross my path.馃槀
On a normal day, my bed time is set for 9:30pm but on days when I鈥檓 too exhausted I hit the bed even before then. This is to ensure that I鈥檓 up from bed as early as 4-5am. I really prioritize my waking up time so much because those early hours of the day serve as a me time for me. There鈥檚 so much for me to do within the early hours of the day and so waking up late means I wouldn鈥檛 be able to meet my target for the day and that鈥檚 going to cost me a lot.
This wasn鈥檛 me some years back. I could sleep at anytime I want and wake up at any time I want. Sooner than later, it came to my realization that I needed to have a balance in my life. You can鈥檛 just do whatever you want and expect things to go well for you. Sometimes I would sleep at 5am only to go to class at 7am. We know we can鈥檛 cheat nature, that鈥檚 exactly how I would start to doze off during lectures.馃槀
Looking back now, my life has so much more purpose and direction as compared to those days. I pay so much attention to my sleep schedule because how much sleep I have affects my whole day. A typical day in my life is a day of running up and down, meetings to attend , deadlines to meet, students to attend to any many more. There鈥檚 always a different thing to attend to each and the queue doesn鈥檛 get any shorter. Even with the number of hours of sleep I get, I still get stressed out.
Then there comes those days when I鈥檇 have to stay up all night to work on some stuff. The next day at work would be like a war because in between struggling to stay awake and attending to work related stuff, any little thing and I鈥檇 blow off on you.馃槀 Sometimes for no reason whatsoever, my colleagues at work become very hard to others and when I talk to them about it they say they鈥檙e too stressed about to take someone鈥檚 bull.
Truthfully, some people can be very annoying at times and for someone who鈥檚 already running on less hours of sleep, it just takes something small to trigger them. My sleep schedule does clash with some of my activities at times and what I do is try to keep a balance between these two. I spend about an hour to two of my sleep time to work and then I make sure to wake up on time or add a few minutes of sleep to the time left.
As humans , our body needs enough rest as it can get in order to refuel for the day ahead. Everyone needs to prioritize their rest because how much rest you get affects your daily life and your general health.
all images belong to me.