Hello Reader,

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IN THIS EDITION:

What's New on the Vitality Blog

Coaching Reflection

Important Changes Coming to the Vitality Studio

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What's New on The Vitality Blog

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Coaching Reflection

Getting quality sleep is a skill. For those of you struggling to consistently get a good night's rest, this is good news. Skills can be learned, improved and mastered with practice. The following six questions are designed to help you assess your sleep routine and design a plan with the goal of choosing a habit to start practicing to optimize your sleep.

6 Questions to Ask Yourself to Transform Your Sleep

Question #1: How long will you sleep?

The vast majority of adults need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night. To figure out how many hours you need, consider the routine you fall into after a few days on vacation. If you don't set an alarm clock, how many hours do you typically sleep in order to wake rested?

Question #2: What time will you consistently wake up?

The strongest signal to your biological clock is when you wake. Based on most of our responsibilities (work, pets, children), our get-up time is often less flexible than our bedtime making your wake time an ideal place to start. You can then work backward to calculate your bedtime.

Question #3: What time will you go to bed?

Once you've established your planned wake time, think about how much sleep you need (question #1). Count back the number of hours of sleep you need from your planned wake time and you have your bedtime. Now, if you're thinking this is impossible, ask yourself where you could start that would be possible. If there are other responsibilities that are getting in your way (such as children waking you, teens needing to be picked up, or pets needing out), what creative solutions or resources can you think of that you could experiment with)?

Question #4: What can you do to make your bedtime a reality?

When making decisions about how you spend your time each evening, consider how your choices impact your sleep.

One hour before bedtime

Avoid activities that energize you or get you 'amped' up. Strenuous exercise, paying bills or watching disturbing news will make falling asleep more difficult for most people.

Half an hour before bedtime

Develop a routine for winding down and putting the day to rest. Activities such as laying your clothes out for the next day, brushing your teeth, and writing in a gratitude journal send a message to your brain and body that it's time to 'disconnect'. During this window, avoid technology as much as you can.

Question #5: Can you stick to this schedule 6 of 7 nights?

We all make exceptions to our healthy habits. In fact, it's one of the keys to staying on track over the long run. Make a habit too difficult to sustain over time and you're only setting yourself up for failure. Scheduling time for a lazy Sunday sleep-in or a late night out makes consistency easier. If sticking to the plan is any harder than a confidence level of 9/10, scale it back.

Write down your why.

Reminding yourself why a good night's sleep is important goes a long way in motivating you to stick to the plan. Jot down 3 reasons why your plan is important to you.

Question #6: Who will be affected by your plan?

Unless you live completely alone, your sleep routine or the sleep routine of those you live with (including pets) impact one another and the ability to get a good night's sleep.

Sharing your struggles and asking for their support often go a long way to helping change behaviour. Try saying this:

“I’ve been feeling pretty tired lately, and I think part of the problem is my sleep habits. I don’t consistently get enough, and it makes me [grumpy, frustrated, miss workouts]. I want to try making some changes to my routine for a couple of weeks, and see if it helps. Could you work with me on this for the next two weeks, and then we can re-evaluate?”

Once everyone is on board, you can brainstorm some solutions to help increase consistency and follow-through with your plan.

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Still need help with optimizing your sleep? Sometimes even the best plans aren't enough to optimize sleep and require a little more digging into the issue and the solutions. Coaching can help.

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Schedule a Call to See How We Can Work Together

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Important Changes Coming to the Vitality Studio

If you've taken advantage of the FREE Vitality Recharge Toolkit or taken any courses or group coaching programs with me over the last year, you've been in the virtual Vitality Studio. This past year has been a bit of an experiment for me to see what apps/platforms would be most helpful for both me and my clients. While I love many features of this platform, it carries a higher cost compared with some apps/platforms which inevitably gets dripped down to my clients. And it's important to me to keep costs down and pass those savings on to my clients.

What does this mean for you if you have an account? (or are interested in taking advantage of the free resources)

You will continue to have access to the Vitality Recharge Tool Kit and the Boundaries for Vitality mini-course until the end of May 2023. After that date, your access to the studio and those resources will be discontinued.

I am currently trialling a few other platforms. Stay tuned for updates.

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Thanks for reading. If you found something useful, please share it with a friend. If there's something you'd love to learn more about, please share it with me.

Yours in health and vitality,

Anita 🧡

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