#119 How to sleep when you're super stressed at work (3 Key Tips)!

In today's episode I am going to share my top 3 tips to actually getting to SLEEP when you're ridiculously stressed at work (same one's I use myself)

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Show notes and the transcript can be found here: https://michellekevill.com/podcast

Transcript

00:00

Hello, I hope you're well. And if not, I got you at least you are here. My name is Michelle Kevill. And I help high achieving corporate women feel passionate about their job again. Today it's been, it's been a really hard week for me, there's been a lot of stuff going on for me personally. Y'all know, I'm fully booked, a wedding is coming up my autoimmune conditions. But we're handling it, we're taking it day by day. And it's okay. Like, I would be probably freaking out, probably having a breakdown, before coaching. But I am pretty proud of the way that I'm handling this whole thing, end to end, all my emotions, all my feelings. And one really little thing before I start this episode that I really want to share with you, because I've had a few people mentioned this to me specifically, on client, we're talking about their goals they want to do when it comes to their work and their business. And, you know, they keep feeling really bad whenever they were I say dropped the ball. And they were kind of looking to me like how I do it. And I was just like, Honey, do you know how many times I dropped the ball. Like, like, all the time in every area of my life, I am dropping the ball, the differences, I'm picking it back up might not be because you're picking it back up straight away. But I'm always coming back to it. My business rules will always be here, I'll always be able to come back to it. I'll always you know, I might be working literally the other week I was working like, I felt like 20% capacity in my corporate job. And that's okay, because that's all I could give. And that's fine. And I'm glad I did that. Because I started to build up my confidence, I started to build up, you know, my health started to get better. And I allowed some of that rest to come through, I was able to bring myself back up to working in a better capacity. I never like to say 100% capacity, because you've heard episodes before I talked about this, it is not possible for humans to work at 100% capacity all the time. So I always have hated that culture of like, you're working on 100% efficiency. I'm like, No, I honestly think on a good day, a very good day humans work at like 80% capacity. And then the rest of the time. It's like 50%, on average. And then you have your bad days. It's like a 2040 I think there are instances where all of a sudden we can know there's energy and we can work at 80% i It's not possible to work like that all the time. And there's like, talked about it on many episodes as to why that is and genuinely due to like biology and a whole heap of other stuff. But I'm excited to talk about this episode, because a follow up literally a day ago just reached out to me, they were listening to my podcast, and I wanted to address something that is so common. I've talked about it a little bit, but I haven't done a specific episode on it. And that is going to be how to sleep. How do you get a really good night's sleep, when you are freaking the fuck out at work, you are so stressed. And I want to talk about this directly. I hope it helps that listener and I know there are quite a few of you who have reached out from time to time saying like the you know the effects of stress that that stress and how it affects your sleep. So I'm gonna go into that all today I'm going to tell you a little bit as to why it's happening, how to get out of it, and what you should be doing instead, if you're asleep before I get into it. My epic working life program, it's a six month program is so fantastic. It helps just get your life back on track, you want to go back to loving your job, you want to feel like you're worthy, like you're good enough that you can actually handle this and truly believe it. You want to be earning those promotions getting that next raise. Link is in the shownotes to sign up. I will be opening up cohorts around early next year. I keep saying listen, I'm gonna say it again, make 2024 the fucking year you make your goddamn career better. You love your job again, be where I'm at. It's fucking great. It'd be when my clients are at. It's amazing. Let me help you master these skills. So you can get that. But in today's episode, okay, okay, let me set the scene for you. So maybe you started a new job. And you know, I think part of you knows that you can do this and you can handle it. And yet, you're absolutely freaking the fuck out. Maybe you have to figure out and learn all these new systems and you don't know how to maybe the job isn't super clear. And here's the funny thing. Whenever you start a new job, I honestly think that's the case the job isn't clear. Right? And because that's been with every job that I've started, and let's face it, right, a lot of corporations, like they don't have great systems all the time. I don't mean that to call out places. But certain areas aren't gonna always have like, you know what it's like I say that work is like a culture and I think when it comes to business processes as well, if there isn't a culture of recording and documenting everything, you can see this in various, you know, pockets of organizations, depending on how big the company is, whether it's a small company, a bigger company, per For me, I've worked with very small companies to like complete multi matrix companies. And honestly, Now personally, in my own experience,

05:07

I haven't actually seen a difference between different organism organizations, I've typically found that there is always a lack of documentation around processes, things that are happening, especially if you are in a company that is evolving and building new systems all the time. The challenge with that is yes, you start this new role. And it's a challenge, it might bring up all those thoughts, there might be thoughts around fear of failing and getting fired. The most common one is, what if I get fired, and it brings up a whole heap of anxiety, but here's the thing that is a surface level thought, Okay? Because your brain and body is like, if I get fired, you know, go down the whole wormhole. I don't have a job, etc, and all this other stuff, but there is so much stuff underneath that. There is like, ask yourself, why are you afraid of getting fired? Why are you afraid of making a mistake? What are you making it mean about you, a lot of it comes down to not being good enough. And if you feel like you have to be de.in, that new job, supercar, like, super just knowing everything, here's the thing, that's, that's not going to be possible, but it probably has created safety for you. It feels safe, knowing everything, it feels safe, not having to deal with failure, or figuring out mistakes, or learning a new system or being in the dark and trying to soul like he's a complex problem. And we need you to build a system for this end to end and like go figure it out, which will require troubleshooting and failure and stuff like that. Maybe you're not even like, no one's telling you, you're doing a bad job, but you just feel in the back of your head that you are absolutely sucks. And what this leads to, and it manifests as is extreme anxiety, one of it being not being able to sleep. That's a really common one. Because why the fuck would your brain want to sleep, when it has this threat of work? I talk about this all the time, when you're stressing about work, there is a part of your brain, the limbic system, the stress response, that thinks work is like a tiger that is going to eat you. So of course, it's not going to want to sleep because it's like we're going to work the next day, ie you're going to get eaten by the fucking Tiger. And I need you to be alert, I need us to run I need us to do something, here's the problem, you just end up reinforcing this whole mindset and state that you're in. So if you're thinking I'm not good enough, or I should know everything should be doing better, like things like that. And firstly, what I'm going to do, I'm going to tell you how it's affected you now, what you're not doing from this state, what you'll very likely not doing at all, which will help you but you can't, when you think that I'm not good enough, right? So because you're not dealing or handling anxiety. And when I say handle, I don't mean that in a bad way. Like you can't handle it. But it's so interesting. When I talk to my clients, they say like this in the early days, like my anxiety is going to flare up. Like it's not actually your anxiety, it's going to flare up, it's your thoughts about your job that are going to flare up and create the feeling of anxiety, you have all these thoughts that you're not directly catering to that's popping up for you. But the way they sometimes speak about it is like, it's this thing that just happens. And I used to feel that way as well in my job, like I used to just be like, Oh my god, now I can't cope. No, there was a whole heap of other things that I'm thinking very likely subconsciously, that are causing me to feel a certain way, and then do certain things. Now one of those things, or a symptom of that, is not being able to sleep. And the problem with not being able to sleep is if you're not getting the rest that you need, you are like strengthening that stress response, right? You are feeling you're not giving yourself rest, you can't recuperate. And then what's happening is you're turning off even more your thinking brain, your prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of your brain is not a switched on, to be figuring out and learning and what it is you need to do. I will get into things you need to do to sleep better when you're in this state. But it also want to talk about this is so freakin important this next part, because because I finally realized through coaching, how I was also doing this to myself. So if you believe that you're not good enough, or that you're worried about getting fired, you're likely not going to ask for help. Because asking for help means that you are admitting that you don't know something. And you don't want to do that you want to hide away so you're therefore not getting any support. If you were therefore afraid of failure and afraid that a manager may I don't know, berate you, or get you fired. You're not going to be willing to make the mistakes that you need to fucking make to grow and I've coached so many people on this in the drama around making mistake then getting fired, etc. And 99.99% of the time, people it's been Fine, the person has moved through it through IT managers have been understanding the mistake wasn't even that bad, we are always thinking about the worst case scenarios. And funny enough, they have then become a much like more resilient and stronger person from it. Like they then learn, they then understand something, they then if I give you an example of like, maybe you have to put a complex system together like an end to end project, which is what I funny enough, a few about I think a year ago, I had to do that. I had to put through a process that no one knew how to do it. And, you know, I failed many times, I didn't get it right, I had to figure it out. The difference was, I had this thought, I said, I have the capacity to solve this as it comes. And something along lines of like, I have the capability to figure this out. Because here's the thing, it's not about you don't need to know everything. That's not what they want. That's not what they're hiring you for. Do you have the ability to learn things and figure things out. And I can definitely believe in that now, through coaching, that I definitely have the ability in a area with a ton of like unknowns, that I can figure it out that you can only do that when you aren't afraid of not knowing things. Because you might need to talk to so and so in this business area to find out how that thing works, you might need to go try something a little bit different, you might need to speak to your manager and be like, hey, I need to focus on this thing on my capacity and stuff like that. Like you're not leveraging the environment around you, if you are just hiding away. And I know this to be so true, especially when people tell me that or no one's necessarily telling me I'm doing anything wrong, I just I just believe it, I just I feel like I'm doing something wrong. And that always hints to me that they are just thinking that everyone is judging them, and that they are hiding and pulling away. So I'll give you a very direct example, where I think I actually recently talked about this in the last episode, but I really used to I used to run. So I'm an analyst, and I do a ton of coding. And I used to way back in the day, just like spend hours upon hours, like running code and like not asking anyone for like help or support or I tried to google it and figure it out and stuff like that. But you know, it just was ridiculous. And I saw how because I ultimately had this thought like, I'm not good enough that it made me feel super anxious. And the actions I did in that was I didn't reach out for any help. I wasn't open and honest around my capacity. I kept saying yes to everything. Because I wanted to make people think that I can do it all and it's totally fine. Like I kept putting on this front face, you know that like, everything's fine. And it's all okay, and I'm doing it when I'm actually dying on the inside? How the fuck am I meant to learn that? If I'm not getting support from others, especially in a place where systems aren't fully documented? How the hell are you going to grow and develop? Right? As some of you might think all people are busy, etc. I just took such a change when I started getting coached. Because I ended up just being an advocate for myself, my own learning, getting the support and the help that I need. And if I can documented the crap out of it for other people. And I started creating my own little hub, you can call it, you know, and you know what's funny, all that stuff that I'm totally I was too afraid to do in the past is honestly a strength of like leadership is strength of women, and a really good ability to be able to say, Hey, I'm not an expert in this area. But I know are really capable of figuring things out and then documenting it and communicating it to like someone else and figuring it all out. This is the trap you need to get out of people. And I don't think employees even want you to know everything. They want you to know that you can learn something and figure it out. They want you it's capability if I'm honest, that I see. And that is a big strength. But you can only do that from a place where you accept that you don't know anything that you are going to fail. And that is okay. And that you're not going to be a dick to yourself about it. Because if afterwards, you're going to come home, you're going to berate yourself, you're going to be mean to yourself, then of course you're not going to be able to sleep. Of course, all of that is going to happen. Sorry, we've gone 14 minutes into the episode, and we're not even you're like Where where's the part where I can sleep now, Michelle, I wanted to go on that little rant, because it's so important for you to start seeing how, yeah, frankly, you are creating some of this for yourself. And that's okay, this has nothing to shame you about I was doing this as well. The problem is you never had a very good tool or system or like anything in place to show you how to see it and to show you how to get out of it, which is why I get coached and it is why I coach others to teach them the skills so that they can do them do it for themselves but at such a deep level as well.

14:56

I digress let me go into however, had Sleep. How do you want to sleep when you're feeling in that moment? Okay, I'm going to give you two things gonna give you something, it's going to help you calm down. But I'm also going to give you something that helped me so freaking much. I used to worry so much on the weekend, right? I can relate to exactly asleep. I used to worry and I used to freak out and think, like if I don't rest now, it's the same with sleep. Like you're thinking if I don't like this happened to me, actually recently, so my autoimmune condition flared up. And I kept thinking crap, like, if I don't get any rest now, like, I'm really fucked up. That thought kept triggering and waking me up and freaking me out and my cortisol. And I was just like, interesting. I was just, like, super aware of it, right? I just started to tell myself by not letting myself relax, to the extent that I can right now, then it's not gonna get any better. What do I mean by that? I mean, if you're just fretting about how you're not sleeping, as you know, you make it worse, versus accepting that right fucking now. This is your level, like, you can only sleep like 40%. That's your level. It's okay. It's enough. I know, some of you are like, what? Hear me out here. Again, when you're focusing on how much more sleep you need, or how much more rest you need. You just perpetuating more fear versus is this like, true acceptance of feeling like shit is is being comfortable with being uncomfortable. And when you can do that you're not reacting to the emotion, you might be like, stressed or feeling overwhelmed or a little bit like, oh, like I can't sleep, right? You're reacting to the fact that you cannot sleep and you're adding more emotion to it, and it is making it worse. But if you can just accept that right now, with everything that I'm going through, I'm only going to be like sleeping or resting at 40%. That's okay, that's fine. It's enough. At this point, it's enough rest that my body can give me, given everything that's going on. That is a first step because I need you to be okay with that be okay, we can take it a step further and even say that, okay, I'm really going to sleep at 40%, I'm really, I'm giving myself permission to work at 40% capacity, which some of you it's going to be hard, but you need to accept that, okay, because what's happening is because you're putting so much pressure on yourself to do really well. You're like, Oh, my God, I'm not getting enough sleep, and therefore, I'm gonna suck, and it's gonna get even worse, and then you prove it to yourself. And I would actually say, that is not true you to the worry about the job, and about your performance, and you're using sleep or the lack of sleep as evidence as to see, this is shit. And it's not working. Because some people like we all get different, even when I'm feeling great. I sometimes just don't have a really good night's sleep. But I just don't make it mean anything about my performance the next day, and I just accept that it is what it is. Like, this is how this is what I could produce today. I could only produce this probably while at the start of the episode talking to you about capacities here. I could only do 40% Literally recently could only do 20%. That was my operating capacity. I've gotten to a point in my career where I know what is required to be a sick day versus just accepting that. Yeah, there's my operating capacity right now. So 20% I can find it or I can be okay with it, I can you still get some stuff done. Now, it's only through a ton of coaching that I recommend that because some people will then like super sick, like, yeah, like half dead. And I'm like, You are not at 20% You are at like negative 50%. You're trying to pretend you're at 20%, you're really able to do that. When you get to a deep level of self trust within yourself, that the moment for you. There's no self trust that you can actually handle this. You can handle what's happening to you. And you're using sleep as evidence as to Yeah, so you can't handle it. See the job is stressing you out so much. No, it's your thoughts, your thoughts about the job about you know, being good enough, about you know, like, you're getting fired, and all that type of stuff. That's what is causing all of this, again, the sleep is just a symptom of it. So addressing those thoughts, probing them asking why telling your brain, okay, what would happen if you got fired, that is really important. So first step is one accepting that you can't sleep, because I guarantee you when you can accept that you can actually sleep better. Funny enough. It's weird, I've done it for myself. And then I can get to sleep. And the second thing I'm going to tell you is an exercise that I do myself to get you into a more relaxed and calm state. And I'm giving you this two second because depending on how heightened you are, yeah, you may not go straight directly into you know, just click your fingers straight into sleep, but you're genuinely going to feel way more rested. If you do this versus if you don't, all I want you to do is when you're in that moment you're thinking about I can't say blah, blah, blah, etc. I want you to just like you know, tell yourself the stuff I was telling you before that's one, but also just notice how you're feeling in your body. I want you to notice all the physical sensations in your body from the top of your head all the way down into your body. And once you to really get literal with them, right Like, is there a tightness in your chest? Like, how does that like feel? Is? Is that tightness pressing down? Is it pressing up? Can you imagine it? Like, I want you to get really familiar with these emotions, because here's the problem, you're just reacting to them, you react to them, you make it worse, you can't sleep. This is how you go to sleep. Because there's a part of you right now that doesn't feel safe, and it needs to feel safe and know you, the way you make it feel safe is by getting in touch with these feelings. When you do that, you are letting your body know, Hey, I hear you. I know you're fucking scared right now. And I'm listening to you, you are getting used to you are getting your build. This is how you build emotional resilience. By getting comfortable with these uncomfortable feelings, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, that's honestly, that is the fucking secret to life, I swear to God, seriously, it's hard. But that is honestly, you can be okay with that the sky is the bloody limit. That's not to say you're gonna be perfect at it. But it's so important. And it's a way to get rid of that, like, you know, heightened energy as well. The final thing that I'm going to give you that I also do all the time, it is very semantic thing before I go into that, though, and I want to tell you this little thing. I think I've said this before, too. So I the reason I'm sharing this other thing with you is because 3am Almost every morning, it's gone down a little bit it flares up with my autoimmune condition, right? I brain turns into an absolute psycho, and it starts telling me about inflation. And, you know, wars that are happening and how the world is horrible, etc. The reason I'm always able to fall back to sleep is because I just don't believe the drama, I just pretend that my brain is a fucking like toddler. And in that here's the thing about take that emotional side seriously, then, of course, it's gonna feel terrible, right? But I just know, at 3am You put your quarters a little peaks, probably for me peaked a little too much, which is why it's woken me up because your cortisol levels do naturally rise at night. I'm not meant to wake you up. But if you're already feeling a little bit stressed, then they will peak a little bit. So mine is peaking a little bit. Also, my autoimmune condition does stuff to it, too. But it peaks. I just don't take it seriously. And then I go back to sleep.

22:25

I'm literally just kind of like, yeah, okay, I hear like, I just do not trust my brain before 10am. And I think that's a rule for everyone. Don't trust your brain before 10am. Because I eat in the morning, I wait till 10 Because my blood sugar level has like stabilized you typically by then. And then I'm more rational, clear headed and can think and I want you to take the same approach when it comes to your sleep as well. And if you're ever like waking up in the middle of the night, like you've got all these hormones like flooding through you, that's fine. Now this is a final tip. It is amazing. It does work. Don't freak out. If you are like just just go with it. You can also once you do those two things, start counting backwards from 1000. Okay, now you might think I'm at like 600. And I'm still counting backwards, don't worry about it, just focus on the numbers, it does not matter. You can make count back from 2000, if you want to. It is brilliant. Because what's happening, the reason you can't sleep is because you keep thinking, right? You keep thinking shitty thoughts about your job, and then you keep getting flared up. And it's making you feel a certain way in your stress responses. Like you know, flaring up, I don't want you to skip the other two things that I told you as well, because it is important to feel your feelings and to really not be reacting to how you are feeling. But this is another way to redirect your mind, then I want you once you start doing that you're just giving your brain a job. It's kind of like counting sheep. The problem is you count 20 Sheep like it's just for very anxious people is just not enough. You really need 1000. And if I'm honest, you probably made maybe you need 100,000 The trust me if this works, count backwards from 1000. See what happens and just focus on each number. You're not going in with a goal to sleep. Okay, I want you when you're in these, this is something I used to do as well. I just used to tell myself like I'm not sleeping tonight. That's okay. Like, that's fine. The rest that I'm getting is enough. It's the same what I want you to do with this, like, I'm not gonna fall asleep with this. I'm just gonna count backwards. I'm just going to try with the random woman on Spotify or whatever, just using the stream on told me to do and we're just gonna see what happens. And just see what happens because you're giving your brain a task because I bet you when you do end up going to sleep. And the minute you wake up, your brain starts going on about things, but you're not stressed when you're asleep. Like and I'm talking about actually asleep. Not really stressed. You might maybe be dreaming about it, but that's because your brains been able to switch off a little bit like it's been able to turn off. It's not thinking about the things that are stressing it out at the same here. redirect it, give your brain a task. It was Is to fret, let it fret over counting about numbers, you know, 1999 Oh, my God, like it's, and it's great because it's just a task you just focus on and you go backwards and just see what happens. Just play around with it. Alright, I hope that this has helped all of you that are struggling to fall asleep at their corporate job. And remember, if this is something that you want to take even deeper, if you want to go from absolutely hating your job, if maybe there is a new job that you're looking to go into, but you're a little bit hesitant that all of this is going to come back. And but there's a part of you that really wants to do it. And that's that part that is like it's driven. It believes in you and stuff like that. You want to access that more, if you know in your soul that you are meant for more things that you can do this, that you have like those dreams book in again in the book and you know what I mean, get on the waitlist for my epic working life program. It is taking 10 years of corporate experience and coaching condensed into one, six month one on one coaching package, which, with me, I've made so many word fumbles, I'm just not going to cut this one out. I'm so over it today. It's amazing. Because I give you all these like it's an eight step program, I give you key skills, it is going to build you a customized plan for you to get you to where you want to go. Done in six months. And you have so much opportunity as well. By the way, some people asking me this, if you will, like I don't have enough time, trust me you have time, you cannot make a session. If you go on holiday, you still get to keep the sessions. It's fine life happens you need to shift things out. They're so easy to manage within your very very busy schedule. Get on the waitlist I'm gonna start opening up cohorts and and discovery calls up in the new year. If this is going to be your year to actually not just love your job, but go after those big goals and prove to yourself that you can do this instead of saying kind of stuck and knowing that like am I really going to grow where I'm at here? Or do I want to challenge myself but in a way that isn't going to make me you know like completely blow up and not sleep and stuff like that. Get on the waitlist. I'll be opening up calls for next year. All right. See you later.