Are you getting a good night’s rest?

Especially now, with the unknowns of a pandemic, it’s even more difficult to fall asleep quickly and stay in a blissful, restful sleep all through the night.

According to Harvard Medical School, “sleep and mental health are closely connected. Sleep deprivation affects your psychological state and mental health.”

Many of us are sleep deprived. When I talk to team members about stress and ask how many hours of sleep they get on average, the answer is often alarming. Many participants say they average five or fewer hours of sleep a night. Even pre COVID 19, the CDC considered sleep deprivation a crisis – “an epidemic affecting the public health of 1 in 3 adults in the United States.” It is estimated that 120 million Americans suffer from some sort of sleep issue.

With all the work I’ve done over the years with personality assessments, I naturally wondered if there was any connection to sleep quality/quantity and personality traits. I uncovered only one study conducted by Best Mattress Brand. It “found that people who display more introverted characteristics are also more likely to suffer with disrupted sleep.” More research needs to be considered before you can blame your natural personality tendencies for sleepless nights. However, it is worth your time to think on just how you can use your natural tendencies to understand what is keeping you awake at night or making it harder for you to fall asleep. For instance, if you are high in introversion and you haven’t had enough time to rejuvenate in solitude, just jumping into bed without some thinking time might make it harder to fall asleep. If you are low in Conscientiousness, one of the Big Five personality factors, you might not see the value of a standard routine and bedtime. Or you see the value, but you just aren’t inspired to follow one on a nightly basis. Being high in Emotionality, the fifth factor of the Big Five, may have you reeling from all of the emotions you experienced throughout the day, so you find it hard to calm down emotionally before bedtime. If you haven’t taken a personality assessment, I recommend completing a Big Five based questionnaire to learn more about yourself. (Contact me for more information on getting your own in-depth report.) Then give some thought about how you can use that information to understand your sleep patterns and what you can do to enhance sleep using the tips outlined below.

Time to snuggle up and get some sound ideas for soothing, sleeping slumber.

What to Add:

What to Skip:

  • Blue Light – most know this one. STOP sleeping with your phone.
  • Refrain from checking your phone in the night or first thing in the morning.
  • Alcohol – You think it might help, but it actually interrupts the quality of sleep.
  • Exercise before bed – Exercise is good; however, when done too close to bedtime, you will typically have a harder time falling asleep.
  • Using your bedroom for work or storage. If you work from your bedroom, just walking in the room can give your mind a signal to start thinking about work.
  • News before bed. Negativity causes anxious thoughts that will not aid the sleep process.
  • Long naps, especially late in the day and over 20 to 30 minutes.

What works when you wake up in the night or just can’t fall asleep? Many times, minding the tips and skips from above will help. However, experts seem to have differing ideas whether staying in bed is best or getting up for a while will do the trick. You’ll have to experiment and see what works for you. Here are some ideas to try:

  • Pray, meditate, say mantras that are relaxing and calming in nature.
  • Count backward, count sheep, visualize swimming, and count your strokes.
  • Get up and engage in a quiet activity such as reading. Use a low light versus a well-lit room.

When all else fails, it’s time to see a sleep specialist. Sleep is too important to brush off. Mayo Clinic reports that most adults require about seven to nine hours of sleep. “If you’re sleep deprived, the amount of sleep you need increases. If your sleep is frequently interrupted, you’re not getting quality sleep. The quality of your sleep is just as important as the quantity. Some people claim to feel rested on just a few hours of sleep a night, but their performance is likely affected. Research shows that people who sleep so little over many nights don’t perform as well on complex mental tasks as do people who get closer to seven hours of sleep a night.”

The world needs all the brilliance it can get right now, so implement some of the suggestions above to sleep well, rejuvenated tomorrow, and bring brilliance to the world.