Value Your Self, Value Your Sleep
I don't know if parents (especially mothers) are more prone to this, or if it's something that affects everyone, but many, many, many of us do not value ourselves enough. And this affects our sleep.
Undervaluing ourselves, like most of our hang-ups, starts in childhood, because it's very easy for kids to interpret adults' action as being about them. I remember many years ago my sister and her family came to visit on their way to and from somewhere else. On their outward visit my husband was away with work. I explained to my niece, then aged about 4, that he would also be away when they came back. Her face showed what she was feeling. I can't remember exactly what she asked me, but at that age the word, "Why?" would have been in it, and so I explained that it was just because of he had to go away for work and that he was very sad to be missing everybody. Instantly she was happy again.
This is just one example of the way children can so easily think that other people's actions mean something about them. Had my niece and I not had our conversation, she would probably have concluded that my husband didn't care about her. She had no way of knowing (or understanding) the many factors that had gone into her family arriving at our house twice when my husband was away.
There are myriad times in ordinary daily life of most families that children observe adult behaviour and conclude that they aren't counted as important. And even the most caring and diligent of parents are not going to be able to correct every mistaken assumption a child makes. Of course, there's balance in life, and most kids will also have opportunities to conclude they do matter. But, for some reason, the human mind seems to dwell overly on the negative side of life, and so many of us grow up with this feeling that we aren't important. (Someone once told me that any child with more than one sibling will feel this way, but I don't know if there's any solid research to back that up.)
Whatever the reasons, many of us grow up feeling that other people's needs and wishes are more important than our own, and so we feel conflict when we try to meet or value our own needs. As far as I can see this affects our sleep in two distinct ways.
Firstly, not valuing yourself eventually leads to unhappiness, frustration, low self-worth and a whole heap of other miserable feelings that make sleeping just a tad more difficult than it otherwise would be! Secondly, when we don't value ourselves enough we also don't place enough value on our own need for sleep. Everyone else comes first.
It's this second way that I'm going to focus on now.
I've mentioned in other posts that my husband works shifts. He also works in a job where a mistake could lead to an accident affecting over hundred people, so it has always seemed important he got enough sleep. I spent years when the kids were little making sure they didn't disturb his sleep - getting up the moment they cried as babies, taking them outside early on Sunday morning if he'd been on a nightshift, keeping them quiet if he went to bed before they did in the evening because he was on early shift the next day. So perhaps I got more used to putting my own sleep needs lower down the list than most people. But I suspect that many parents who have sleep problems have done something similar.
Even people who aren't parents don't always value their own need for sleep.
Here are some common ways people undervalue that need:
They stay up late finishing work.
They stay up late because a friend, spouse or partner is in the mood to talk and they don't like to say no, even though they are tired.
They stay up late helping kids with homework that is suddenly remembered about at bedtime.
They don't set firm enough bedtimes for their kids and so end up late too.
Yes, at some time I've done all of those, and I'm sure you have many others you can think of. If you have sleep problems, like me you have probably read countless articles telling you that all around the world people are trying to skimp on sleep. The tone of many of these articles similar to the tone I adopt when it's 10.30 pm and my kids have an exam the next day but are still texting their friends about Dr Who, while playing Minecraft on a computer with an iPad beside them to FaceTime-message the next move to their ally.
Okay, so I am exaggerating a little here, but I feel confident you can now imagine the tone. And here's the thing: it never helps when I use it with my kids. And I do mean never: instead it meets with resistance, defiance and usually with us all getting even more wound up - not the best way to head for bed. So I do my best not to use that tone with my kids, for my sake as well as theirs. And while I can understand the frustration of all those article writers who feel sure that if they could just get through to the masses how important sleep is - truly you cannot bully or force someone into sleeping. Most people who stay up late already know that they need more sleep, they don't need yet another article reminding them. They know they feel tired, they know their immune systems are out of whack. They wish they could get themselves to bed earlier, but no matter how hard they try it never seems to happen.
Since we can't bully ourselves into sleeping, it makes sense to gently encourage ourselves instead. This is what works with my kids and it is also where learning to value ourselves more comes in. When we connect with our own values and desires and really honour those, we feel more satisfied with life. When we take action to get or do what matters to us we don't need to look for someone else to blame. Paul McKenna suggests that you take at least 20 minutes every day for at least 3 weeks to connect with what matters to you. You write an un-censored list what is important to you, and then divide this up into what is really important and what not so much, eventually selecting one goal to work towards. The last stage in McKenna's exercise is to commit to one small step towards achieving your goal. I think it's important to emphasis the word small, because if you feel sleep deprived, sometimes achieving goals can feel almost impossible. McKenna says it could be as little as looking up some information on the internet!
The first time I did this exercise, the goal I selected was getting more sales for my novel Drawings in Sand. I committed to a very small step - uploading a new cover for it onto Kindle. Taking that very small step lead to me checking out the Kindle forums, which lead to me finding a Facebook group of authors I could join, which lead to me learning new ways to market my novel. (Or any ways to market it since I had none before!) The novel has not as yet achieved my sales goal, but it has gained several 5 star reviews and ratings, the goal now seems considerably more reachable, and I have let go of a huge amount of frustration! That helps my sleep.
In truth, I didn't have a huge lot of faith in this particular exercise, and was surprised at the changes it brought. I'll be honest: I haven't done it a ton of times since, but I have become considerably more aware of ways in which I have prevented myself from getting what I wanted, and of the conflict this created inside me. Letting go of beliefs and feelings that created this internal conflict is now a priority for me.
Because I already used processes to release feelings and beliefs and have continued to use those, I can't honestly say if just doing McKenna's "Value Yourself" exercise would be enough to turn around old patterns of low self-worth. But in a way that doesn't matter. I suspect that if you need more support to improve the value you place on yourself doing this exercise is likely to lead to you finding that support in much the same way it led to me finding the support I needed with my novel.
Undervaluing ourselves, like most of our hang-ups, starts in childhood, because it's very easy for kids to interpret adults' action as being about them. I remember many years ago my sister and her family came to visit on their way to and from somewhere else. On their outward visit my husband was away with work. I explained to my niece, then aged about 4, that he would also be away when they came back. Her face showed what she was feeling. I can't remember exactly what she asked me, but at that age the word, "Why?" would have been in it, and so I explained that it was just because of he had to go away for work and that he was very sad to be missing everybody. Instantly she was happy again.
This is just one example of the way children can so easily think that other people's actions mean something about them. Had my niece and I not had our conversation, she would probably have concluded that my husband didn't care about her. She had no way of knowing (or understanding) the many factors that had gone into her family arriving at our house twice when my husband was away.
There are myriad times in ordinary daily life of most families that children observe adult behaviour and conclude that they aren't counted as important. And even the most caring and diligent of parents are not going to be able to correct every mistaken assumption a child makes. Of course, there's balance in life, and most kids will also have opportunities to conclude they do matter. But, for some reason, the human mind seems to dwell overly on the negative side of life, and so many of us grow up with this feeling that we aren't important. (Someone once told me that any child with more than one sibling will feel this way, but I don't know if there's any solid research to back that up.)
Whatever the reasons, many of us grow up feeling that other people's needs and wishes are more important than our own, and so we feel conflict when we try to meet or value our own needs. As far as I can see this affects our sleep in two distinct ways.
Firstly, not valuing yourself eventually leads to unhappiness, frustration, low self-worth and a whole heap of other miserable feelings that make sleeping just a tad more difficult than it otherwise would be! Secondly, when we don't value ourselves enough we also don't place enough value on our own need for sleep. Everyone else comes first.
It's this second way that I'm going to focus on now.
I've mentioned in other posts that my husband works shifts. He also works in a job where a mistake could lead to an accident affecting over hundred people, so it has always seemed important he got enough sleep. I spent years when the kids were little making sure they didn't disturb his sleep - getting up the moment they cried as babies, taking them outside early on Sunday morning if he'd been on a nightshift, keeping them quiet if he went to bed before they did in the evening because he was on early shift the next day. So perhaps I got more used to putting my own sleep needs lower down the list than most people. But I suspect that many parents who have sleep problems have done something similar.
Even people who aren't parents don't always value their own need for sleep.
Here are some common ways people undervalue that need:
They stay up late finishing work.
They stay up late because a friend, spouse or partner is in the mood to talk and they don't like to say no, even though they are tired.
They stay up late helping kids with homework that is suddenly remembered about at bedtime.
They don't set firm enough bedtimes for their kids and so end up late too.
Yes, at some time I've done all of those, and I'm sure you have many others you can think of. If you have sleep problems, like me you have probably read countless articles telling you that all around the world people are trying to skimp on sleep. The tone of many of these articles similar to the tone I adopt when it's 10.30 pm and my kids have an exam the next day but are still texting their friends about Dr Who, while playing Minecraft on a computer with an iPad beside them to FaceTime-message the next move to their ally.
Okay, so I am exaggerating a little here, but I feel confident you can now imagine the tone. And here's the thing: it never helps when I use it with my kids. And I do mean never: instead it meets with resistance, defiance and usually with us all getting even more wound up - not the best way to head for bed. So I do my best not to use that tone with my kids, for my sake as well as theirs. And while I can understand the frustration of all those article writers who feel sure that if they could just get through to the masses how important sleep is - truly you cannot bully or force someone into sleeping. Most people who stay up late already know that they need more sleep, they don't need yet another article reminding them. They know they feel tired, they know their immune systems are out of whack. They wish they could get themselves to bed earlier, but no matter how hard they try it never seems to happen.
Since we can't bully ourselves into sleeping, it makes sense to gently encourage ourselves instead. This is what works with my kids and it is also where learning to value ourselves more comes in. When we connect with our own values and desires and really honour those, we feel more satisfied with life. When we take action to get or do what matters to us we don't need to look for someone else to blame. Paul McKenna suggests that you take at least 20 minutes every day for at least 3 weeks to connect with what matters to you. You write an un-censored list what is important to you, and then divide this up into what is really important and what not so much, eventually selecting one goal to work towards. The last stage in McKenna's exercise is to commit to one small step towards achieving your goal. I think it's important to emphasis the word small, because if you feel sleep deprived, sometimes achieving goals can feel almost impossible. McKenna says it could be as little as looking up some information on the internet!
The first time I did this exercise, the goal I selected was getting more sales for my novel Drawings in Sand. I committed to a very small step - uploading a new cover for it onto Kindle. Taking that very small step lead to me checking out the Kindle forums, which lead to me finding a Facebook group of authors I could join, which lead to me learning new ways to market my novel. (Or any ways to market it since I had none before!) The novel has not as yet achieved my sales goal, but it has gained several 5 star reviews and ratings, the goal now seems considerably more reachable, and I have let go of a huge amount of frustration! That helps my sleep.
In truth, I didn't have a huge lot of faith in this particular exercise, and was surprised at the changes it brought. I'll be honest: I haven't done it a ton of times since, but I have become considerably more aware of ways in which I have prevented myself from getting what I wanted, and of the conflict this created inside me. Letting go of beliefs and feelings that created this internal conflict is now a priority for me.
Because I already used processes to release feelings and beliefs and have continued to use those, I can't honestly say if just doing McKenna's "Value Yourself" exercise would be enough to turn around old patterns of low self-worth. But in a way that doesn't matter. I suspect that if you need more support to improve the value you place on yourself doing this exercise is likely to lead to you finding that support in much the same way it led to me finding the support I needed with my novel.
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