Sleep Well to Age Well
How to Balance Your Day to Sleep Soundly and Age Better
It’s a little known fact in the world of sleep that mastering the perfectly balanced day is a necessity to sleeping well. Having just the right amount of physical exertion, mental stimulation, and feeling of accomplishment is key to a healthy night’s sleep. Unfortunately, many people struggle with balancing their day. As with learning most new behaviors, bringing awareness is the first stage of change. Here's how to begin.
Logging Current Lifestyle Activities
It's difficult to change your lifestyle if you don't know what your current one looks like. Keep a log book for two weeks before making any lifestyle changes and include the following:
- Hourly activities from morning until night.
- Rating of physical exertion after each activity.
- Rating of mental stimulation after each activity.
- Rating of feelings of accomplishment after each activity.
- Rating of enjoyment after each activity.
Method to Your Madness
Have the mindset that there needs to be a method to this madness, and your job is to seek how you rated in each of the four categories. However, before tallying the ratings, ask yourself this question,"What is my general feeling of how balanced my daily life is between physical exertion, mental stimulation, feelings of accomplishment, and feelings of enjoyment?" Write a brief description. Next tally your ratings in each of the four categories over the two week period and see how closely the tallied ratings correspond to your general description. Chances are you have depicted yourself quite accurately. The reason for this exercise is to demonstrate that writing information down brings awareness to how we really live our lives. And this is our starting point for change!
Where to Begin Making Changes
This is the fun part. Let's say for illustration purposes, you are lacking in the physical exertion area but your days are exceedingly mental. However, feelings of accomplishment is generally high, but areas of daily enjoyment is assessed low. There are many places to start. Choose an area to work on and pick a behavior to change or add to your daily routine. Keep in mind this is a process and it is not necessary or recommended that you make too many changes at once. Consistency in making a change is more important than the quantity of change. Master one behavior at a time and proceed with a thoughtful strategy in place assessing your quality of sleep as the weeks progress.
Tally Ratings
Next tally your ratings in each of the four categories over the two week period and see how closely the tallied ratings correspond to your are to your general description. Chances are you have depicted yourself quite accurately. The reason for this exercise is to demonstrate that writing information down brings awareness to how we actually live our lives. And this is our starting point for change!
Behavior Change Examples
- Decrease mental stress by practicing short walks throughout the day inbetween mental challenges.
- Increase daily enjoyment by planning a fun activity to anticipate throughout the day
- Increase physical exertion by joining an activity that you did as a child. Examples might be tennis, jogging, basketball.
- Increase life enjoyment by planning a weekly fun ritual.
- Increase mental stimulation by planning a daily time to read, write, or find a new interest
- Increase sense of accomplishment by starting with an easy goal increasing the difficulty as the weeks progress. Examples may be planning a day trip to planning a week long trip, or walking 20 minutes daily to jogging 2 miles daily.
Have a mindset that practicing lifestyle changes aimed at increasing the quality of sleep is as worthy as practicing our golf or tennis swing. By balancing our day mentally and physically between work, play, life enjoyment and accomplishment, we not only sleep better, but age better, and in turn live more vitally and vigorously!
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