Pod Insights Change Wired 3 Sleep myths that turn high performers into poor sleepers. And a simple 3-step solution that I use to get my clients to 85%+ sleep quality. 3 Sleep myths that turn high performers into poor sleepers. And a simple 3-step solution that I use to get my clients to 85%+ sleep quality. Change Wired
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About this episode If there was a pill that consistently and instantly boosts your cognitive and physical performance - it would contain sleep! If peak performance starts to slip, don’t blame your willpower - look at your sleep. We dive straight into the 3 levers that consistently turn “I’m fine” into focused, calm, and energetic: the stories you tell yourself, the routine you follow, and the environment you live in. From caffeine myths to all-nighter bragging rights, we call out the hab...
Transcript 0:09 Speaker 00 Hello and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina, I'm your host, I'm your partner in change transformation in learning how to grow your best every single day. And on today's podcast, guys, I'm very excited to talk to you about recovery, specifically about sleep. And you're going to learn about three things that hold back great quality sleep or hold back people on getting great quality sleep. So you can use that great quality sleep to fuel your best days.
0:50 Speaker 00 The truth and the fact, according to research and all the data that we have, is that sleep, great sleep is a foundation of great performance. If you take Olympic athletes, for example, like there is no freaking way they will set records on a bad night of sleep. Not only that, even one night of bad sleep deprivation, less than five hours, will qualify you in your cognitive performance as being legally drunk, which means you are not allowed to drive because you are a hazard to people around you on the road. Sleep is crucial for great performance.
1:34 Speaker 00 And I think a very tricky thing is that it's hard to judge how you perform on bad sleep, subjectively. You don't actually feel, well, you might actually feel tired or that it's taken you longer to focus, or maybe your brain is all over the place, or maybe your emotional state is not where it could be. But sometimes you get into the bad sleep habits so frequently that it becomes kind of your default and you don't even know that you could. At a higher level that you could learn better. You know, so many times I hear, I heard and I hear from people things like,
2:18 Speaker 00 I'm not great at learning or reading, or I don't memorize a lot of stuff. And when you dig under the hood, you see they don't really sleep well. And they don't have good routine around getting good quality sleep. And no wonder you can't remember a lot because your memory consolidation or basically a learning process, just like you're building muscle happens while you're sleeping. If you consistently deprive yourself of good sleep, meaning less than seven point five or nine hours, which is recommended for optimal health and performance. If you consistently deprive yourself of that sleep, that means that you consistently are not great at learning
3:03 Speaker 00 or building muscle or maintaining your health or maintaining your emotional regulation. And a lot of people also experience a lot more stress or for example anxiety or inability to regulate their emotions also because of lack of proper sleep. But then people say, well, actually, we're gonna get into three things that hold high performers or people who are committed to being high performers. People who want to do a lot of stuff, who want to do the hard, the challenging part, who want to do their best. These are three things that hold those people back. And I wanna tell you that in my practice, I've been in coaching for eighteen years.
3:45 Speaker 00 And for the past five years specifically, probably for the past three years specifically, I'm super focused after I got certified as a sleep, stress management and recovery coach. I get extremely focused with my clients on the recovery as the foundation of their success. So what I noticed after that is with proper work and
4:09 Speaker 00 My clients agreeing that it is important to work on that. We get their sleep to eighty-five percentile plus. Where before they thought that they were bad sleepers, that they are not really that great with their ability to have great sleep. Or very often that they don't need that much sleep. But what data shows, and if you were to test yourself, I guarantee you that your performance cognitive, physical,
4:45 Speaker 00 in most cases, will almost certainly improve when you start having recommended amount of sleep. And, and, and, from my experience, it's for the, for the most part is in your control, what kind of quality of sleep you get. And I'm gonna give you three essential things that are needed to create consistent, great quality sleep. And then also some which are on a degree less important, but they're still vital and important. And again, why do you want to care about your sleep? Is because if you are interested in really, really doing your best decisions, your emotional regulations, which undermine a lot of your good decisions,
5:28 Speaker 00 your long-term thinking, your creativity, your fitness, your longevity, your energy levels, all of that. If any of that is important to you, or showing up for people you lead, your team, your family, your kids. If you wanna set the example in the world of being your best and doing great things, not just once off or burning yourself out. If you believe that people deserve to perform well, to do great things and thrive, then you gotta be a model of that first and foremost. But anyhow, sleep.
6:05 Speaker 00 Sleep is the byproduct of three things that I noticed high performance performers don't do that well. Number one, that prevents a lot of high performers of from getting good quality sleep is stories they tell themselves. Things like, well, caffeine doesn't affect me that much. I can drink those espresso or a cappuccino right before bed and I go to bed just fine. A lie, but I'm used to see a person for whom, when they measure quality of sleep with that caffeine and without, for whom that wouldn't be the case, that is a total lie. Caffeine affects everyone, just because you knock yourself out from pure exhaustion into bed,
6:50 Speaker 00 doesn't mean you're gonna get great quality of sleep and it's all the sleep that you need. So that's number one. The second story that high performers tell themselves that often prevents them from getting great quality sleep that they can have is, you know, successful people don't sleep that much. Successful people need only, I don't know, five hours or six hours maximum, right? And I'm just totally fine. What science shows is people who are honestly and objectively are totally fine on less than six hours of sleep, six or less, it's 1% of, 1% of population. And the chances that you are that person, well, there is a slight chance.
7:30 Speaker 00 But if I were to tell you how many people tell me exactly that thing that I worked with personally, that would be probably sheer luck, that all of those people are just happen to be in those 1% of the 1%. It's kind of like that research on the fact that every driver you ask thinks that they are above average. But if everyone is above average, like, what's the average and who is below that? If everyone you ask thinks that they're above average. Humans are very not great at judging our performance until we get to objective benchmarking, which for, for you, you need to do a DNA test in order to really qualify if you are okay
8:13 Speaker 00 on six hours of less of sleep every day without downstream negative consequences on your cognitive performance and longevity.
8:22 Speaker 00 And avoiding diseases down the road. So stories we tell ourselves, right, that you're just fine. That's another story that I hear from almost every high performer. Or that successful people don't sleep that that much. And successful people actually do sleep enough. I was listening to a lot of what Gary Vaynerchuk, for example, talks about. He is the CEO, the founder of VaynerX and just has a lot, a lot of companies he's involved in. And just does genius work without seemingly being genius. He wasn't a great, I don't know, studier.
9:04 Speaker 00 He doesn't have some Einstein-like ideas, but he just works hard and and he's thinks smart. And he he talks a lot about how he tries to prioritize his sleep and and exercise, even though it's not his natural thing. Now, he also studied meditating, maybe meditated for many years before. But more and more leaders start talking about how actually, eh, if I were to rewire back things and knew what I know now, I would prioritize my sleep better. Just because we know from, again, research that cognitive performance, physical performance, affects leaders just like anyone else.
9:46 Speaker 00 And number two, if you truly want to deliver maximum impact on people and in your work, it's not just the hours you work matter, it's also the quality of those hours. And again, what research shows, when you are running on late nights and undersleeping, you are definitely not your best. And doing small stuff doesn't mean doing better stuff or the stuff that matters. So stories, again, what leaders would very often prevent leaders from getting the best quality of sleep. And that's where I start my work with people. I ask like, oh, what do you believe about sleep? What do you think about sleep? And I just leave it there, open-ended.
10:29 Speaker 00 And people start telling you all these beliefs that they thought.
10:34 Speaker 00 The truths that they believe to, to be true. Like, again, caffeine doesn't affect me, I don't need that much sleep, or I'm a bad sleeper. I can't sleep, I've never been able to sleep. But then you ask them, when did you ever try to have a good routine? And that goes now to the next point is a lot of sleep that you think is bad is due to the daily routines that you don't do right. And by right, I mean, in the way that is aligned with how our biology works, our circadian biology, circadian rhythm, or 24-hour sleep-wake cycle works. Certain things need to happen in order for you to have a chance to have great quality sleep.
11:17 Speaker 00 Like, for example, right, once you decide to, no, you know, I actually think that getting great quality sleep will really positively affect my life. When you're really committed to that, then we can get to the step number two is your routine. And some of the fundamental things, three fundamental things that you need to start getting right before hoping for great quality sleep consistently. Number one, consistency of your sleep and wake time. When you go to bed, when you wake up, the more consistent you are with it. And I, I did personally mini test with my clients, the more consistent you get with
11:58 Speaker 00 the timing, almost to the point that everything else matters less, the better your sleep gets. So consistency first, and it also matters for your health outcome. Consistency is the most important thing because your brain, your body needs to be prepared biochemically for the process of sleep to happen. So your sleep cycles are synchronized, so your brain cleanses itself, so all of your hormones are released on time, like melatonin, oral like growth hormones, recovery happens properly. You need to time it and keep it consistent in order for your brain, your body to know when that event, sleep, happens.
12:44 Speaker 00 So first, it's consistency, which is really.
12:49 Speaker 00 Undervalued thing in today's world. People's sleep is all over the place. The second thing is light. Getting your sunlight in the morning, in the first hour of waking, or substitutions like 10,000 lux lamp. But sunlight, you know, it's not a lamp. So it always works better for wiring. Great sleep-wake cycle, which affects the quality of your sleep. So bright light in the morning and then at night, making sure that you don't expose yourself to things like blue light from your screens. Get the protection like apps, F dot L U X. Check it out, I'm gonna link it in the show notes. Don't be in the environment of bright lights.
13:33 Speaker 00 At least a couple of hours before your bedtime, at least, at the very least, one hour. It's gonna be dark. You gotta let your brain know that soon you're gonna be getting ready for bed. And what research shows, when you expose yourself to bright light, your melatonin amount is diminished. And even if you take a supplement, it's not the same at all as naturally produced melatonin. So melatonin drops, you and your sleep gets, sleep cycle gets out of whack, gets compromised and just doesn't work as well. So bright light, no bright light at night, bright light in the morning, sunlight. And then the third thing is substances. Like food, two, three hours before bed, your food has to be finished.
14:17 Speaker 00 Alcohol, no alcohol at night. I think the, the timing for alcohol to go through your system, for you to still sleep well is about five, six hours. Probably depends on the person, depends on the amount of alcohol. But if you take it with dinner, your sleep isn't gonna be the same. And my clients measured it. And on the nights when they do have that glass of wine with dinner, their sleep still gets worse. And when they remove it, it gets better. Alcohol, caffeine, the recommended cut off time is eight to ten hours. For me personally is, I think it's about ten hours. I stop by ten A M. and I go to bed around eight, nine P M. So caffeine really matters.
15:00 Speaker 00 And again, you can sort of fall asleep, especially if you're exhausted and tired and functioning on six hours of sleep all the time. But it doesn't mean that the quality of your sleep is not going to be affected. Again, it's one of those things that you can't judge subjectively. You need to experiment to see what it really does to your body and your sleep. So those three things, your sleep-wake time, regularity there, your light hygiene or light behaviors, bright in the morning, no bright light or especially artificial bright light at night, and you have your substances.
15:36 Speaker 00 So those are the things in your day that you need to take care of to hope to get consistent quality of sleep. First, you gotta have
15:51 Speaker 00 helpful stories around why you wanna get great quality sleep. Because again, if you have beliefs that you don't need sleep, you don't want sleep, guess what? You're gonna be awake, like your psychology is a powerful thing. Number two, your daily routine. And number three, the environment. And by environment, I mean things like, what do you hear about sleep in your family, at your workplace? Do leaders at your workplace say things like, oh, I did an all-nighter, I just really needed to prepare for that? Or who has time to sleep? When you hear that, and that is your social environment, guess what? Your brain gets a notice, we are socially driven creatures.
16:32 Speaker 00 And so if everyone in your environment does not value sleep and has really poor sleeping habits, guess what? That's probably gonna be your reality. It's part of your social context which powerfully affects what you do. The second thing, not having good sleeping place, not separating your workplace and your sleep place, getting your laptop.
16:53 Speaker 00 Into your bedroom, in your phone, checking your phone, getting yourself stimulated in your bed, where you're supposed to be sleeping. Your brain reads the context. What it means is if in your bed, you are always stimulated by notifications, by email. You take your computer, you take your food sometimes with you, you take everything. Your brain gets confused. And so when you get to the same place and trying to sleep, your brain doesn't want to sleep because usually what you do there is a lot of stimulating activities. So your brain is context dependent. So make sure that your sleep context is only for sleep. Just like for great digestion, you want to make sure that you eat in a place where you only eat,
17:38 Speaker 00 not when you, where you work. Otherwise, you can cause yourself indigestion because your brain doesn't know what to prepare, digest food or work, which requires directing your blood flow to different places. Your blood flow can really go two ways. Either to digestion and rest, or to work and run and being in that activated fight of light response. So those are two different states and your brain works in different modes for those states. So context and your environment, social environment, your bedroom environment, what you do right before bed, if you stimulate yourself with notifications, with emails, if you work right before going to bed.
18:21 Speaker 00 Like, no wonder your brain has hard time slowing down. It's not how it's supposed to happen, on and off. That's not how your brain works. Your biology is a bit of a slower thing. It needs like an hour to get ready into sleep vibes and transition to sleep environment, which is dark and cool and calm, with no notifications and stuff, just clicking and ramping up your brain.
18:50 Speaker 00 That is not how sleep works. So if your sleep doesn't work for you, it means that you don't actually work for your sleep. And no wonder your sleep suffers. And again, I worked in this for years, specifically in the last three years. In every single case, when the client is truly on board with working on their sleep and we work on the sleep habits and they take care of proper sleep hygiene and behaviors and environment, we consistently get into eighty-five percent plus percentile of sleep quality every night. And once they start compromising those habits, which sometimes happens, they're like, ah, I'm okay now. But then they change their habits
19:34 Speaker 00 and sleep starts getting out of balance again. Because sleep, just like most things in life, are a byproduct of what you do. And so when you change the actions, what you get gets different. Just like with brushing your teeth. If you want to have clean teeth for life, you kind of have to do it daily. Otherwise, you would do it like once a month, right? But there is a reason why we do it every day. The same thing with shower. You want to be clean every day? Well, you've got to take your shower every day. Yes, till the rest of your life. And sleep is one of those things you will have to do till the rest of your life. And it depends on good routines in your life. And yes, you know, I lived in fifteen different countries.
20:19 Speaker 00 And once I started valuing my sleep and I decided it's going to be my priority because it affects so positively my performance and more importantly, my emotional well-being and happiness and health on so many levels. Once I noticed that and decided to prioritize, it kind of became easier. Like, yeah, I do these things and I don't go out late at night. And that's fine. I'll go out in the morning with people that also prefer to have more a biology-friendly lifestyle. We are not night owls. Maybe it's time we'll make peace with it and organize our world accordingly.
21:03 Speaker 00 Because, well, because it matters and it makes us feel good, look good and do our best. So that's it for today, guys. Before we jump into conclusion and summary, please don't forget to share this podcast episode with at least one other person who you'd like to maybe sleep better with you, have social accountability, work on it together. It's the best way to work on things together. Share, review, rate this podcast can only survive if you do take this extra step. Review, put a five star, a thumb up, whatever you can on that app that you're using for listening to your podcast, right?
21:45 Speaker 00 Really appreciate it. And then to sum up this episode, three things you want to focus on. If you want to get great night of sleep consistently for all the good things it brings with it. Number one, stories in your head, check with that. What are your beliefs around sleep? That will stand in the way of getting great sleep more than anything. Number two, what you do during your day, and we're going to unpack it in a second. Number three, your contacts, your environment, your social environment, your bedroom environment. So let's unpack the second one, your daily routine. You want to get consistent time of sleeping. Number two, you want to get bright sunlight in the first hour of waking in your eyes for five to 10 minutes.
22:29 Speaker 00 Or for the times when it dark outside during winter, you want to get some sort of solution, those circadian or sad lamps. And light at night, no bright light at least an hour before bed and make sure that your screens are protected and don't emit blue, green, bright light. There are many different ways of doing so. And then substances, your caffeine cutoff time, eight to 10 hours before sleep. If you don't drink caffeine, don't start your food time two, three hours before bed. And your alcohol, always lunch or none. The science is clear right now. No amount of alcohol is good for you, especially before sleep.
23:13 Speaker 00 That's it for today, guys. So sleep on it. Design your day so your good sleep has a chance to survive. And till next time, keep changing, keep growing, keep reaching for your best.
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