How to improve your life balance with sleep

Are you on a journey building yourself the best life balance possible, but you just don’t know where to start? I suggest you start with your sleep. This can be backed up by Matt Walker a scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology who points out: sleep is your superpower. Why this is so, is what we’re going to dig into by looking at how to improve your life balance with sleep.

How sleep impacts your mind, body, soul and DNA

If you look, you will find a whole bunch of studies showing the importance of a good night’s sleep. You are also going to read about how sleep will impact all areas of your well-being.

To get a better understanding of why sleep has a huge impact on your life balance, we need to look at which areas sleep affects. In his TED Talk Walker explains how sleep will impact your brain, body, DNA code and immune system.

Physiologically a good night’s sleep has a positive impact on both your reproductive and cardiovascular system. Walker explains how you have so-called natural killer cells in your body. These cells see to it that your immune system works as it should. They are responsible for identifying dangerous elements, which might be for instance cancer cells. To simplify it, having your sleep-restricted will cause a drop of these cells. That is why Walker talks about how short sleep can increase cancer.

When you see to it that you get a good night´s sleep your body and brain get the rest it needs. It´s not “only” about your mind, soul and DNA, even a workout has a better impact on your health if you back it up with a good night of sleep.

Why you want to focus on your sleep, to become more creative

During sleep, your brain sorts out information. What happens is, while you sleep your brain reorganizes information and knowledge from your day. In a way, it is hitting the save button for you. Not only does sleep help you rearrange information and store it. Sleep also helps you learn and remember better. In case of sleep deprivation, it is almost like your memory inbox would be shut down.

As sleep enhances your ability to learn and remember, it even has an impact on your creativity.

Sleep, enhancing good decision making

Sleep sets you up for a new day and gives you the energy you need. Whereas lack of sleep has a negative impact on your capacity to focus and concentrate. It also makes it harder to produce deliberate and good decisions in life. With an outcome of one bad decision leading to the next, and so forth. The ripple effect of bad or not enough sleep can some serious consequences in the long run. ⁠⠀

How to improve your life balance with sleep

Getting back to the previous claim about sleep being your superpower, I guess you can now better grasp the meaning of it. And of how getting a full night’s sleep is crucial for your well-being.

But instead of getting stressed about your sleep pattern, let´s focus on what you can do to ensure your sleep is good enough.

The easiest and best way to do that is to have a look at how you personally value your sleep. Is it something you find important and is it a non-negotiable variable in your life? Or do you find sleep to be something you can do when you aren´t busy with life?

 

Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity.

Matt Walker

To value your sleep is to understanding why you need it and building some form of regularity around your sleep pattern. You will also understand the impact both alcohol and caffeine will have on your sleep. There is no point in stressing about your sleep. Simply become aware of your sleep rhythm and make some smaller adjustments here and there to see what happens and what the impact will be for you. This is how you improve your life balance with sleep.   

You might also like to know why it is important for you to start building a balanced life for yourself:

• Living a balanced life; why it is important
• Striving for life balance; the key to success