For a stretch of many years in my early adult life, I was certain that I had some sort of insomnia. I was one of the many who would regularly wake at 2am and my mind would start racing and I would be unable to fall back asleep for an hour or so. This pattern persisted until I read an article that posited the eight-hour sleep stretch being normal was a myth. This now somewhat famous BBC article referenced in other credible publications such as Psychology Today cited a study done in the early 90’s that forced people into darkness in order to study their sleep habits. Those participants eventually fell into a sleep pattern of 4 hours, then a period of wakefulness and then another 4 hours. This study in combination with a paper by Roger Ekirch who revealed a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks was enough for the BBC article to draw a conclusion that supported the title of their article.
Coincidentally, I read this article whilst being unable to sleep and it had an immediate impact on my ability to turn my brain off and get back to sleep. There was something so comforting that came from the knowledge that my “challenges” were first of all, something a lot of people faced and second of all, not challenges at all, rather a perfectly natural sleep pattern that humans have experienced for millennia. I still wake up in the middle of the night, but 99 times out of 100, I’m able to fall back asleep in short order.
Recently, I have been thinking about other “challenges” that keep us up at night that are nothing more than normal human patterns, which should be treated as such thereby removing the detrimental obsessing that keeps us from getting back to sleep.
Following the daily ups and downs of virtually any graph representing almost anything that can be represented graphically. This could be weight, your balance sheet, the stock market, interest rates, or how many hugs you get from your kids. All of these examples are out of your control. Let go of your attachment to day to day fluctuations and focus on doing your self ascribed work.
Comparing yourself to others. We are inundated with the comings and goings of our neighbors, peers, friends, and co-workers. It is hard to not internalize these encounters and have them play on your psyche. Focus on improving yourself as compared to who you were yesterday or the month before or the year prior.
Certain bad habits. I am not excusing nail biters or nose pickers. We should have enough self control to tackle those habits, but maybe those “habits” were simply the way humankind groomed itself for thousands of years. Tissues and nail clippers are relatively recent inventions. Or how about overeating? If you are not sure where your next meal is coming from, let alone when it will arrive, you might have an inherent scarcity mindset too. And I think there is a strong likelihood that many of these traits become genetic or at least passed down as learned behaviors through the many long years of our existence before farming civilized society.
What this boils down to is learning to give yourself some grace so that you can move forward with your plan and not let the small stuff out of your control get in the way. I do think the first part of this newsletter shares the most profound example of what I am saying, but maybe there are others not coming to my mind. Can you think of any other monumental roadblocks that are nothing more than typical patterns of human beings keeping you from your best selves?
