I have discovered something really interesting about myself.  And I want to tell it in story form.

On Sunday night, I went to bed at 11 PM and woke up at 5:30 AM on Monday morning.  I love the quiet of early mornings.  I love the stillness and the air laced with possibility for the day.  But under all that early morning quiet, I felt a deep sense of melancholy.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it and I couldn’t seem to shake it.  I kept going about my day and checking tasks off my list until about 2 PM when I felt so tired I had to lay down.  That night, I went to bed at about 11 again, but woke up at 7:45 AM on Tuesday.

Right as my eyes were opening I felt a sense of peace and joy.  I also felt a sense of grounded purpose for my day.  I was incredibly productive and had high energy, which got me to thinking…

Are the days when I feel blue or melancholy linked to how much sleep I’m getting?  When I look back on my days, this seems to really correlate.  This may seem rudimentary to some of you, but I think it is so empowering.  What if an extra 30 minutes or hour or 2 hours of sleep could totally change our day?

Again, that may seem rudimentary to some of you or maybe even out of reach, BUT, I think we ALL would benefit from making sleep more of a priority.  Just ask Ariana Huffington who practically wrote a book about it.

And isn’t our happiness, joy, peace, contentedness worth the extra effort it might take to get some extra zzzz’s?  That age old saying of “we can sleep when we die” couldn’t be further from the truth.  I would say, “We can truly LIVE when we actually sleep.”