Last Night

Note: This was written earlier this morning but posted later in the day. I decided not to change the tense so read with that in mind.

Last night, after a mumbled and downright inaudible conversation - most of which I cannot currently recall, I fell asleep fully clothed with my make-up and the lights still on. To some of you, this may not sound strange at all and your response to that statement of fact would simply be "you were probably just really tired, big deal?" Actually I was exhausted. Why am I telling you this? Well it's because, falling asleep wearing the clothes sported earlier that day with my make-up and lights still on is very unlike me. Very, unlike me.

Don't get me wrong, it has happened before but the reason I am alarmed is because I never usually sleep the whole night through like that. Usually, my body would be in a state of unrest because my subconscious would be imploring me to wake up, change, cleanse my face and conserve the damn electricity! Usually, in the wee hours of the morning, that time reserved for drunkards, slumber-seeking pub or partygoers and prowling, nuisance urban foxes, I would randomly wake, change, cleanse, conserve our electricity bill and then go back to sleep.

So, as I write this on my commute to work, I find myself asking two questions:

1) Why am I so tired?

2) Why do I think this is blog worthy?

Well, I'm tired for a number of reasons. The last week has been extremely busy for me and somewhat stressful. Actually, the last few weeks have been busy and that usually means I get less sleep or my rest is extremely disturbed and plagued with nightmares and/or thoughts of what I should or could be doing. Also, another explanation could be that I do a lot of other things outside of my 9 to 6 (oh how I wish it were a 9 to 5!). This (understandably) is starting to take its toll.

I feel that this is worth writing about because there is actually a noteworthy number of the UK population that have problems sleeping; 25% to be specific (that may or may not be a fabricated statistic to illustrate my point - I thought it would be fun for you to find out no your own) but I digress. I do a lot of different things and yet somehow I still feel like I'm underachieving - I'm learning to cut myself some slack though. Working hard is a wonderful thing but working smart it better.

I made a pretty important decision recently that'll hopefully enable me to work smart and less hard. (I say less hard because anything worthwhile in life always requires some degree of effort - very few [good] things will ever be handed to you on a plate.) But anyway, if you haven't had a similar "do I work too hard / am I working hard or smart enough" conversation with yourself yet then I implore you to do so in order to reassess your goals and strategies.

Due to the comparatively short-ish nature of this post, I'll leave you with a few words that have gotten me through the past few weeks taken from an amazingly insightful book called Notes from a Friend by Anthony Robbins (READ IT! If you haven't already!):

YOUR PAST DOES NOT EQUAL YOUR FUTURE

NO PROBLEM IS PERMANENT

NO PROBLEM AFFECTS MY ENTIRE LIFE

THIS TOO SHALL PASS IF I CONTINUE TO TAKE MASSIVE, POSITIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE ACTION

Massive, consistent action with pure persistence and a sense of flexibility in pursuing your goals will ultimately give you what you want, but you must abandon any sense that there is no solution

We all have problems, disappointments, and frustrations, but it’s how we deal with setbacks that will shape our lives more than anything else we do

SUCCESS IS THE RESULT OF GOOD JUDGMENT

GOOD JUDGMENT IS THE RESULT OF EXPERIENCE

EXPERIENCE IS OFTEN THE RESULT OF BAD JUDGMENT

Happy working. goal setting and sleeping - let me know if you often/ever experience problems sleeping too?