The Success Nuggets #65 - Sleep is your greatest asset by Johann Callaghan

The Strange Business of Sleep.

In this episode, David Abel speaks with Johann Callaghan, The Sleep Success Coach, about why success may depend less on pushing harder and more on recovering better. They explore burnout, leadership, decision-making, the 3am mind, phone habits, worry, dreams, and why sleep is not a weakness, it’s a performance system.  

Overview from the host David Abel

We tend to talk about success as if it’s made of effort.
Long hours. Early starts. One more email. One more meeting. One more thing to prove.

But in this episode of Success Nuggets, I speak with Johann Callaghan, The Sleep Success Coach, about the quieter and stranger truth: many people don’t have a time problem at all. They have an energy problem.

Johann talks about burnout, leadership, the 3am version of ourselves, why problems become so convincing in the dark, and what happens when a high performer finally stops treating exhaustion as a badge of honour.

We also get into phones, worry, decision-making, dreams, recovery, and the small but powerful act of not looking at the clock when you wake in the night.

It’s a conversation about sleep — but really, it’s about control, identity, pressure, and whether the most ambitious thing a person can do is learn how to properly rest.

Success Nugget:
A powerful leader is a well-rested leader.

With thanks to One Golden Nugget and Maxwell Preece for editing, support and artwork

Transcript

Why Sleep Matters For Success

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Today on the TikTok nuggets, we're talking about something every ambitious person needs, but that many quietly sacrificed sleep. My guest is Joanne Callahan, the sleep success coach, who helps leaders and high performers improve their sleep so they can shop at their best, not just in business, but in life. We'll explore how rest affects decision making, focus, energy, resilience, and whether success really has to come at the cost of exhaustion. Hello, Joe. Hello, David. Hello. When did you first realize sleep wasn't just a health topic, but a success topic?

Joanne’s Turning Point With Sleep

SPEAKER_03 1:06

From my own personal story, I had many sleepless nights for one reason or another, many different things. And what I found was that being tired and exhausted, it really limited me in my performance and how I showed up. Not just business, but just my personal life. I was a single mother as well, you know, for a long time, lots of responsibilities, not to contend with. But I was just catching up all the time, you know, coping, surviving. And I got fed up with it one day. I remember saying to myself, God, is this all there is to life? Like just the rat race trying to keep up with things. And I said to myself, there has to be a different way. When I started being able to have the opportunity to sleep well, when I bought my own house, I moved from a house of 10 people, right? I'm the eldest of my family. And when I bought my own house and moved into that, I started sleeping really amazing. And I became a different person. And what I discovered was I can think clear, I can perform better, I'm not tired, I'm not narky. My mood, my health, and I was forever getting colds and flus. Success has been able to access all your resources so that you can show up at your best and feel amazing, feel alive.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

And that's wonderful that you move that to the visible improvements in yourself. Do you remember a moment with a client and you thought this person doesn't have a business problem, they've got a sleep problem?

Time Management Is Really Energy

SPEAKER_03 2:28

So time management is what comes to mind there when you talk about that. So many business people, business owners, leaders, they're trying to get more done. So it's not a time problem, it's an energy problem. And our energy comes from recovery. Rest, sleep. Rest and sleep. That's where our recovery comes from. So I got to see with many business owners that even though they showed up successful in business and what have you, and I have seen people that eventually have caught up on them where they did have burnout. Many, many successful business leaders have experienced burnout, myself included, many times, more than once. It's this idea that society makes us feel like we have to keep working and striving and grinding. Um, and like it's a badge of honor. It's a badge of honor to keep going and striving, but it is going to catch up. So it's more of an energy problem.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

So

Deep Sleep, REM, And The Brain

SPEAKER_02 3:20

tell me about the science behind sleep and the brain. What do we need to know?

SPEAKER_03 3:24

That's a great question. When it comes to brain health and sleep and the body function and what have you, think of it like this our brain uses 20% of the total energy resources in our body. So that means our brain is very demanding. And our brain is like the command center of everything. But our nervous system is what governs it all. And yet it demands 20% of the overall energy of the body. So that means that when your brain slows down, everything else slows down. So the question is, when or why would your brain slow down? Well, when you're sleep deprived, all the signaling. So we have the neural networks, we have the neuroplasticity in the brain, and it all slows down, the signaling slows down. Your responses all slow down. When we don't have enough energy, the pruning effect can't happen. So the pruning is any information or anything that's not needed gets pruned away. So there's a clearing and a cleaning in the brain that enables better efficiency in the brain. And it has been discovered, David, would you believe in 2015 this brain clearing was discovered where all our toxins, so this toxin debris, all our byproducts from cellular activity during the daytime, all this is cleared away at nighttime when we're in a deep phase of sleep. And our brain ultimately goes through a lot of different processes. So there's a sleep architect as well. So we have deep sleep, we've REM sleep. You may have heard of REM sleep where we dream. This is involved in our emotional regulation, laying down our memories. So our short-term memories in the hippocampus part of the brain, it goes into the outer cortex where it's laid down as long-term memory. So this only happens in a deep phase of sleep. And in the REM sleep is where all the emotional regulation, so all the integration of the different parts of the brain. So there's a lot going on in the brain at night. I mean, we could talk here all day about the brain, but it really is such an important part of our health and our well-being for our cognitive function, for decision making, for emotional regulation. And leaders, the one thing leaders are great at is their ability to make really good decisions. Decision making is better enabled when we have a good night of sleep because the prefrontal cortex and your amygdala they can integrate and they can communicate more effectively when the brain has been well slept. That process stops when we are sleep-deprived.

Grind Culture And Phone Addiction

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Yeah, I'm gonna pick up on something you said there as well. I'm Gen X. We were taught to work hard and work harder and work bloody hard and work hard some more. And you can sleep when you're dead, and people are proud of working hard as well. But also 2015 probably is a big crossover with smartphones. There's a generational crossover and uh device technology crossover, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:26

100%, yeah. Like, I mean, we were told to work hard, grind, and and society set us up that it's glorious glorifies you and it rewards you if you've been seen to work hard. If you see athletes, right, athletes always, always, always have recovery and rest as part of the process. It has to be part of the process. If you're in the gym, you know, you're trying to build your muscles, part of the process is the rest for the muscles to regrow again. So if you want to be better equipped in all areas of your functioning of your brain and even physical energy, mental energy mode, where we're spiritual beings as well, you know, your outlook on life, your purpose, all of these things, we have better capacity when we're well slept and well-rested. And then you mentioned about the phones. So the iPhone came around, I think it was 2007. So it was developing over the years. So yeah, 2015 was when it really took off. And yes, we do have a problem with our phones. Now, technology is great and it is here to stay, and it is evolving and it's evolving very quickly, and we can't do anything about that. What we can do, however, is we can have control over our phones rather than our phones having control over us. This is ultimately what it comes down to because there is an addictive nature about phones, right? There's a lot of marketeers and all that kind of stuff. They know what they're doing when it comes to marketing. And there is so much of our attention now has been taken to the phones and what have you. So it's really important that we understand this and we take a break from our phones. We don't use our phones in the morning and don't use our phones late at night before we go to bed. They are disruptors of our sleep as well and our rhythms. They're stimulating the brain and they're increasing dopamine. And we have enough stimulants out there in the world at the moment. So it's like having we need to have that harmony and a slowdown before to enable the onset of sleep, but also to be able to relax, just relax during the daytime and practice that often so as our nervous system can adapt and have that balancing effect.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

I can imagine that you see leaders become different people once they start sleeping properly.

Mood, Triggers, Cravings, And Teams

SPEAKER_02 8:33

But are there any signs that those people are beginning to run on fumes physically from the outside, or maybe just their behavior or their language they use?

SPEAKER_03 8:42

How we talked is really, really important. Um, you know, having an optimistic kind of outlook on life. Because when we're sleep deprived or when our brain is slow, when our brain is tired, it doesn't want to use the cognitive part of our brain because it's trying to reserve energy. And that's how it saves energy. But that's defaulting to all the negative stuff because this is protecting us, it's protecting us from all the what-ifs that could happen rather than focusing on what we can create. And our body and our brain needs to feel safe for us to be able to go to that place of future creation and possibilities.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

I just had a very big weekend. There was a lot of alcohol. My sleep was terrible. I was awake all night. I had a long drive home, and probably within 10 minutes, my son being just a son, age nine, got a slightly louder reply from me. Yes, that must happen with an or a negative projection, or perhaps just shutting down their teams, you know. Oh, I'm working so hard, but my teams are standing off me. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 9:45

All the time, yeah. All the time, David. You're not the only one. And and here's what's happening like you wake up first thing in the morning and you're just not in humor talking to anybody. You just you can't hold a conversation, right? Somebody says something to you, and you yes, it's a trigger, you snap at them and uh you're rude to them. And then the other person gets defensive. Their natural responses be defensive. And what's happening is the amygdala, which is our emotional brain, it's amplified. And the reason why it's more amplified, it's more sensitive. This is why we're triggered, and there's a disconnect between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. There's a disconnect because this is where all our logic is in the prefrontal cortex, all our logic and reasoning and all that kind of stuff. But now we don't have any of that. So we're working again on this limbic system where it's trying to keep us safe. And so we tend to snap and we get triggered really easily. We're impulsive, right? We've more cravings as well. So we're more cravings for sugar because it's that sweetness of life we're trying to get, you know. Um, so there's lots of things happening as a result of that, you know, our body is just trying to adapt and keep us surviving and keeping

Inflammation, Longevity, And Health Span

SPEAKER_03 10:52

the energy going. So the energy with the quick fixes of sugar, it's a quick energy release, but we're putting on weight and uh we have insulin problems and we've diabetes problems as a result of that, and neuro um degenerative problems and Alzheimer's, all this kind of stuff that happens over time. But if we have poor habits in our life and we're continuously having this type of a lifestyle, long term it can have all these effects, and it can, you know, longevity is very much associated with a good night of sleep, as well as many other things. But when we're talking about longevity as well and our lifestyle, we want to have a good health span, in other words, a good quality of life and how we age and aging well has a lot to do with how well we sleep. You know, we've heard people in chronic pain and all that sort of thing. Inflammation is a massive part of lack of sleep as well, because again, the clearing process, the detoxification, and the body and the brain can't happen as effectively. So you've more inflammation, more pain, and it just goes on and on. You can have that slowdown and that more conscious awareness when you have a well-rested brain. They say a power, well, my quote is a powerful leader is a well-rested leader. And it really is so true.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

We're talking about people just w working, working, working and burning themselves out.

Worry At Night And Feeling Safe

SPEAKER_02 12:08

But there's I guess there's another side to sleep, people who just worry. Maybe they go to bed at 10 o'clock and they're awake at three o'clock. And is that three o'clock version of ourselves telling us the truth? Or even when I first got married, say you know, never go to sleep on an argument. Oh yeah, that's true. What's the effect of of of like worry or or something that's just happened on our sleep there as well?

SPEAKER_03 12:35

So you talked earlier on about technology, and uh technology is keeping us very much distracted. So distraction is a big problem in our world right now. Why is that a problem? Well, because we're not dealing with our stuff, we're not dealing with a simple argument that happened earlier on during the day, or we're not dealing with, you know, something that somebody said to you, we're more harder on ourselves and we're giving out about ourselves, and we're going to bed going, oh, I should have said that to that person, or I should have done this, and we're beating ourselves up, or we're feeling resentment or anger as we're going to bed with all these feelings that we didn't deal with during the daytime. Um, all of this is up here, the mental stuff and the emotional stuff. And I'm seeing an awful lot of this. People are going to bed worried, concerned, upset. And there's a lot of it in the world at the moment, um, as it is. And we need to be more aware of the fear-based stuff and realize that we do have control and to have more power and more agility and more autonomy. And um, and we can, we absolutely can. And we have to be careful of what we've been told, but the news that we're watching, the books that we're reading, because it's all fear-based, it's all kind of programming us. And even the people that we're hanging around with, you know, are the people who uplift you or the people who are, as I call them, mind the BMWs, the blamers, the moaners, the whiners, they drain your energy. And we human beings are multidimensional. We're physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. And we need to recover in all those areas, all of those areas, even socializing as well, is a huge, huge part. We we we grew up in tribes when we first came on the earth. That was, and if you didn't belong to the tribe, um you wouldn't survive. So we absolutely need people in our lives and we need community and we need collaboration, all that sort of thing. So understanding what is draining your energy in all these different areas, we can deal with what's troubling us and identify and to slow down enough to kind of ask the question, what's really troubled me? One thing that I do with my clients is I ask them to use a worry journal and write down what is worrying them and to have a solution to that and just really think it through because we catastrophize more often than not. That is when we overworry and it's keeping us awake at nighttime. If we don't feel safe at night when we're going to sleep in all those dimensions that I mentioned, it is not going to enable the onset of sleep. We are very vulnerable. We are at our most vulnerable when we're sleeping at nighttime. And this has evolved over thousands of years. So we need to feel safe when we're going to sleep at nighttime.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

Just a quick side question.

How Humans Slept Before Modern Life

SPEAKER_02 15:17

Do we know how long people slept for back in the old old days when we were tribal?

SPEAKER_03 15:22

We slept a lot longer, but we also slept in more biphasic as well. And what happened was the invention of the light bulb.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

The digital light bulb.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

Not your one, David. The invention of the light bulb, but also um because light and darkness are rhythms of nature that we have evolved by. When we lived in the caves, we got up when the sun came up and we slept in the darkness, and we've evolved for thousands of years. So it's relatively new, and we are sleeping less now. And the other reason is the industrial revolution, where work in nine to five, people had to sleep in a longer seven or eight hours. There was no sleeping during the daytime. So there's a couple of factors, but yes, we did actually sleep longer than we currently are now at the moment, and a little bit more frequently. Yeah, absolutely.

Naps, Learning, And Mental Rehearsal

SPEAKER_03 16:14

And you know what the best time to nap as well, and it's been shown in studies that morning time is the best time for productivity because you've more blood flow to the brain, you've more cognitive functioning, uh, if you've higher cortisol, natural cortisol, so you've better concentration. So I do a lot of my learning in the morning and the hard kind of mental work. Now, if you're learning, having a nap after that, it has been shown in studies that it helps to bed down what you've just learned and it will help you to recall it later on as well. So it'll really help you to retain that information.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

I've heard that actually about orchestras and musicians by having a big heavy session and then having a nap straight after and the muscle memory.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

Absolutely. So I played the piano when I was very young, and my teacher said to me, Juan, imagine visualize yourself playing the piano. Honestly, I thought he was after losing a few marbles. I said, No, Juan, visualize because your brain doesn't know the difference between real and what's imagined. And you are actually exercising those neural pathways in your brain. So I did do it, and it did actually help. And further on, like fast forward a few years, when I started my business and I started speaking on stages, and I was a nervous wreck and all of that, because it is one of the most fearful things you can do. I mentally rehearsed myself on the stage exactly how I would like it to be. And it really helped me to have more confidence. So mental rehearsal is something else that you can do and it does work.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

Why do our problems feel so convincing at night?

SPEAKER_03 17:49

You're really digging deep, Dave. I love your questions. We're so distracted during the daytime, we're not we're not dealing with our stuff, and we're alone with our thoughts. So we have to face them. And because we've been avoiding them all day long, and this happens unconsciously, it's just because we're living busy lives, fast-paced, that we're not taking the time to consider and reflect on things during the daytime. So when we're alone with our thoughts, it can seem even bigger and it's more threatening.

Mindfulness Without The Woo Woo

SPEAKER_03 18:19

This is why it's so important to slow down during the day, do mindfulness things during the day. And look, this doesn't have to be woo-woo. A mindful thing that you can do is go for a walk without your phone and look at the doors on all the houses that you pass by and take note of the colors of the doors, take note of the birds singing, use all your senses, your sight, your hearing, your touch, the the air that you're smelling, the taste, you know, from the air, whatever. Use all your senses because that's very rounding and it makes you present. And it's very calming and nurturing on your body. Honest to God, it is one of the best things that you can do when you're using all your senses. But if you practice that often during the daytime, then your practice and your ability for your nervous system to switch on and off. And therefore, it will make it easier at nighttime when you have to do your stuff.

What To Do When You Wake

SPEAKER_02 19:05

And for anyone who is up at 2:47 a.m., what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_03 19:09

I never look at the clock. And here's the reason why the minute you look at the clock, you're doing the mental maths, you're getting stressed. More cortisol, and then when we've got cortisol in your body, that's your wake-up hormone that's keeping you awake. When we're worrying, when we have like resentments, even resentments about angry ourselves. Oh, I should have said this or I should have done that. That's the first thing that I would do. But also be okay with waking up during the nighttime because our sleep architecture, we we operate in cycles and we do wake up. Uh, we have about four or five cycles a night. We do wake up at the top of every cycle, but we don't, we're not awake long enough for the most part to be consciously aware or to remember it. That's when we're turning over in bed and getting comfortable again or whatever, you know, we wake up for a slight, it's natural, but it's what we do with it, the story we tell ourselves when we wake up.

Liver Load, Toxins, And 3am

SPEAKER_03 19:56

That's what we need to look at. This is having an impact on your liver. So, according to the Chinese clock, the Chinese clock has all of our organs. There's 12, 12 of them in the in this 24-hour clock, and each organ has like a two-hour window where it's optimally performing. So liver is between one and three o'clock in the morning. And liver is a big one for anger and resentment. Sometimes anger is a good thing because it's kind of a driver, but like everything else, too much is not good for you. But the other thing, as well, is we're literally we're consuming, there's a lot of toxins in our environment, and liver is a detoxifying organ. So toxins in terms of there's emotional toxins as well. We can have toxic people in our lives. Um, skincare products, the foods that we're eating, the air that we're breathing, the water that we're drinking, women with their hormones and the estrogen, especially in perimenopause, are recycling all that estrogen. And if it's not getting the body, it's it's have has more of an adverse effect. A second time, the cycle, second cycle in the liver. And it has been shown that in many people, the liver just has too much work to do, and it's actually waking people up because it has too much work to do. So we need to look after our bodies as well and the mind the people that we're hanging around with and all these, just be mindful of all these toxins. We're not going to eliminate everything, but there's a lot we can do to reduce our toxic load, and which will help our liver.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

It's fascinating. I'm sure many people have never heard that liver science as well.

Dreams, Nightmares, And Processing Emotion

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Remembering nightmares or dreams. Where do nightmares come into all this?

SPEAKER_03 21:31

Okay. Our REM cycle is one of the main things where is is our emotions. It's processing our emotions. And dreams can be really weird. They don't even make sense. And this is because the prefrontal cortex, all our senses are disconnected, all our senses are offline. That's when we go in. So sleeping is a very sacred time, it's a very spiritual time, but it's also a time to process our emotions. Okay. This is where all the mental rehearsal kind of comes in as well. And it's It's like a simulator machine almost because the prefrontal cortex, the logic is disconnected. So now all of the emotions can come up like in full view for our brain to do something with that and to process it. So that's why they they seem really, really weird. Now, where nightmares come in is it could be something traumatic that happened or a repeated occurrence of bullying, for example, or something repeatedly that's going on in your life, and you just don't know what to do with it. And the nightmare is trying to process that. Sometimes you can have a recurring dream as well that might may seem very vivid and strong. There is like dream therapy that we can do. So that and it's a very, they did it thousands of years ago, all the Romans and the Greeks, dreaming was a very big, it was a message that your soul was given to you, if you like. And it really comes, it's a very deep-rooted thing with nightmares and and dreams. And if you tap into your dreams, there's a thing called lucid dreaming as well that you can tap into and it can give you a lot of information. And it means something different to everybody because it's down to your perspective and your experiences in life. But with dreams and nightmares, you can actually keep a dream journal, see what the pattern is, the repeated pattern, and you can create consciously when you're awake, you can create a conscious ending to that. So it's very big, but that's just to give you a little insight into dreams.

Snoring And Sleep Apnoea Warning Signs

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Snoring got anything to do with anything?

SPEAKER_03 23:27

Yeah, it does. Yeah, snoring. And look, I've experienced that my husband was a chronic snorer for years. We actually sleep in separate rooms now. I call it sleep divorce because it prevents the real thing. I'd years and years of uh, oh my god, and he'd be like, I can't help it, but I wasn't getting sleep. And the snorer, the person who snores, is not getting deep sleep either. And here's the thing about snoring: if your partner is chronically snoring, so there's different levels of snoring, but if you're a chronic loud snorer, it may be a sign of sleep apnea, which is a medical condition and it's a very big undiagnosed problem that a lot of people have that they're not aware of. And long term it can have massive effects because it's depriving your brain of oxygen. And the brain, remember what I said, oxygen, we need oxygen for the energy production in the cells. So if you're oxygen deprived in your brain, uh it's going to have implications. So snoring can be a problem. If it's mild snoring, you can get the strips, you can use mouth guards. It could be a structural thing, you know, it could be a septum uh deviation, or it could be something. So go to your doctor, and if it's really bothering you, go and get it checked out. I mean it might need a sleep lab test done that will tell you about sleep apnea or not.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

Joanne, thank you. It's been a real powerful reminder that success isn't just about pushing harder, it's about resting smarter, thinking clearer, building a rhythm we can

One Simple Change For Tomorrow

SPEAKER_02 24:50

sustain. What's a simple change that someone could make tonight and feel tomorrow?

SPEAKER_03 24:54

No, if I was to give you one tip or one, you know, a starting point, because everybody is different. And this is really, really important. Everyone has different everyone is different and everyone has different uh preferences and likes. But the one thing that I will say to everybody is to have a really solid morning routine. Start your morning off slow and start it off intentionally as well. Because you're when you when you're intentional, everything will follow. Everything will follow suit. So create a really good and pay attention to your intention. I say sleep is your greatest asset, and I really live by that. It really is your greatest asset because without good sleep, everything else just falls apart. Everything we've seen it from your mental capacity, your moods, your relationships. And we know we need, especially in business, we need good relationships and good communication. But a morning routine, getting daylight first thing in the morning is probably the simplest place that you can start and really creating a good intention for your day.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

I think it's it's very clear that Better Sleep doesn't place it down. In fact, we can't run an empty. For the audience, just remember it's not about the hostel. Joanne, thanks for coming in today. It's been amazing. Everything's leaving.

SPEAKER_03 26:12

Yeah, brilliant. I really enjoyed it, David. Thanks a million.

Final Takeaways And Where To Learn More

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Join David and his incredible guests next time on the Success Nuggets podcast. And to find out more, visit oneGoldenNugget.com. Thank you for listening.