Quality Sleep: The Ultimate Performance Enhancer

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”_Benjamin Franklin 

‘Sleep is for suckers!’ This is a slang of the industrious class in some quarters.

However, with time, I believe it will soon be replaced by ‘sleep is for winners.’

Now, many active people consistently deprive themselves of sleep, assuming that, it is an optimal way to live a more productive life. And for a long time, I engaged in that line of thinking. 

Until recently, I used to think that to achieve more you need to sleep very little on a daily basis. This misguided pattern of thought caused me to go through my days with a high degree of cumulative stress. 

Having learned better, it is now clear to me that quality sleep is necessary for our mental, emotional and physical vitality. 

We can’t cheat nature. Our Creator has made sleep essential for us to live and function; God alone is the only One who is always at His best without sleep, without slumber. 

This article is a call for us to make sleep a priority again in our lives as did our ancestors. In modern culture, the basic human need to rest has been dismissed for far too long, making missing sleep an erroneous sign of superiority. 

Hundreds of ambitious people now use their precious nocturnal hours for ‘superior activities,’ throwing their wellbeing in the rear. This, however, has not been without a huge cost, both in financial and non-financial terms.

For example, in America alone, research from the Rand Corporation reveals that inadequate sleep is costing the States more than four hundred billion dollars a year.  

Imagine the cost on the entire world economy!

You see, sleep deprivation will backfire in the long run.  No matter how strong you think you are; you need quality sleep to stay healthy and function at your highest level.

In this direction, Matthew Walker, the author of ‘Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams’ discovers that:

“Routinely sleeping less than six hours a night demolishes your immune system.” 

In case you don’t know Walker, here is a brief introduction. He is currently a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. And he was previously a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. His sole focus is to help improve our overall health through quality sleep. 

As evidenced by his research, sleep deprivation will eventually tell on our physical, social and economic health. We really can’t afford not to sleep well.

If you are among those who brag about working or studying late into the night, I hope this piece will cause an instant change in your thinking.

As it turns out, nothing is more critical to our wellness, vitality and effectiveness than good, quality sleep. 

To be clear, I am not arguing that sleeping excessively will make us perform better. But my argument centers on the fact that the right amount of quality sleep is a sure driver of peak performance, and it is essential for good health.

Note that while we sleep, our system flushes away the toxins that were accumulated all through the day. Deep sleep enables us to wash away the scraps of stress that can slow us down the next day. 

Undoubtedly, quality sleep is necessary to boost our immune system, replenish depleted energy and enhance our brain power. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation does the exact opposite, making us more susceptible to fatigue, sloth and illness.

Now let’s dive into what we can start doing today to make changes on how we can get better sleep.

Six Tips to Get Quality Sleep

To improve the quality of your sleep, adhere to the following tips on a daily basis:

Maintain a good balance between nutrition and exercise during the day. 

Establish a pre-sleep routine

Maintain a comfortable sleeping environment 

Don’t eat too much or too soon before bedtime (or leave a two-hour window between your bedtime and supper)

Maintain a regular sleep-wake schedule

Reduce or eliminate bright light when you are ready to snooze.

Please note that these tips have been carefully extracted from the wisdom of foremost experts and sleep psychologists around the world; so don’t ignore them.    

     

Further peep into the book, ‘Why We Sleep’ reveals the paradox of overworking.

Walker writes: “The irony that employees miss is that when you are not getting enough sleep, you work less productively, thus need to work longer to accomplish a goal.”

And he continues with an allegorical question: “Why try to boil a pot of water on medium heat when you could do so in half the time on high (heat)?”

In other words, sleep deprivation is not really a smart way to maximize your time.

The key lesson here is this: whatever your workloads, try not to make a habit of prioritizing them at the expense of your sleep. 

Yes, to make the most of time, you need to cut-off distractions and eliminate non-essential things in your day. But try to make sleep a priority, because it is.

Indeed, quality sleep is a good investment for our long-term health and effectiveness.

Finally, I hope these lessons will prod us to start making better choices with regard to how we sleep per night.

Vision: What You See That Others Don’t

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”_Hellen Keller

Creating a clear vision is essential to a meaningful life.

A good first step to creating a great success is to create a ‘vision for one’s life.’ 

With a clear vision, we can create extra-ordinary result in the future. Without it, mediocrity will take over by default; as the old scripture says: ‘Without vision, we die.’

Envisioning is important because the amount of one’s endurance and the intensity of one’s focus are directly proportionate to the clarity of one’s vision.

However, envisioning is not a onetime thing that we do and forget about completely; it is something that we do continuously.  It is something we need to cultivate in our hearts every single day. 

This is the secret of true champions as the American former boxer and three-time Heavyweight Champion, Muhammad Ali once said:

“Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them— a desire, a dream, a vision.”

Having a vision is about massively focusing on a promise, a principle, and the future. In this direction, James Allen inspires further when he said:

 “Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.”

The author of a perennial bestseller, ‘Think and Grow Rich,’ Napoleon Hill put it this way: “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” For a great thing to happen, we have to picture it first in our mind, and then act faithfully towards its realization on until it is achieved. 

Indeed, our lifestyle can instantly take a new dimension when we populate our minds with lofty ideals and commit to making them happen every day.

Resolve to Stay True to Your Vision

When overwhelming difficulties arise—as they must— don’t give in to despair and never give up on your keenest vision. Be reminded that many icons in history went through the toughest of challenges before they could realize the deepest desires of their hearts. 

More than anything else, what kept them going was a firm belief they had in their vision, a massive focus they placed on their goals, and most significantly, an unshakable resolve they relentlessly nurtured to stay true to their dream. 

In pursuant of their resolute vision, they set and lived by higher standards than everyone else. They lived their lives on purpose; they lived not by whim but by design. Thus, they were not blocked from success by difficult circumstances but they were led to greatness by strong personal decisions.

One of those icons was Walt Disney, the founder of The Walt Disney Company.

Walt Disney built an impressive empire with the supreme force of his vision. As he later commented: “This whole thing was started with a dream.”

Even though he had to face the crippling challenges of bankruptcy and betrayal, he was so driven to succeed that he stared down ‘fatalities’ with a formidable force of his shining vision. 

As Disney demonstrated with his life, when you are possessed by a great vision, you can become almost invincible.

Along these lines, Adam and Matthew Toren share great insights in their book: ‘Small Business, Big Vision: Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right.’ 

To rekindle our fighting spirit, they counsel as follows:

“If you're having trouble staying motivated, do whatever you need to do to recapture that original feeling you had when the spark first hit and your vision was crystal clear. 

Remembering that moment—and, most importantly, reestablishing that frame of mind—will get you through any challenge you face.

 No matter what the world throws at you, you do have the power to push through.

So don't let anything or anyone get between you and your big vision!”

By remaining faithful to our vision through sincere effort to live each day with diligence, discipline and purpose, we can be confident that the best years of our lives are yet to come—no matter the degree of our success, right now.

Remember, being faithful to our vision is about doing what we can with what we have at the moment.

It is about asking ourselves this question, each day: 

“What one step can I take this day to move me an inch closer towards turning my vision into a reality?”

It is about accepting the fact that circumstances will test our nerve, that unforeseen trials will test our mettle; that life will assess the strength of our determination.

It is about knowing that we, therefore, must take 100% responsibility for our ultimate outcome, no matter what happens—even when it is far easier to give up, to give in or to feel sorry for ourselves.

If we apply this every time we hit a wall of hindrances and hurdles, we will remain strong to fight through to the top.

Exercise Will Not Only Make Us Stronger, It Will Also Make Us Healthier, and Even Smarter

  “Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body; it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.”—John F. Kennedy

If I don’t take good care of my body, how can I function at my peak?

That’s the question I tend to ask myself whenever I am tempted to skip exercise and fill my stomach with sweet-smelling junk foods. I encourage you to do the same.

Since we have only one physical form, it is therefore important to put our body in the best shape possible. An eastern proverb advises us to treat us our body like a temple; that means placing our wellbeing in number one spot of utmost care and attention.

To do that, we need to work at it every day, by moving for momentum, eating for strength, and sleeping for renewal. 

However, this article will focus on one of the three: moving for momentum or aerobic exercise.

There are lots of researches to prove the value of exercise with regard to energy, focus, memory and mood; all of which are essential elements productivity and wellness. 

John Ratey, M.D., a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School explores in details the connection between exercise and the brain.

He makes it undoubtedly clear his book, ‘Spark - The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain,’ that we can lift our mood, sharpen our intellect, improve our memory, manage our stress and even function better in our world just by increasing our respiration.

In other words, aerobic exercise can launch our brains into a mode of peak performance. According to John, the impact of exercise on our energy level and our ability to focus is not just immediate but even long after the practice.

The right amount of workout helps the flow of oxygen and other essential nutrients throughout our cardiovascular system. This results in an energy boost that can serve us well in tackling a demanding project. No wonder, the Roman philosopher, Marcus Cicero zealously wrote a long time ago that, “Exercise alone supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.”

Now let’s talk about putting this to work in our own lives.

Start with Five Minutes Per Day

“The higher your energy level, the more efficient your body, the more efficient your body, the better you feel, and the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results.”—Tony Robbins

If you think negatively about exercising everyday because it feels like a burden, you are looking at it the wrong way. After finishing this article, I bet you will have a quick rethink.

With this in mind, I suggest you make it as easy possible get started. 

For example: 

Start with five minutes (or less if necessary) a day. For 5 minutes, choose to do any form of exercise that appeals most to you, like walking, running, jogging, swimming, pushups, etc. 

The key is to start small and celebrate progress. This is how you can make exercising a daily habit, and reap the full benefit of mental and physical liveliness discussed in these pages.

Aerobic exercise will boost your strength and enhance your endurance. It will supply you the reserved energy you need to work harder, stay longer and the mental stimulus for increased creativity you need for extra-ordinary output. 

Stepping Up

In the book, 'Bigger, Leaner and Stronger,' Michael Matthews gives us a better approach with the following words:

“For optimal muscle growth, you must lift in such a way that causes optimal micro–tearing and then you must feed your body what it needs to grow and give it the proper amount of rest.”

Though, Michael directs his counsel to professional body builders, I think people like us can learn something useful from his ideas. And that is: good exercise is supremely necessary for a healthy body but it will work best, if we combine it with nutritious diets and adequate rest. When we do this, we can reap the fullest gain of unlimited vitality. 

In conclusion, the sovereign invigorator of the body is regular exercise. And we don’t need expensive workout gadgets or become a gym rat to increase our heartbeats for good. We just need to commit ourselves to a few minutes of aerobic motions every day. 

With this little effort, I hope you are convinced that regular exercise can enhance your energy, sharpen your focus, strengthen your mind and elevate your mood.

More importantly, I hope I have nudged you enough to make it a daily practice in your life.

Suspend Huge Leaps, Consider this Instead

“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.”— Louis Sachar

   

Today, I have a hypothesis for you and it is this: in the pursuit of our strategic (long-term) vision, small steps are—ultimately—more effective than big leaps.

This is because small things make the big things possible, not the other way round.

To verify, slow down and give a thorough glance at the world around you, you will realize that nothing great exists that is not made up of small details. Everything in life, both the big and the not-so-big is essentially composed of tiny components. 

For example:

The gigantic elephants and the strongest trees in the forest grew out of microscopic cells. The longest bridges in the most advanced nations of the world were skillfully built out of small rocks, tiny sands and mass elements of sturdy steel. 

Even the solar system, the nebulous galaxies and the astronomical objects of the planets are made up of atomic particles of protons, neutrons and electrons.

This is the reality of our world, though it can sometimes be easy for active people to ignore or forget. The plain truth is: massive outcomes—either positive or negative— are generally the aggregation of tiny components.

However, we like to fantasize on using huge leaps to pursue audacious goals: we want a single move that will create an instant breakthrough. But, this is far from the basic reality of the world in which we live. 

In fact, lasting success comes from serial buildup of concrete victories, one small step at a time. This is how real winners build a great business, develop a powerful mind, raise an awesome child, write a fascinating book, and create an impressive art. In support of this, the English philosopher, Francis Bacon wrote: “We rise to great heights by a winding staircase of small steps.”

Whatever, it is that we envision, one small step at a time is the way to go. It is the underlying pattern in the works of the Almighty God: the Wisest Maker of all things.  

Now, if we truly understand and apply this small-concept, we will literally astonish ourselves with the results we can produce.

Set a Big Goal but Adopt the Strategy of Kaizen

We want to have big goals, yes. But we don’t need to take unimaginable leaps to make them happen. Instead, we set out towards our vision in small but meaningful steps every day until we win-out. 

A huge vision is accomplished in small steps; it is realized through continuous progress. This is the meaning of Kaizen, as written by Dr. Robert Maurer, in his book, 'One Small Step Can Change Your Life.' 

You see, the small-step principle—not the huge leap fantasy— is the surest key to any success. It is the foundation of true greatness.  Small but steady can overcome, even the hardest of all hurdles.

Louis Sachar, the award-winning author of twenty-five books, attempted to make this clear when he said: 

“Life is like crossing a river. If you take a huge step, then the current will knock you off your feet and carry you away. 

The way to do it is small steps, you will take hold of life. You will get there in the end.”

Therefore, suspend huge-leaps mentality but take concrete small steps towards your big goals and accumulate small wins along the path of your purpose. 

Do this unremittingly, and you will walk over the tallest mountain with little sweat.