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Glenn Mattson
Welcome to Building Blocks of Success. Season three today is session eight and is going to be focused on the power of the rest, unlocking success through a healthy sleep habits. As driven individuals, we often find ourselves burning the midnight oil, right? Juggling countless responsibilities and we sacrifice sleep in the pursuit of success. Quite honestly, sleep is usually the last to do list, and is the one that if needed will get pushed. But here's the problem. It's a catch, neglecting our sleep, and can actually hinder our productivity.
Glenn Mattson
Today I want to deep into and take a look at sleep deprivation and what it does and how it can impact your success. In the United States itself, $411 billion. $411 billion is connected to sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is an all too common challenge faced by business owners and entrepreneurs for sure. Research is going to show you that successful individuals often struggle with sleep due to an overactive mind, high stress levels and an imbalance between life and work. Well, when we look at sleep deprivation, or lack of sleep, there's really three different types in one is what's called acute deprivation. Acute deprivation is where you lose sleep one, two, maybe three nights. So it happens and then you can recharge your battery that's acute.
Glenn Mattson
Then you have what's called chronic deprivation and chronic deprivation is over a month, two months or a year, this acute, where you're not getting asleep, just builds up builds up, builds up and now we're in a chronic scenario.
Glenn Mattson
The third type of deprivation that can happen is called insomnia. Now, insomnia is a little different because with acute or chronic, more times than not, not always, but almost always, their sleep habits have changed. Their sleep habits have adjusted because of work, and because of outside activities. So historically acute and chronic is because they got a lot of stuff going on. Insomnia is you have the opportunity to go to sleep, we're just not going to sleep. So when we look at these different types, and you know, the crazy thing is is we as entrepreneurs, I know I did it, I would say it's a badge of honor. Right, I have this watch that I wear that does you know how much hours you sleep and the amount of oxygen you get in your sleep, which by the way is critically important. But I remember sitting down with my brothers and you know us all looking at our phones and different types of tools were used to see how much they slept versus I slept and was almost a badge of honor, which is honestly ridiculous on how little sleep we got, not just for a day or two. But what was the weekly average then go to your next week, your next week, your next week or next week. And almost looking at it as a joke of look how much little sleep I've gotten. And then of course I have one of my brothers will try to tell me that well you can train yourself not to need that much sleep. And that's just you got to train yourself to be that way and I want you to ever realize it's not the case.
Glenn Mattson
Alright, you know, when you start looking at some straight percentages, they'll tell you, five out of 10 people show up to work tired. That's five out of 10, 50%. 6.9 of 10 go home tired and exhausted. Now we have to take a look at this inefficiency as saying, is it a badge of honor or is it just being a dum dum? Now, if you look through the, you know, the data points on the inadequacy of sleep, how it affects your cognitive functions, your neurotransmitters, it is immense. It's like, it's little like having glue or mud inside your brain, and everything just moves slower. It's not connecting, your decision making is off kilter. For many people, they get emotional when they start getting sleep, and they don't make good decisions, they don't have creativity, many of them, they're very poor at really memory, right and in handling stress.
Glenn Mattson
So in the long term, you can have some pretty massive physical things that can happen to you. And I have a lot of those stories too, on what happened over a month or two months of just not getting enough sleep, and what happens to your body, or over a year or two, what your body starts to do. So one of the things I want to talk about is look, when we look at sleep, team, it's important to understand when you're a baby, I mean, just look at let's look at timing for a second. When you're a baby and your first born right before, well, before you can walk right, in essence, right under a year old, you're sleeping 12 to 16 hours a day, 12 to 16 hours. By the time you're two, it's gone down to 11 to 14 hours. By the time you're six to 12, you need nine to 12 hours, 12 hours asleep. Gosh, I remember my dad would walk upstairs on Saturday morning and if we were in bed for longer to a certain time period, that was it, boom, out, right? 12 hours a night from six years old to 12 years old. And unfortunately, 30% of all kids have a very difficult time falling asleep. But if you think about that, right, nine years, six to 12 years old, you need nine to 12 hours of sleep. And by the way, each year, all the way up to 19, so by the time they're 19, the average sleep per night drops by 40 to 50 minutes, easily. So what's happening is, is that many kids, by the time they get to 19 are getting six to seven hours of sleep. When most scientists will tell you you need a solid eight hours of sleep.
Glenn Mattson
Now, of course, some people are going to tell you that, eh I can get six hours I'm doing great. All right, that's fine. But I'm just telling you what the average person needs is eight solid hours. And by the way, have you ever done this trick where you get a lot of sleep on one day and then on one Saturday for six months you decide to sleep in? And then you're exhausted the next day? Well, that's because you didn't recharge your battery, you just recharged your battery enough to be exhausted. All right. So if you look at the amount of percentages, right now, look at the average person, the reason that they're having a tough time sleeping, not always, but the average is that they're, you know, they're really invested in their business. Right? They put everything that they have into this thing, and their minds continuously race about ideas, about how to look at something, about challenges, how to write an email, what's the best way to look at a solution or a problem. So more times than not, when, when their mind is moving so fast. It's like literally having 13 plates on a little pencil spinning constantly as you're driving a bus down the road at 100 miles an hour in potholes. So you know, more times than not the entrepreneurial especially in the beginning, the emerging, the developing phases of entrepreneurship, they're spending a fair amount of time and their energy really on thinking about the business being in the business, right? Handling the stress. How do they effectively look at this vision or how do I handle this?
Glenn Mattson
So their mind is constantly going and as another fact that you will see in many studies. When you look at ADHD or kids that were hyperactive, right? Many different ways of looking at that, but if they were hyperactive as a as a child, and many of them right now are the ones that are entrepreneurs, they can handle an enormous amount of stuff going on in their head, because their head is always on. And they can juggle a tremendous amount of stuff. So what caused nightmares for their parents when they were younger, is a blessing when they get older. But it's also a curse, because they have a very difficult time shutting it down.
Glenn Mattson
So what I want to spend a few minutes with you is how can we address this? How do we really take a look at sleep deprivation, and team, I'll be the first one to raise my hand and tell you that I thought it was a badge of honor, I thought that if I could take a red eye, fly out to the west coast, do a full day program, have dinner with my client, jump back on an airplane and take the red eye back and then go to work the next day. So in essence, over a four day period, you got a day's worth of sleep and everyone would sit back and say you're crazy, how do you do this? I can't even imagine how you're walking. And the mere fact that others were shocked was the motivation that I could do it, right?
Glenn Mattson
So as insane as that all sounds, that's not what warriors do. That's not what smart people that are trying to conquer the world and develop a business and all that fun stuff do. So if you're in the mind saying to yourself, I'm a warrior, right? I'm great. I'm doing this because I have to and I need to. There are a point, right, that I understand that, but you have to recharge the battery. And don't be like, you know, again, like me where you think everything has to be done by you. Everything has to be done today. And the more you do, the better you are, the better you are, the more you do, right. So work hard, play hard. All those scripts that we have. Those are all good, but you gotta recharge the batteries.
Glenn Mattson
I remember when I was a kid, and I still remember it vividly. I'm in my bedroom. My parents made us all go to bed early. So you know it could be a Sunday night, I'm in bed at eight o'clock. It is sunny out at eight o'clock, my friends are out in the front yard playing kickball and I'm in my bed. I can hear them playing, I can actually see them through my window. It was awful as a kid, right? But you're a child, you're a kid, you gotta go to bed. Body needs to recuperate, your body needs to right, so my parents made us go to bed early. Even to this day, if I'm tired, and it's time to go to bed, that passive aggressive, that rebellious personality inside me says, you know what I'm staying up because I can. Where's the logic in that? It's insane. So you got to look at sleep as something that isn't like a badge of honor, if you don't get it. I want you to look at it quite the opposite.
Glenn Mattson
Team, at the end of the day, 60% of people surveyed said that stress and anxiety was the number one reason that they couldn't fall asleep, 60%. And if you look at that, close to 80%, it's 79.5, which statistically is 80, but 79.5 to 80% of adults in the US take prescription sleep medication, prescription, not over the counter, prescription. They're not just using melatonin, right, but they actually take prescriptions. So taking a look at how to fall asleep is a big thing for a lot of people right 70, 80% take it. Do you realize that 10% of us walking planet earth take medication to help them fall asleep five times or more a week? That's quite a bit.
Glenn Mattson
So when we look at this, let's take a look at how we can be better at the sleep part. How do we improve our ability to sleep? Now I'm going to run through three things with you, four things. And I would like you to try them before you tell me they don't work. And it's going to take a bit of time. Remember, as ambitious individuals who as we are it is not uncommon for our minds to be in overdrive and that makes it very challenging to unwind and fall into a restless sleep. So I want to share with you some things that have worked for me and many of my clients over 30 years of coaching to help them in this area. I'm going to give you, there's more, but I gave you a handful.
Glenn Mattson
The first one is, I call it the mind dump. The mind dump is right before bed. Some people can have a journal on their bed stand, some people will do it on the kitchen table, then they go to bed, doesn't make a difference where you want to do it. But what you need to do is navigate through your tasks, right, navigate down through some of the ideas or concerns or things that are going on in your head, like tomorrow I have to do or when I meet with so and so I need to think about this, this is a strategy I need to keep myself over here. So a very effective strategy is to actually bring the future into the present, like we talked about one of our podcasts, is to think about what has to happen tomorrow and walk through it in your head. And jot down either the ideas, the concerns, the roadblocks, the questions that you have to ask, things you have to remember; that all gets written down. By transferring these thoughts from your mind to paper, it actually allows your mind to stop thinking about it. What many people don't realize is when you're in bed sleeping or thinking and you start pondering about tomorrow, and especially when you start doing your to do's, many of us will go over those two do's 60, 70, 80 times. Now there may be different variations, different angles, a lot of us they'll go over those to do's over and over and over and over again. Many research will say the reason that individuals recapture, rego over, redefine their to do list, it is a part of their brain so they don't forget it. So one of the easiest ways to shut your brain off is to make sure that your brain isn't concerned about forgetting it. So you actually jot it down on a piece of paper. Many people would call this a worry list at nighttime. So if you're the individual that wakes up at two o'clock, and you can go back to bed, I have found it to be very successful for me, personally and for my clients, is having like a three by seven card type of thing, or a book if you want. And when you wake up in the middle of night, start thinking about something, what is worry? Worry is thinking about the future and not doing anything about it. So what we want to do is convert what we're concerned about, we have anxiety about, to two action steps, meaning that you're going to say gotta talk to so and so do this, do that, make sure I follow this up, send this email, make this phone call. And in essence, you have an action list. After you're done with the action list, you'll be shocked on how much your body actually starts to relax. The reason you're regoing over and over and over again, all those thoughts and things that you said, was solely because you didn't want to forget. So having the ability to have a mind dump is really important.
Glenn Mattson
Number two. Now, number two is visualization. And what I mean by visualization is before bedtime, imagine yourself peacefully navigating through your tasks, through what you have to get done. See the beauty of the success of it not the horror of the nightmare of the failure of it. So look through your day with some will say rose colored glasses, that's fine, but your tasks, your challenges, see them as a stepping stone towards where you want to go. Almost talk to yourself like you're a third person and explaining to yourself what you see and give gratitude towards it. Visualization and visualizing success and gratitude is really very, very helpful on alleviating anxiety and promoting a more peaceful state of mind. So visualization is a really powerful thing. If any of you played any sports, I'm sure that if you had a coach back then would tell you to visualize each play. You're playing baseball, visualize walking up to the plate, putting your shoes into the batter's box, moving your ankle back and forth and feeling the cleat digging deep into the ground. When you pick up your elbow. You just visualize everything that you have to do. Your brain does not know the difference between reality and unreality. So visualization is really powerful if you haven't gotten into that. But visualize your tomorrow. Mind dump your today. One of your great mind dumps is the debriefing I told you about in terms of start, stop, better, more, different. Amazing thing, amazing thing for your mind dump. Also, this is something really important. This is not an hour before bed, this is you are in bed.
Glenn Mattson
One of the things that I'm going to suggest is as a third item for being prepared for bed is have a habit that does not include social media. The average person watches 2.3 hours of social media before bed, literally in their bed with a phone, social media. Social media has your brain and it especially with ADD people, right, always going the brain, it gets very excited. And it gets stimulated by social media. So I'm going to turn and tell you, no social media before bed. The number one is TikTok, right. Right before bed, no social media. Literally turn off your phone.
Glenn Mattson
The other piece right before bed. Because as you mind dump, one of the powers of the mind dump is that you're taking all the stuff that you're thinking about and putting it on paper and taking it out of your head. What I want you to put back into your brain, and this is important, right, the last five to six minutes, before it's time for sleep, sleep, quietly walk through your successes of the day. Walk through every version of a success. If you made a phone call and it didn't go well and they hung up on you your success is, you made the phone call. The success is even though you got kicked in the teeth, if that's how you felt, you picked up the telephone and did it again. So the success is, you did it again and you didn't let failure get in your way. So a lot of what I'm sharing with you now on the positive side is something that many of you may have to learn.
Glenn Mattson
Like I grew up in a household that was very apparent and very full of critical parent. Didn't mean that my mom didn't love us. It's just that her style of communication was a little on the critical side. That's how she grew up. So shoulda, coulda, why didn't you? You know you could have done this, was all part of the natural conversation in that scenario. So when you look at our ability before we go to bed, you have to get rid of anything that's negative in your head. You can't have Glenn, you should have done this, why didn't you do this today? You know, you always do that. When are you gonna start to learn? Oh, my gosh, that's awful. You want to say is, dude you had a good day today. Even though it didn't work out with that phone call, you had the courage to make another one. And when that didn't work out, you have the courage to keep going through the day. You have to look for the goodness. You had resiliency today. So the last five minutes, I'm telling you, five minutes, last five minutes, you're really drudgy, you're really just about to fall asleep. That is when your positive, reassuring statements are made. Look team, and I've said this a million times, right? When you say something positive to yourself, it's like Teflon on your body just bounces off. But when you say something negative, it's like Velcro, sticks right on you. So we need a lot of the positives. Even every day, listen you do something you do well, you better stand up walk around and say I did a good job right there. But at night, try it five minutes.
Glenn Mattson
So we do the same thing for our kids. When you go lay down with your child, you're talking to them, you're rubbing their head, you know you're whispering and maybe you're singing to them right before they go to sleep. The best thing you should be doing for your child right before they go to sleep is have them go into sleep with positive words. Have them go into sleep with unbelievable confirmation on who they are. You don't have go to sleep saying you're a bad student, you didn't do well, you hit your sister. What's wrong with you?
Glenn Mattson
So we have to look at the good so the good goes into our brain. And when we fall asleep, that's what's going into our brain for the next six hours, eight hours, 10 hours, whatever we're sleeping for. So, mind dump, visualization, positive statements for the last five minutes. No social media.
Glenn Mattson
Number five. Make sure that you have a habit, meaning that you go to bed at the same time. You have a habit of doing the same things on the way to bed. Is it changing into your PJs? Is it then brushing your teeth? Is it then taking off your makeup or whatever you have to do? And then is it your mind mapping, right? You're dumping and then is it visualization? Then is it, so have a routine we are creatures of habit. We're animals.
Glenn Mattson
Last one I want to share with you is this. Dump it, visualize it, positive, habits, making sure they do the same thing each time. Positive stuff before you go to bed. No social media. The other thing I'd like to share with you is simple things. Go into bed and read. No TV, read. Some of you may need white noise for others of you need no noise. I'm a light sleeper. When we first got married, and I was with Heather and we're in our bedroom, and she wouldn't listen to the TV to go to bed, she would watch TV and fall asleep. I would read and fall asleep. The first year or so I would literally go to sleep and wake up and can remember most of the shows I watched. But I didn't watch them; I was sleeping. So the mere fact that the TV was going on. I couldn't necessarily recall it, but I can literally see the show the next day and I go oh yeah, this is going to happen. Or didn't I see the show? I was physically sleeping, but my brain was still processing what was going on. So I personally don't like anything when I go to sleep. Heather likes watching TV, you have a habit.
Glenn Mattson
Here's the last one I want to share with you. When you mind dump, another thing that you can do that's very powerful, is meditation. And what meditation does for those individuals that do have a mind goes a mile a minute. Meditation is for those individuals that think about work, think about business, think about their future, think about an email they have to write, think about who they have to hire, think about how they're gonna have this conversation tomorrow about. Those individuals that have 60 things going on inside their noodle. And then all of a sudden you brush your teeth and say, okay, now shut up and go to bed. Good luck. So when you do your mind dump, visualization, positive, reassuring statements, right, confirmations. One of the things many people do is meditation. Now there's lots of ways of meditating. If you need help on that, just send me some notes, I'll be more than happy to share with you four or five different ways of meditating. It's very easy to meditate. What's really hard to do in meditation is to shut off your brain. And part of meditation is the breathing. Part of the meditation is separating yourself for sure. But one of the most powerful parts of meditation is the fact while you're breathing, you should not be thinking about anything. Should be no thoughts going in your head. You're not talking to yourself; you're not thinking about things. You are mindless. And just the fact that you can turn your brain off and breathe in. Hold it and breathe out. Hold it, breathe in, hold it breathe out. You're not thinking about your kids, you're not thinking about the soccer game you gotta go to, you're not thinking about work, not thinking about well, how am I gonna get new tires? Part of the gift of or beauty of meditation is helping individuals who minds go 700,000 miles an hour. Stop. Slow down. Right before bed.
Glenn Mattson
I personally love meditation. But one of the things that I have found recently that has been really helpful, and it may be helpful for you, it may not be. And again, I'm sure many people have different things out there that they do. And journaling is a great thing to do. Meditations another great thing to do. But, you know, we all have our different ways. Now, one of the things that I like, that I've been doing because late is actually, it's called Yogabody.com. And it's not about yoga, don't get, don't worry about it. Yogabody.com. And it's for stretching, and it's 15 minutes a night and you do what's called gravity stretching. And it's three stretches that you do. Five minutes for each one, and you don't do anything besides just sit there and let gravity do the work. Depending on your body, stretching is magical to your body, magical for what it does to your endorphins, your blood system, white blood cells, it's just, it is amazing what it can do for you. But the stretching, separates and slows down your body and your brain. So me personally, I dump, I visualize, I stretch and then I meditate and go to bed.
Glenn Mattson
That's helpful, utilize it, try to get half an hour more each night, and progressively get a little better, a little better. In the very beginning I went to bed very late, I'm a late, late, late, late person. I'd walk around my house by myself, everyone sleeping. On purpose, I will get into bed at nine o’clock, 9:30, okay, 10. Purposely turn off the TV. My phone is already on a nightstand with the alarm on and read or talk or think and then take notes. You're dumping. Start having a new habit and a new habit means you have to break your old habit. And habits are things you get into your bed, you started thinking about what you have to do tomorrow and all the stress that you have for tomorrow and all the things you have to do for tomorrow, and then you fall asleep. That's a great way to go to sleep thinking about all the junk you have to do. That's all you're gonna be thinking about while you're sleeping. You know, in addition to that, one of the other things is people get up in the middle of night for different reasons. And that's just broken sleep. But talk about how to have habits to get to sleep and to stay asleep. It's really beneficial and it can help dramatically in your ability to be productive.
Glenn Mattson
I have found a massive increase in my efficiency and my effectiveness by getting sleep. And I am by far the ringleader that says the more you sleep, the less productive you can be. So when you take a look at this, moving forward, realize we all need it, we all have to have it. The reason most of us can't sleep is because of stress and anxiety. And if that's the case, do the mind dump first, visualize what you have to do, send positive things to your brain right before you go to bed. And if you need to have help, learn how to do yoga that'll separate your brain from all the actions that you have to do is one of the beauties of it just turn your brain off. If you're looking for some help that Yogabody.com, I don't even know who does it, but the gentleman is great. I think it's like 50 bucks for the whole year for the stretching, every night, 15 minutes. Fantastic.
Glenn Mattson
I've hope you learned a great today on really building blocks of success. Session eight really focused on creating an innovative way of dealing with sleep deprivation and having success. Talk to you soon.
Glenn Mattson
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
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