Your Body is Begging for Rest (Here's Why) | Episode 429

Your Body is Begging for Rest (Here's Why) | Episode 429

What if the most powerful upgrade to your life is free and starts tonight? Justin opens up about the pressure of speaking to a worldwide audience, the trap of late‑night hustle, and the simple reset that changed everything: committing to real sleep and sane boundaries. This isn’t self-help jargon—it’s a walk through the messy middle, where production schedules, family routines, and mental health collide.

We break down how dehydration, travel, and screen-heavy evenings quietly erode focus and mood, then map out a practical pivot to rest-first living. You’ll hear why swapping midnight edits for earlier bedtimes delivered sharper mornings, better episodes, and more present parenting. We dig into anxiety in crowded spaces, the return to therapy after a long gap, and the value of small, low-stakes habits—reading, naps, and even family coloring sessions—that cool the brain and refill attention. Sleep becomes more than comfort: it’s biological repair that speeds healing, steadies emotions, and makes creative work feel lighter.

If your calendar owns you, this conversation offers a realistic way back: one change, zero cost, big payoff. We challenge you to choose a bedtime, guard your evenings, hydrate on the move, and try a hobby that asks nothing of you. Work will still be there in the morning. You’ll be more of yourself when you meet it.

If this resonated, follow, share with a friend who needs permission to rest, and leave a review so more listeners can find us. Ready to trade burnout for better days? Subscribe and tell us the one low-cost habit you’ll start tonight.

Chapter Markers

0:00 Global Welcome And Big Goals

2:04 Recent Events And Show Milestones

3:31 Pivot To Self‑Improvement Theme

4:09 Mental Health Pressures On Air

5:46 Practical Habits: Hydration And Reading

7:26 Meditation, Naps, And Rest

8:47 The Book That Changed Sleep

11:22 Partying, Poor Sleep, And Consequences

13:42 Travel, Hydration, And Energy Drain

15:22 Rebuilding A Sleep Routine

17:12 Family Rhythm And Night Work Trap

19:39 Choosing Efficiency Over Hustle

21:01 Early Wins From Better Sleep

21:20 Low‑Stress Hobbies And Coloring

24:38 Presence, Anxiety, And Church Panic

27:58 Returning To Therapy And Ego Work

30:29 Sleep As Free Self‑Care And Boundaries

33:52 One Change At A Time

35:25 Final Reflections And Community CTA

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Transcript

Global Welcome And Big Goals

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes 0:02

Hi everyone, Justin Hayes, Justin Alan Hayes here, Voices for Voices, TV show and podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. You can give us a big thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share. All free things to do. We greatly appreciate it. And if you could reach out to 25 of your closest friends or in your uh friend circle, let them know about voices for voices. We're doing big things. We're third behind uh the Dan Bongino show and the Joe Rogan experience. So we're the hottest, third hottest show on the planet. So whether you're watching or listening from one of the over 100 countries, one of uh the over a thousand cities, uh, thank you. Welcome. And we want to make that 3,000 cities worldwide and 300 countries worldwide, and helping at least 3 billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond. It's because of you, our viewers, our listeners, that we're even at this spot. It's really a miracle, miraculous that uh we are reaching uh the depths of the world, uh, the locations, the geographies. Uh, thank you so much. We have only you to thank. So thank you and welcome to the show. The show must go on. And after last week's uh heavy snow, heavy winter weather, uh, we are getting back to a little more normalcy here. Um, getting getting content out, sharing stories, uh, talking about the topics that matter. Um our latest episode. Uh, we talked about the Olympics and uh the halftime show of American uh football, Super Bowl, uh entertainment, the halftime uh between uh Bad Uh Benny, Bad Bunny. Sorry about that, Bad Bunny and the uh the rival, uh kind of the America first uh uh rival, highest competition, uh first ever of a um halftime show of the American Football Super Bowl, as well as the uh winter 2026 Olympics getting kick started. Um the uh opening ceremony is coming up here this weekend, a lot of great things happening, a lot of great topics talking about. Uh so thank you for joining us, and I I truly mean it. Uh, it it's it we have goals, and then when we break them, it really it's just incredible, it's a credible feeling. It's hard to put into hard to put into words, uh, but we uh have nobody else but but you to thank. So we're gonna talk a little bit about self-improvement on on this particular episode. Uh what kind of things do you do uh to self-improve? Are they easy things? Are they are they tough? Do they involve more than yourself? Do they just involve you where you can uh you can work on things uh to self-improve? I mean, I'll just talk about right now the mental health uh aspect for me for self-improvement. Uh I wouldn't be able to be where I am at in front of a camera uh with so many people across the world watching, listening, dignitaries, governments, uh people that I you know you can only can only dream about having certain individuals uh in their staffs uh watching and listening. And and with that comes a lot of a lot of pressure, a lot of a lot of stress. So when we do come on for shows, a lot has gone on in between shows, whether it is something as we'll call it as basic as having a drink of water at the the filter in the back at rental, but you know, whether it's you know making sure that I'm I'm hydrated because attends shows and speaking and medication and different things, they they tend to uh you know give me a parched mouth, and and so I can have the the best ideas that I think and I could just feel and hear my voice just crackle. Uh and so it could be something as uh basic as that. Uh, it could be something like uh reading one of our books, uh, The Search for Drake Colton by nine-year-old breakthrough author Ryan Solomon, which is available everywhere. Amazon, you name it, you can get it. Or whether it's rereading my mental health story up until a couple years ago, uh, the prescription for living uh book that uh that I wrote, um, or could be The Young Siren Born just flying off shelves by David Solomon, brought to you by Voices for Voices Publishing. Could be doing that, or it could be you know, we hear the word meditate, and you know sometimes we get turned off by hearing that. Like, you mean you want me to sit quietly and you think that my mind is going to cooperate, cooperate with me and slow down. And I've been there, done that, and I try. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Uh taking a a cat nap, a quick nap. Uh you know, our our bodies need it, our bodies need rest, relaxation, whether that is a little bit shorter, spurts during throughout the day, or at night. And I'll just I'll give a personal example, and this ties right into to mental health. For me, again, I'm talking about me, I'm not talking about anybody else. Uh, so maybe this is you, maybe it's not you, maybe it's somebody you know. I'm just gonna share it because this is me. So in 2017, when I was uh when I came out of the hospital, as you know, I'm not gonna go through all that, but what I will go over is uh there was there's a book that I I read in it. It's I think it's called Why We Sleep. Uh something around around that uh as far as the title goes. And the book went into quite extensive or goes into quite extensive detail on why we sleep, why it is, why it's necessary for us to to relax and and to to sleep, not just oh, I I just wanna sleep through this event or I just want to sleep in just because hey, I've been there, I've done it. Like, uh, I'm gonna set the alarm for 10, 11 a.m. or what have you, depending on, and if there's travel and there's time zone differences, time times get all out of whack sometimes. That happens, no worries. Um, and so this book was really helpful, and I really do need to I need to review it again because it really goes through step by step why why we need rest, why our bodies need rest. And in my earlier life, when I was out partying and drinking, you know, out till 2, 3, 4 a.m. and uh not the most healthy of habits from the alcohol standpoint. First off, second off, my sleep was basically non-existent. It was the drunk sleep, it was the past out. I wasn't getting very good quality of sleep. Uh, I had I had looked at sleep as you know on the back burner where eh, I'll go to bed when I go to bed. And so when I got my first job out of college, you know, I found myself sometimes, and this wasn't not necessarily from uh alcohol consumption, binge drinking inside. This is more of just well, my body's used to being up till two, and so I'll just I'm up till two dawn whatever. And and then I would try to wake up, you know, four, four and a half, five hours later, and then go into work, and I was not operating at my peak capacity for a very long time, and so I was looking everywhere except at my sleep because we've gone through you know when I would close my eyes and you know, different things, yeah. I I'd see a shark, and it and so I kind of dreaded going to sleep, really. I really did for a long time, a very long time. And and so the fast-forwarding to his book, again, I'm not trying to sell anybody on any books. If you want to buy our books, great. We'd love to have you make a purchase or five. Um but his book I'm referring to, it really got down into the science, but almost kind of like you know, our body needs to replenish itself, like electrolytes replenish our body when we maybe have a parched mouth. Uh maybe if we do some uh activity, uh physical activity, uh even even just traveling, if you travel through an airport, all that walking from gate to gate, depending on where you're flying to, you're it there's been literally every type of plane I've I've been on, uh, from the commercial side. So there's times I've been on small planes, and then we would have a layover, and then I'd have to go all the way to where the big planes are, and then the opposite at times, and so I didn't realize how much energy I was expended. I was just like, okay, I need to get to this gate by this time to make it onto this plane, and and so I wasn't hydrating myself properly. Uh and then the sleep just again was non-existent. And when I came out of the hospital in 2017, read this book, I started to kind of revamp my sleeping style, and really it comes down to the time, right? So we have primetime TV, we have the news, we have all these shows that come on at 9, 10, 11, 12, 1, and sporting events, right? So I'm on the eastern time zone, and so if I'm watching a team that's playing a game on the western time zone, well, the the game's gonna be starting basically three hours late. So it's gonna be starting at usually like 10 p.m. And the game would be sometimes, you know, American baseball, sometimes two, three hours, and if I would watch the whole game, you know, it would be about 1, 2 a.m. And it just wasn't cutting it for me. I was sleeping in more than I needed to. Yeah. I mean, without getting into like too too much detail, uh we know family life and that since I've and this is just until we're speeding up until like right now, like a week and a half ago, right now, when what I would do is we lay down, re-bedtime stores, our daughter, my daughter falls asleep, and then I felt like okay, Justin, um, you have to get up and you have to do some work. So I gotta, you know, maybe cut an episode, um, film an episode. In my mind, it's the same thing. Um titles, descriptions, hashtags, all the things that come into shows where people are like, oh, it must be so easy. All you gotta do is just sit in front of your camera and and uh and do a show. Well, yeah, that's that's the easy. It's not easy, but that's the easier part. The other stuff is I don't call it busy work, but it is busy work. It takes time, but it doesn't take a lot of like brain power. And it was having a negative negative effect on me. It's having a negative effect on me and my family. I I was thinking I was doing what was right by getting up and going and doing some more work, so I went from I don't know, let's just call it peak capacity, and then we're at a state of rest, and then I get up, and then I'm at close to peak capacity, and then I try to shut it down for the night at 12, 1, 2 a.m. It just wasn't working, and as somebody that loves sleep, um I needed to make a change, and so the self-improvement was my mind, even then the next day, wasn't able to work at peak capacity or as close as it can be, and so I was being less efficient the next day, and then less efficient the next day. I was getting things done, it's not that I wasn't getting anything done. There were projects, there were episodes, there were things that were getting done, a lot of things that were getting done at that. But I didn't feel like I had a chance to breathe. Like when I was, you know, you're reaching for ideas in your mind. You know, of course there's AI out there, but I try to steer clear of AI as much as possible. So when I finally decided to make the choice to rearrange my schedule so that when I went to bed, I went to bed. And so it has so I'm in kind of infant stages of getting back to that spot, so my so my body can repair itself as best as it can. Um and so that self-improvement for me has been huge the last week and a half. Now the weather being what it had been, that didn't help that didn't help out, but it was great because I got to spend a lot of time with my family together. Um and and so I I think that was a huge spark of you know what Justin, I I I need to I need to make a change. And it's one of many changes that I'm doing for self-improvement. And it's not just for me, it's for it's for you, our viewers, our listeners, it's for my family, um, it's for my friends, my colleagues, ever everybody. Everybody I'll say everybody gets a piece of it, but everybody gets a better me in the process. So when I am on a show Nobody's perfect, I'm not perfect. I don't program to be when I say I work you know high efficiency and uh in in a peak peak capacity, that just means I I'm I'm working well, I am I don't feel burnt out as much. I still do, but a whole lot less. So for instance, like today, I've been able to film two episodes, do a TikTok live, do a lot of different things, and it's still pretty early of a time. Whereas prior to self-improvement on the sleep side for me, I would just be getting started with an episode. And so that right there that's that's kind of proof is in the pudding. So what do you do for self improvement? It doesn't have to be earth shattering. So I do like to read, I do actually like the color I'm not a great I don't draw very well but I can I like the color and and so our family there's times where we'll we'll color and so it's like I don't have to worry about a whole lot at that time it's just I'm just coloring there's no real judge it just coloring and so that's another way that I self-improve because that right there takes some stress off of my brain instead of constantly like okay what what's the next show going to be about and what's the next show and how are we gonna maximize uh you know getting our our shows out to as many people in as many countries and cities across the world how are we gonna do that so I still spend time thinking about that but when I'm coloring and when I'm sleeping my body's repairing itself and it's taken less it's taken some of those peak stress moments and it's turning the volume down so those are a couple things I do for self-improvement there's there's others you know yes there's some times where watch a movie as a family or go to my child's class and you know they they do certain activities and so at most of those I can just sit and just be present in the moment I can just be present in the moment I don't have to be the center of attention although that is one of one of the areas meant mentally for me where I do have to be a center of attention like I get uncomfortable when I'm in like group settings I think I gave this example before I'll give it again for those that haven't seen or watched that that particular episode good example is church so my the best time for me to go is during the week because there's not as many people then on the weekend when I've gone on weekends even recently was recently as I've gone I've had semi panic attacks these are panic attacks I haven't had in years and I haven't done anything wrong I've same regimen same medication same same therapy well I'm getting back to the to doing the the the therapy from a peer therapist point of view you know had the psychiatrist and that um and then a couple years ago my therapist who had had for years abruptly retired bounced around a little bit just never really made it back to a peer therapist um and so that's another way that I'm self-improving and it's taken a lot for me to get there I've had to again fight my ego fight myself and others uh but so far it's helpful and so that's self-improvement for me again a lot of it for me is on the mental side and they don't have to cost money right sleep doesn't cost money I mean yeah you could be doing you know the opportunity cost of well if I'm sleeping you know nine hours I'm I could be losing this amount on work but you got to think about it might be losing some money on the work but the work's always going to be there I've never shown up to a day of work where there hasn't been something to do might not be what I want to do but where there's been something to do so the work's not going anywhere the work's not going anywhere so we just ask ourselves what's more important my longevity being around as long as possible or getting that last spreadsheet done or getting that last slide for a presentation done or running that um that report so you don't have to run it in the morning I mean it all just sounds crazy to me again it's easier when you're in the moment you're doing the things like for me with the sleep to look at go oh yeah less screen time by sleeping getting rest that's another self-improvement strategy so you're potentially reading potentially coloring potentially going to therapy and letting your brain kind of reset a little bit let those wounds if you you know if you've had a cut and it's it's healing it'll take less time when you have more sleep because your body is able to take that time to help repair itself in a much quicker way so if you have an extra two hours of sleep for the next five days that's an extra 10 hours your body's gonna feel a little more rejuvenated which we've talked about so again what do you do for self-improvement doesn't have to be anything you spend money on some of the things I mentioned you do some of the things I mention you don't part of it is just the lifestyle change like the sleep it's just like hey I'm going to bed and I'm just rearranging my schedule and getting getting myself ready so I can go to bed and my family goes to bed. I mean it I wanna say it's a no-brainer I should have done a long time ago I'm I'm reaping the benefits of doing that and so again I ask you know what are you doing for self-improvement? Have you thought about it outside of you know a performance review at work and all I'm talking just you purely as a human being what's you what do you do to for self-improvement to kind of optimize your self-improvement and so getting back to that that the book on sleep uh been very helpful again I need to I need to take a another another look through because it was just so helpful is when I was coming out of the hospital that was one of the things I was afraid to go to sleep basically because of the shark is coming after me and you know go to your happy place and my happy place is here at the beach or on up here and then this shark would come out of water and then I would just get freaked out and then I wouldn't want to close my eyes and somehow some way that's kind of subsided I don't know how I don't know why but when I started to think about like wow I didn't realize how many processes of our body need sleep need rest relaxation it's really incredible so maybe think about that think about think about one thing you can do to help self-improve yourself that doesn't cost money your friends are gonna be your friends regardless set set some boundaries that's hard for me to do it's been hard for me to do but that's where the sleep part is it's like well okay well this is my new this is my new this is my new routine and so are you if you're cool with it then that's you know thank you if you're not well I gotta do it I do so we just have certain hours that we do the work and then certain hours where we use our coping mechanisms we do our self-improvement one day it might be one thing the next day it might be another so think about that I think about it all the time it's easy to think about it and go oh yeah that's easy but doing it that's a whole different story so next time you can find us same place where you found us for this episode to watch to listen if you can give us the big thumbs up like follow share subscribe let everybody know about voices for voices we're the organization that is and will be helping at least three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond if you're able to make a contribution we are a 501c3 nonprofit charity uh you can do that at lovevoices.org lovevoices.org lovevoices.org and spelled out it is l-o v e v o i c e s dot org so thank you so much for tuning in we have over 425 episodes in our catalog again if you can reach out to 2550 maybe 100 of your uh your friend group uh maybe make a post uh let it let them know uh how valuable voices for voices is and till next time let's celebrate the voices of everybody and let us be a voice for not only us but for someone that might not be able to share their voice we'll see you next time take care we love you