Stop Glorifying Hustle: Your Healing and Health Happen in Your Sleep
For high-achieving women, staying up late is often worn as a badge of honor. But relying on minimal rest is not competence; it is literally taking out a debt to your future self.
This Week 8 challenge focuses on the most foundational pillar of wellness: Quality Sleep—the time when your body and brain truly heal, process, and repair.
The Basics: Why 7+ Hours is Non-Negotiable
Getting enough sleep is foundational for health, yet it can be hard to prioritize those 7+ hours of sleep each night consistently.
The True Cost of Sleep Deprivation
Immediate Cognitive Impairment: When you get less than 7 hours per night, memory, focus, and problem-solving abilities become impaired.
Severe Impairment: Getting less than 5–6 hours of sleep for five nights can impair you enough that you might not pass a field sobriety test. Physical symptoms like balance, judgment, and spatial understanding become faulty.
Long-Term Health Risks: Insufficient sleep for many years increases the risks of dementia, heart issues, depression, and obesity.
Sleep as a "Dishwasher Cycle" (What Happens During Sleep)
Sleep is essential because it functions like a dishwasher cycle for your brain:
Chemical Clean-up: It cleans the dirty chemicals the brain uses all day long to think, organize, move the body, and solve problems.
Science: During deep sleep, your brain uses the glymphatic system to literally flush out metabolic waste, including beta-amyloid, a protein linked to Alzheimer’s.
Emotional Processing: It sorts the sensory information, emotions, and memories we gather in our experiences during the day.
Trauma and Anxiety Interference: Trauma and anxiety disorders often interfere with the REM process (the phase that processes emotions and trauma), leaving a person chemically fatigued and unable to fully regulate their emotions.
The Basics: Creating Your Sleep Sanctuary
To improve your sleep, you must mindfully prepare your body and environment for deep rest.
Your 30-Minute Wind-Down Challenge
Implement a 30-minute “Tech-Free Wind-Down” ritual before bed for five nights this week. This means zero screens, zero work, and zero stimulating conversations.
Avoid Blue Light: Avoiding looking at screens for at least 1 hour before going to bed is crucial, as blue light delays the release of melatonin, the chemical that prepares the body for sleep.
Mindful Preparation: Help yourself relax with warm water on your face, taking a bath (Lavender scents or bath bombs are helpful), or self-massages (Magnesium lotion can help with restless legs).
Calm the Mind (Journaling): To prevent remembering all the tasks for the next day, journal all the tasks and worries you might forget before going to sleep. This can calm anxiety and lessen the severity of emotional impact on REM sleep.
Consistency and Environment: Be consistent with your sleep and wake times to set your circadian rhythm. Aim for a cool, dark, and quiet room (use white noise or ear plugs if needed).
The Specifics: Solutions for the Mid-Night Wake-Up
Sometimes, even with a good routine, stress, fatigue, or deep-seated anxiety can jolt you awake between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. This is often the quiet time your brain selects to deal with unresolved issues.
Scenario A: Emotional Jolt or Panic Zinger
A dream with intense emotions, a zinger of panic, or pure emotional intensity can wake you up and prevent you from returning to sleep.
The Rule: Do Not Stay in Bed and Try to Solve It. This only trains your brain to continue this process.
Change Your Space: Get out of bed and use red or orange night-lights to minimally light the space.
Change Your Temperature: Changing temperature is key to resetting the emotions of the body. Cuddle into a warm blanket or, if you're too hot, use a cool drink or cloth.
The Boring Reset: Find a very boring book or audio story to listen to for 10–15 minutes.
The Goal: Aim to be back in bed within 30 minutes from the time you got up.
Scenario B: The Emotional Soap Opera
If the emotions are strong and you cannot shake the feelings, grab a journal and spend less than ten minutes answering these Emotional Soap Opera Questions:
What is the main theme of the dream or worry? (Can’t find something/someone, betrayed by someone, never ending misery...)
What emotions are the strongest? (Fear, hurt, sadness, anger,...)
What core belief is being triggered? (I am not good enough. I am flawed. I am unlovable...)
Who are the main characters in the dream or involved in the drama? (Parents, Siblings, Friends, Romantic Partners, Bosses...)
Once finished, close the journal and use soothing practices like deep belly breathing, yoga, or meditations (using apps like Insight Timer or Calm App) to calm your mind.
Scenario C: The 4:00 AM Planning Brain
This is common for high-achievers who lack sufficient time during the day to organize tasks, causing the brain to choose the quietest time to present the problems.
Note and Schedule: Note what your brain wants to solve or plan, then write it down on a sticky note or small paper.
Plan Time Later: Plan a specific time during your day or week to do a meditation and problem-solving/task management session.
Guided Return: Guide your brain back into your body using these actions and phrases:
Say: “Now is not the time to solve problems or plan.”
Say: “I have time set aside for…”
Say: “Now is time to rest.”
Try Body scanning, stretching, self-massage with a calming oil, or sipping an herbal tea with hops, valerian root, or passion flower.
Lifestyle Changes for Deeper Rest
If your sleep issues persist, it’s a strong signal that something in your life needs to be changed. No medication can make lifestyle changes, stop abuse, or heal trauma.
Resolve Unresolved Events: Use the Emotional Soap Opera Questions to gain insights into events or memories that are causing you to lose sleep. Working on resolving these during the day can improve sleep over time.
Assess Boundaries and Responsibilities: If your brain needs to plan/solve problems at night, it's time to assess your responsibilities. High-achievers with anxiety often have weak boundaries with work/rest and feel over-responsible in relationships.
Train Your Mind: Train your mind to relax when you decide it is best for you. Be your own advocate by using meditation, mindfulness, and gently guiding yourself back to focus on the present.
Your Challenge this week is to improve your sleep by preparing to rest deeply and practicing training your brain to relax when sleep evades you.
Your Next Step:
You've taken the courageous first step by acknowledging that sleep is a non-negotiable element in your life. Your ability to get quality rest is the ultimate indicator of your overall health—and if your body is waking you up at 4:00 AM with problems to solve or emotions to process, it’s a clear signal that something in your life needs to change. To turn this awareness into sustained action, I recommend two resources: First, utilize journaling to find patterns and themes. Also consider individual therapy sessions to uncover meaning and resolve deeply rooted conflicts. Second, if your lack of rest is rooted in anxiety and trauma interfering with your REM sleep, the ZenHikr Challenge provides the necessary somatic and mindful framework to gently process those deeper emotional patterns during the day, restoring the security your body needs to finally rest deeply at night.
