Sleep or coffee? If you have to ask this question…

The answer is probably sleep.  Today I was so tired and I thought to myself, \”sleep or coffee?\”  When I ask myself this question in the morning, it\’s harder than in the afternoon, because sometimes you just need to get up and get going. But, honestly what went through my head today, and I think is the real answer to this question, is that our body knows what we need. When we are sleepy it\’s because we need sleep. When we are hungry it\’s because we need food. Real freaking simple. When we are babies, it\’s super easy. Nobody ever says hmm that baby should have some coffee in that bottle. Nope, nap time. Right? But as we get older we stop listening our bodies and start following unnatural schedules or trying to do more than we can do.

That\’s where caffeine comes in.  I have been using it to be superwoman for years. I hate sleeping. Sleeping takes time away from the things I want to do. Sleeping is boring.  The process of going to sleep feels like an ordeal.  And it\’s especially difficult when you are over caffeinated.

A while back I read an interesting article about Gwyneth Paltrow\’s practice of \”clean sleeping.\” I am not going to try to explain what she believes but the gist is that our sleep habits should be priority for our health just like our eating habits. We all know that sleeping well is beneficial. I\’m not going to list all the benefits of good sleep.  That\’s what Google is for.  But, what I am going to do is remind myself, and you guys, that our bodies tell us what we need.  We just don\’t listen to them!  I always think, \”oh I need some more energy.\”  NO!  What I need is some more sleep.

So today, I put this concept into practice. This morning I was tired, I went back to sleep. Only for probably 15 minutes.  I\’m not talking about the snooze button. I did my stuff and came back home.  Went to sleep.  Got up, and felt a ton better. This afternoon around 4 pm I started feeling tired again.  And my first instincts were to make some coffee. Ya know, I\’m dragging. But, I thought about this whole sleep thing and listening to my body, so I closed my eyes and took a little nap. It wasn\’t a long nap — that\’s hard to do when a velociraptor lives with you.  It was probably less than fifteen minutes but it truly helped. My mood and energy has been terrific today.

Tonight when I go to sleep, I am hoping that because I haven\’t had caffeine since this morning and because I\’m not overtired that I go to sleep like a baby. My goal from here on out is to listen to my body as much as possible. And see what happens.  I hope you will consider trying this too.

Alien fighter signing out.