The Verlo Sleep Challenge – Week 4: Put On Your Big Girl Pants and Fight for Sleep

Do you have trouble carving out time for sleep? Read this updated post to learn how to stake your claim to get the sleep you deserve and need. 

Years ago, Arianna Huffington, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post had a life-changing experience that forever altered her relationship with sleep.

In her book The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night At A Time, Arianna reveals how, in her quest for success, she deprived herself of sleep to the point that one day she actually blacked out and later woke up on the floor in a pool of blood (she had hit her face on her desk on the way down).

It was, quite literally, her proverbial wake-up call on the importance of sleep.

And it transformed her life, both personally and professionally. She became a fierce sleep advocate, protecting her right to sleep and her employees’ rights, installing napping rooms at The Huffington Post so they could sleep without judgment. She also wrote her aforementioned book, which she dedicated to “All of those who are sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

In fact, this successful executive does everything in her power to facilitate sleep – and it’s something you can learn from her. As she says in her book, “unless we take specific and deliberate steps to make [sleep] a priority in our lives, we won’t get the sleep we need.”

What does Arianna do?

Let’s focus on just some of the steps Arianna takes to ensure she gets her Zzz’s:

• • She shuts out the outside world to prepare for sleep.

• • She makes her bedroom conducive to sleep by creating a dark and quiet sanctuary.

• • She has a ritual for preparing for bed that includes taking a hot bath with Epsom salts and burning a candle.

• • She wears wonderfully comfortable pajamas.

• • Her luxurious mattress and bedding are to die for.

• • She sets her own sleep boundaries by turning down requests for her time, powering off her electronics, and even telling people not to call her after a certain time. And she does this without any apologies.

Incorporating a little Arianna into your life

While most of us aren’t as wealthy or powerful as Arianna Huffington, we actually do have power over our personal lives. We just need to take control of it again.

For those of you who have accepted the Verlo Sleep Challenge, here is your sleep challenge for Week 4:

Make an executive decision to get more sleep, and set boundaries to make it happen. In doing so, you will lead a happier, healthier and more successful life.

And if you have any doubt of that, note how Arianna Huffington responded to the question of whether she thought she would have had the same career if she spent more time sleeping instead of working such long hours:

“I believe that not only would I have achieved whatever I’ve achieved, but I would have done it with more joy, more aliveness, and less of a cost to my health and my relationships.”

Wake Up! Sleep Better.

P.S. By the way, if you haven’t read The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night At A Time, we highly recommend it.