How did you sleep last night?

Be honest…

Did you wake up this fine Monday Spring morning feeling refreshed and bounce out of bed like a newborn lamb?

Or did you feel groggy, tired and achy, like you’d done a few rounds in a boxing ring?

If it’s the latter, you’re not alone.

Around 30%-40% of adults say they experience insomnia.

While over 75% of people over 65 report some form of sleep disturbance each night.

And this is clearly a problem if you’re ambitious to achieve big projects that need your total concentration.

After all, you need sleep to recharge your body and brain.

A good night’s kip resets your nervous system, rebalances your hormones, processes your emotional experiences and helps consolidate your memories.

When you don’t get enough rest, you face all kinds of obstacles.

The obvious ones are irritability, foggy thinking and slower reaction times. But it can also lower your learning capacity and your ability to work under pressure.

None of which are ideal when you’re trying to set up and run a home business, or learn a new skill – often after a busy day of work.

However…

What if your sleep problem wasn’t as bad as you thought it was?

And what if feeling more energetic was just a matter of shifting your mindset?

This was the surprising conclusion of a scientific study, which I read about this week.

And as ‘World Sleep Day’ is coming up this week (March 13th) I thought I’d share it with you.

Why You Don’t Need 8 Hours Sleep

The common mantra is that we all need 8 hours of sleep every night.

Fail to reach that target – so we’re told – and we’ll be at risk of burnout, along with heart disease, dementia and other serious health issues.

Because of this, there’s been a boom in the ‘sleep industry.

Popular products include…

• Wearable sleep trackers
• Sleep programmes and courses
• Meditation audio guides
• Smart mattresses
• Melatonin and magnesium supplements
• Blue light glasses

Which means that we’re tracking our sleep more than ever before. And lots of us are becoming utterly obsessed with hitting that 8 hour target.

The trouble is, being stressed about sleep is one of the most reliable ways to damage your sleep levels.

The more you worry, the harder it gets.

And here’s the thing…

The evidence for this golden number is shakier than headlines suggest.

Most experts say that, provided you’re getting more than 6 hours, you should be absolutely fine.

Yet for many people, 6 hours of sleep feels like a disaster.

They wake up and bemoan their previous night’s struggles.

All that staring at the ceiling with their mind racing… waking up for no reason at 3am…. going to the loo…

Yet it’s this BELIEF that can be more of a problem for your levels of focus and energy than the actual lack of sleep.

You see, in cognitive performance tests carried out in 2021, researchers found that it wasn’t the objective quality of sleep that predicted how well people performed.

It was their perception of how well they had slept.

For instance, the reaction time to challenges was quicker when subjects thought that they’d slept for 8 hours (but in reality they’d given only 5-hours to sleep).

Reaction times slowed when test subjects thought they’d had 5 hours of sleep (but actually slept 8-hours).

You can see the study results here.

And here’s another fascinating finding.

At least a third of people who label themselves as ‘insomniacs’, actually sleep pretty well when objectively measured.

They’ve developed what’s known as an INSOMNIA IDENTITY

So they’ll say, “I’m a bad sleeper” and repeat that over and over again, until it feels like a fact.

But it’s not necessarily true at all.

Okay, so you might wake up a few times a night… go to the loo…. toss and turn a bit.

Yet it doesn’t necessarily mean you should wake up the next morning feeling disappointed.

Another person the same age as you might have the SAME night’s sleep and wake up feeling satisfied – even glad that they got more sleep than usual.

That person will feel less tired throughout the day and perform much better at tasks.

Which means that it could all come down to a shift in your mindset.

Rather than telling yourself “I’m knackered, I’ll be useless today”, you could tell yourself, “I’ve slept enough, I’m going to be okay”.

This could automatically improve your energy and focus.

And there’s a wider lesson here that applies to more than just sleep…

How to Recalibrate Your Sense of Failure and Success

Let’s imagine that two people launch a small digital product on Etsy.

Both of them make 15 sales in a week.

One of them thinks “That’s disappointing.”

The other thinks: “That’s 15 strangers who paid me.”

In both cases you have the same result, but a different perception of failure.

The person who’s disappointed will feel de-motivated and may even give up taking the project any further.

But the person who feels successful will be energised and motivated to work hard to get an even better result next time.

In other words, your perception of an event can increase or reduce its physical and mental impact.

You can magnify the failure… or magnify the success.

Which one you choose will make a big difference to your future performance.

Usually it comes down to setting the right expectations.

Most people set an ambitious target, which is admirable….

But because of this, they define anything short of that target as a total defeat.

So if you expected 100 sales, then 15 feels disappointing.

Yet you could see it another way…

Because when you’re building a business from scratch, it’s important to appreciate even small gains.

Sure, 2, 5 or 15 sales is not a lot, but it shows proof of concept.

It’s a demonstration that you CAN make sales, and that your offer DOES have appeal to customers.

Which is an exciting base to grow from!

If you define success as ‘measurable improvement’ then you will experience many more small victories, which will build your confidence and motivation.

So perhaps a better question isn’t, “Did I succeed?” or “Did I fail?”

It’s, “Did I progress?”

Often the answer to this will be a resounding ‘yes’!