This week is National Sleep Awareness Week which makes for interesting timing since many of us are still trying to find the hour of sleep we lost when Daylight Saving Time kicked in on Sunday morning. There has been no shortage of tips in the news this past week to help us build better sleep habits. I even recently taught a class on how to use Qi Gong to get a great night’s sleep, complete with a list of my top twenty suggestions for improving the quality and quantity of your sleep.
One of the recommendations that you often hear from sleep scientists is that you should never, ever press the SNOOZE button on your alarm clock or iPhone. You are setting yourself up for failure by starting your day negotiating for a few more minutes instead of hitting the ground running.
I have wanted to write a blog for awhile now about my “Three S’s Approach to Achieving Your Goals”. When I repeatedly heard the word snooze mentioned this week, it reminded me that I never shared the “Three S’s” with you....until now.
My Three S’s for Success are:
SYSTEM,
SCHEDULE and
(DON’T) SNOOZE.
When you create goals for yourself, if want them to actually happen and not remain as fantasies on a wish list, there are action steps that need to be taken to effectuate change. Whether your goals are personal or work related, pertain to fitness or finances, or are short term or long term, you need to come up with a SYSTEM and a SCHEDULE for implementing that system.Having a goal without a system is like spending a lot of money to get your car washed and waxed and then intentionally driving it through a mud pit on the way home.In this example, what is the result? You have to start all over again and go back to the front of the car wash line.
The same thing happens when we press the Snooze Button on our alarm clocks. We think we are getting a chance to finish our natural sleep cycle and will wake up feeling rested, instead the opposite happens. After you hit snooze and drift back off to sleep, your brain starts its sleep cycle all over again. You end up going back to the beginning of your sleep cycle and will actually feel worse. I think it’s the same feeling we get when we press snooze on our goals. We make the decision to eat healthy and clean, and then find reasons to pull the half-stale Oreo cookies out from the back of the pantry. We think, “it’s okay, I will just start over again tomorrow.” If we actually do start over tomorrow, that is a good thing. The problem is that sometimes the snooze begins a downward spiral that we can’t easily escape from.
If you have ever said to yourself, “I have already ruined my clean eating for the day, I might as well just keep eating this way” then you know what the downward spiral feels like. Ask yourself this, if you dropped your phone on the floor, would you say “Hey, it’s already down on the ground, I should just step on it and smash it into a million pieces”? I am sure the answer isNEVER. You would immediately pick up your phone, check for damage and take better care of it next time. Don’t you think we deserve as much attention and TLC as our phones?
Whatever it is you are hoping to accomplish, try attaching my “Three S” approach to it. Come up with a schedule for your goals and a system of action steps. You can mark them on your calendar, post them on your fridge or put a note in a bottle that you send out to sea...just take the time to write them down. Maybe the best idea is to put your list next to your alarm clock so every time you are tempted to press snooze, you will be reminded of the Three S method and it will give you a boost. If this doesn’t work and you need a 4th "S": SUPPORT, remember, I am just a phone call away!