Why you’re not sleeping well (& how to fix it)

Poor sleep, not enough sleep, no sleep – they all suck. And sleep deprivation has serious short term AND long term mental and physical health effects.

So let’s get this sorted out!

(Watch the FREE VIDEO TRAINING instead here.)

The most common sleep issues I hear from professional women are 

1/ Struggling to switch off when they go to bed

2/ Waking up around 2am

And 3/ Insomnia

Insomnia

Now if you’re in the third category, there is something important to note here.

If you have been diagnosed with or you’re fairly sure you have insomnia… you need to know that this is not a fundamental issue or disease process. 

This is not a diagnosis you’re stuck with or something that has gone wrong with your brain or your body.

Insomnia is a descriptive diagnosis meaning it’s the word that was chosen to describe people who are having sleep problems.

I’m not saying it’s not serious, but it is reversible and the things I’m sharing today will absolutely help. 

But it’s important that you don’t dismiss these things thinking they can’t help you because you’ve been given this diagnosis or this name for your sleep struggles.

If you’re in the headspace of “that won’t help me because I have insomnia”… you’re absolutely right – this won’t help you because you won’t believe it can and you won’t commit to making the changes you need to make. Agreed?

Sleep Deprivation

If you fall asleep in under 5 minutes of being horizontal, studies have shown that you are sleep deprived.

It usually takes up to 15 minutes to fall asleep. So if you consistently drop off super quickly, when your head hits the pillow, or you let yourself lie down on the couch for two minutes and you are out of it… it’s likely that you are sleep deprived. 

Now that doesn’t actually change the problem here, it just highlights that this is more of an issue for you than you probably thought.

So what’s the underlying problem?

When it comes to sleep, the problem has EVERYTHING to do with ENERGY flow.

Now to demonstrate this point, imagine you’ve been sitting down all day at your computer. That’s really all you’ve done. You probably shouldn’t feel as tired as you do as you haven’t been doing that much physically, and yet you still can’t fall asleep. It happens right?

Now consider the opposite, you do a fun gym class at 630/730pm and come home buzzing and you’re all pumped up…

or you catch up with a friend to do something fun in the evening and you’ve been laughing away and chatting all night…

 or you’ve been on a really good date and you’re all giggly and excited…

And then you jump into bed and you can’t get to sleep.

Two completely different energies, yet same outcome – sleep not happening.

So what’s the answer here? 

What’s the magic formula, the perfect balance?

Our energy is cyclical

Well it comes down to that fact that our energy is cyclical – particularly for women – that we can’t expect to have the same level of energy all the time.

(I teach this more in depth in my Magic Monthly Mapping Workshop inside The Green Body Circle membership. ✨)

And yet we do! We demand of ourselves the capacity to keep going, to push through… we force ourselves into this energetic plateau.

And then when we go to bed we expect that we can just fall asleep easily and wake up refreshed.

But it doesn’t work like that! This is where energy management is so important. 

One Major Driver Important for Sleep

But there is one major driver of energy that is particularly important for our quality and quantity of sleep. And that is mental load or stress.

And if you struggle to get to sleep at night this is absolutely an issue for you. There is some unresolved sh*t there lingering in your brain.

And that’s a big problem for switching off and falling asleep.

But interestingly, if you are waking up at 2am… it’s the same thing! You may be falling asleep because you’re exhausted or sleep deprived.. but you’re waking up because your brain isn’t done sorting stuff out yet. It’s too busy. It’s trying to process things.

Don’t tell me you shouldn’t be stressed

I don’t care if you FEEL stressed or not, in fact depending on where you’re sitting on the burnout scale – if you’re in a highly productive & achieving state right now but you just can’t get good sleep… you will likely rebel the idea that you are stressed. Let me explain more…

Remember early on in the stages of burnout we are on fire… We are wired. We are non-stop and ticking boxes and we get caught in the trap of thinking we’re in control of everything and we’re doing fine.

But struggling to fall asleep or stay asleep can be one of the first signs that we are in overload. That our nervous system is overloaded. That our adrenal system is overloaded and that stress hormones are being pumped out to keep up with everything.

So whether you identify with “being stressed” or not – doesn’t really matter. If you’re here reading, if your sleep is poor, then your BODY Is in a state of stress. And it’s energy depleted. Period.

So how do we fix this.

Well there are a bunch of things that help and plenty of strategies many of which you’ve probably already tried. Switching your phone off earlier, drinking chamomile tea, not eating too late, or maybe you’ve used a yoga or meditation app every night for a few days before giving up.

But the strategies that work the best are the ones that target the big two problems we’ve identified so far… Stress and Energy Management.

Here’s What You Need

That means having daily stress reduction habits as part of your everyday routine…

And it means learning to better manage your energy to support your sleep.

Your plan for improving your sleep must include those two things – daily stress reduction habits & routine, and energy management – learning the things that influence your energy and working your days and weeks around that, instead of trying to match your energy to what you think is required of you. 

I use a specific weekly planner to do this and the way it works is it starts with your energy.

(You can get it here OR inside the membership.)

I estimate my available energy based on the stage of my cycle & other things I’ve got going on in my life. From there I put in my self care habits and health routines. Then I schedule my week around that.

It’s revolutionary actually because everything we do tells us we need to match the energy of what’s outside of us. Work, people, our exercise, everything. This planner starts with your own energy and allows you to get things done without the burnout and the overwhelm.

So remember – 2 things – daily stress reduction and better energy management.

Now if you’re like, great, yep, totally makes sense… but um, HOW do I do that??? Keep reading.

What Will Work For YOU

Now there are some very simple routines you can use to achieve these two things and get better sleep, and what works for YOU will depend on your work hours, family life, exercise and more.

This is one of the things we really nail down inside The Energy Shift.

The Energy Shift is a 2 week challenge (mini program) starting Monday, where I’m going to walk you through the four things that massively affect your energy, (sleep being one of them)… and set you up with the exact habits you need to get your health on track & lift your energy back up to where it should be.

After just 14 days you’ll have a solid yet ridiculously achievable routine that will align your diet & exercise goals with your sleep and stress management so that your energy flows consistently.

You’ll be able to drop the effort, get rid of a bunch of things that you THINK you need to do to get healthy (that I know are a waste of time & money)… and you’ll find in just 2 weeks that you will no longer feel tired, hopeless and snowed under with all the things you feel like you “should” be doing to fix your energy and get healthy.

I am super excited to be offering this mini program because these were the some of the comments I got from previous Energy Shifters…

“I’ve been getting up straight away when my alarm goes off…”

“I have not been tired!…

” I have had so much energy I don’t know what to do with myself – I can’t believe it…”

This is after just 2 weeks and making really small achievable lifestyle changes!

This shift works ya’ll.  

SIDENOTE: This challenge also happens to be the BEST bang for your buck if you’ve been thinking about jumping into a program with me for a while – this is perfect because you’re guaranteed you’ll see a change in yourself FAST.

All the details are right here: https://go.thegreenbodyplan.com/energy-shift