The Importance of Good Sleep

As of late, I have not been sleeping very well.

I know that good sleep is important, and I always accomplish more when I have slept well, but a good night's sleep seems to be something that eludes me increasingly frequently.

One of the unfortunate byproducts of having what you might call an ”anxious temperament,” is that swirling thoughts in your head often disturb your sleep patterns. It's not exactly insomnia, because I do end up going to sleep... but then I (sometimes) wake up after a couple of hours with a new set of swirling thoughts.

Some people with anxiety disorders don't sleep well because they're afraid something's going to "get" them, or because they're afraid they might die in their sleep… in my case, most of my anxieties are the result of suddenly thinking to myself ”Oh my God, I've got to do this and that thing!”

Earlier today, I was trying to work out if there was ever a time in my life when I slept well, on a regular basis.

I didn't sleep well when I was at University because I was always worrying about my classes. I didn't sleep well when I was in business in my 20s and 30s because of stress. During many of the years since then I haven't slept well because I've had financial worries most of the time.

Thinking about it a bit further, I came to realize that it has been a very long time since I have consistently slept much more than 6 1/2 hours a night.

If I have to be brutally honest about it, I am functioning adequately, but not particularly well. And I'm also inclined to think that my sporadic lack of creativity is the result of insufficient quality sleep... as is my tendency to almost fall asleep in front of the computer, in early afternoon.

I suppose the most obvious answer here is to remove the factors that supposedly would be the root causes of my poor sleep. But how do you remove ”financial worries” in a world where your income is more or less stable while your cost of living continues to go up by 10-15% a year?

I can momentarily make myself feel better about it by acknowledging that lots of people are suffering from the same problem. But that doesn't exactly make it right, does it?

I fear that some things in life don't have easy or obvious answers. The closest to an answer we have these days is that we're planning to sell our big house next year and move into a smaller less expensive place which hopefully we'll make at least the financial aspect of life maintenance less stressful when it currently is.

But ultimately you have to ask yourself how much you can "shrink" your life and still be able to live relatively decently.

It's an issue I am working on solving...

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!

How about you? Have you ever had sleep issues? Have you ever had an anxiety disorder? How did you cope with it? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2025.02.10 00:56 PST
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