Do You Dread Waking Up in the Morning?
Hey there. This is Bethanie Hansen, your coach at the Mindset for Life podcast. And I asked you this question today to start off the podcast. This is the topic we're going to be talking about. And the question is, "Do you dread waking up in the morning?"
Now that might seem like a really strange question to be asking you. But I'm Bethanie Hansen, known as "Dr. B," educator and coach. I help teachers, leaders, and coaches stop Sunday night dread and reclaim their power and purpose.
I've discovered that leaders, teachers and coaches care about the people they lead and the direction they're headed. They care about their students, they care about their clients and their customers. Everybody wants to feel confident in their role and treat people with love and integrity, even when other people are very challenging to be with.
I've been an educator and a coach for 28 years. And in my experience, sometimes it is hard to get up in the morning because of what's going to happen the next day. Somewhere in there, a sense of Sunday night dread creeps in. And we wish there might be a day off coming up.
At the same time, we even feel guilty for thinking it.
Well, what's helped me the most have been some of the tools, strategies and thought patterns that I now share with clients through education and professional coaching.
These very same things helped me to wake up and to reduce my own stress levels, to improve my sense of overall well being, and to be able to move through tough challenges with greater purpose. Now, I don't feel "that" way anymore.
Yesterday was a holiday. I got up, and I was so excited to be awake. I remember thinking, "I've got this whole, empty day. Nobody expects anything from me. I don't have to go to work. I get to do those things that have been on my list for weeks and weeks." I did some of those things. I cleaned the kitchen.
I did the dishes, I wiped down all the counters. It had been a mess for quite some time. Not a super clean kitchen. Went over to my mother's house, planted some things. Cleaned up some pots in the backyard. Really, really enjoyed the day. It felt great, felt amazing, in fact. And then today, it was a day to go to work. I got to do some coaching this afternoon.
I was looking forward to getting up. But at the same time, I wasn't. I remember waking up and laying in bed, and thinking, "Oh my goodness, do I have to get up this early? Why did I set my alarm for this hour?"
As I thought about it, I contemplated just like pushing the snooze button. I thought I might roll over and just go back to sleep. Then, I remembered my husband asking me politely a couple of days ago not to press the student snooze button over and over again while he was still sleeping. Because I'm just going to keep waking him up, right?
So as I'm thinking about staying in bed, I'm also thinking about how to be kind to my husband and thinking in the name of kindness to my husband, I'm going to be good to myself at the same time.
And I'm going to get out of bed quickly. I'm going to shower, and I'm going to put some energy behind it. I'm going to really try to wake up with vigor. And I'm going to get excited about this day.
That did not happen either. I got out of bed, I took the shower, I was still dragging. I just wasn't feeling that great. Then, I realized it was a sunny, beautiful day. And I rekindled that energy by taking a walk outside. That did it.
That helped. I was energized. I was ready to go. I entered one of my meetings, one of my calls, and I was able to participate and get some work done. I was very excited about how the day started.
Do you ever have a day like that where you get up and you start thinking about all the ways you could sleep in, just turn over, cover your head, reset the alarm and sleep a little bit longer? In fact, sometimes we have a whole arsenal of stories behind that, like why we deserve it, how much we're suffering.
All of those stories create more and more dread for waking up in the morning. So the more we indulge ourselves in how great it's going to feel to stay in the bed, how warm it is under the covers, or how soft or how cushy, how nice when we finally got comfortable, get some really good sleep, all of those things that we might be reflecting on or telling ourselves, all those thoughts are creating a sense of dread too.
Now, the other idea I have about this feeling of dread comes from the difference between a vacation day and a work day. Isn't it amazing how, if you have a vacation day, and you have all this time to yourself, and you actually have something you want to do, you can have all kinds of energy?
You might get up earlier than expected, because you're so excited about the day. And at the same time, on a work day, you know, your calendar may be very full. Even if those are things that you might enjoy and you might be looking forward to, just the sheer volume of activities that you expect of yourself and others expect of you during that work day can feel overwhelming before the day even starts.
That alone can cultivate that sense of dread. And it can turn on your negative filter that starts to look at blessings, gifts and opportunities as burdens. And pretty soon, we're looking at that day, and we create the drag we're feeling. It's like we've got the anchor dragging behind our virtual boat.
We're trying to sail around the house, or the workplace, doing our thing. And that anchor is just hitting everything. And we're feeling so down because we're not bringing it.
So one thing you can do to reduce your dread about waking up in the morning is to make sure you go to bed early enough to give yourself a solid night's sleep. That may sound like a pretty simple idea. I don't know about you, but I tend to milk the evening hours, because that's when I get my projects done.
I might even record my podcasts late in the evening, or do something I'd like to do on the computer, work on some digital photos, write in my journal, something like that, in the evening. If you save your best activities for late at night, then you really can't give yourself a solid sense of sleeping, a really a good foundation for thinking and feeling the next day.
If you don't get a good night's sleep, you're really not going to feel good in the morning. Let's flip that into the positive.
Now. If you set yourself up with a solid night's sleep, give yourself plenty of time to really rejuvenate your muscles, your body to really get into a deep sleep, you will feel so invigorated and refreshed afterwards compared to the night before.
How early do you need to go to bed for you to feel great in the morning?
Well, each of us is a little bit different there. It's hard for me to say this, but I really do need eight hours of sleep. There were some times in my life where I was achieving a lot. I was raising my kids, I was going to school for my doctoral degree. And all of those things really took more time than I did have in the day. So I might get less than six hours of sleep at night. And that did take a toll on me.
But that time has passed. And now it's time to really focus on well being and getting a good night's sleep. So the number one reason we dread waking up in the morning is that we are physically exhausted. That's the number one reason. If we can give ourselves enough sleep, really set up the environment that we're going to sleep in to be dark enough, quiet enough, cool enough or warm enough, whatever works for you, have enough blankets, have enough comfort, get yourself ready to go.
And then also set yourself up so that if you start to wake up in the middle of the night, you write those ideas down that are flowing through your mind and go right back to sleep. I have coached a lot of upper-level leaders, vice presidents, and corporate executives who wake up at three o'clock in the morning with an idea-filled brain, tons of ideas on their minds.
Often it's in the form of worries, things to do, stuff they didn't take care of the day before, things they're worried that they need to get done tomorrow. And whatever's happening to you, if you happen to wake up in the middle of the night, I always recommend have a little notebook next to your bed. Flip on a very dim light, write down the ideas, turn it off and go back to bed.
It's a little bit like the experience I had when my first child was born. He was a few weeks premature so he was born three weeks early. And he wanted to eat all the time. So he would eat and sleep at the same time, and then at nighttime when you should be sleeping, he'd be awake. And he would want to eat all night long, too. About three months into this pattern, I was just so exhausted and I went to the pediatrician, and I said, you know, this child's never sleeping. He sleeps, eats, and then he's awake the rest of the time. What do we do?
And the pediatrician said, you have to rock him back to sleep and stop feeding him in the middle of the night. The reason he's waking up in the middle of the night for food is that you're feeding him. But at three months old, he is now sound enough, he's strong enough, he doesn't need you to feed him in the middle of the night, so you can stop doing it.
Okay, if you've ever parented a child and tried to stop feeding them in the middle of the night, you know that this is a painful experience. Because they will scream and cry, because you're not feeding them. And they're used to getting fed. But after a few nights of this, they get used to it, and they learn that nighttime is the time to sleep.
And pretty soon, they start sleeping in the night. Or if they do wake up, they're not asking for food, they're expecting to be comforted and go right back to sleep. That did work.
It was an awesome method. It was sort of a behaviorist approach. And I'll admit,
