Sometimes you need to quit your new schedule right away, and other times you need to keep pushing through and give yourself time to get used to it.
This is one of those other times.
How do you know? Because your intuition is a little out of whack right now.
You just gave yourself permission to do something fun for yourself – to rest more – to enjoy a lighter schedule – and it’s feeling really uncomfortable.
This isn’t a case of “I didn’t allow enough time to prep supper and I’m not waiting another 24 hours before I fix this!” Or a case of “my kids really do NOT do well with this new bedtime, so I’m going right back to our old one tomorrow night.”
Those kinds of scheduling changes, yes, you need to follow that intuitive hit and change it right away.
But when you’re giving yourself more room to enjoy? Something new to step into? A bigger identity to fill?
Those kinds of shifts come with practical changes.
- How much time you allow yourself to sip coffee in the morning, for example.
- How long you’ll spend doing devotions and meditating in your room before coming out and attending to the kids.
- When and where you let yourself do exercise.
And *those* kinds of changes are either going to feel like a breath of fresh air, or really uncomfortable to you.
But no, you don’t get to “follow your intuition” and back off right now. That’s not the right call here.
The *right* call is to keep sinking into the discomfort and keep trying.
- Keep drinking that coffee (not gulping it).
- Keep letting yourself meditate for 15 minutes first.
- Keep going for a run on your own instead of letting the kids crawl all over you while you do living room Pilates.
Now, you want to know what area of her life my client needed help with for this one?
Sleep. That’s right, sleep.
She was chronically sleep deprived (for years, I’m guessing) and had just switched her schedule (during our work together) to allow herself adequate time for sleep. (Instead of allocating even more time to her to-do list. But that’s a story for another day.)
After a few days of her new bedtime, she told me that her sleep wasn’t any better – she was still getting up too early or finding herself wanting to do “just one more thing”!
And here’s what I told her: It takes time to break the habits of months and years. You may need several weeks to readjust to your new “more sleep is permissible” schedule.
Your *body* needs at least a couple weeks to adjust to being allowed to sleep more, at any rate. How long your mind will take is another story – but whatever you do, don’t start filling that sleep time with other things!
That will set you back right to where you started on the amount of sleep you’re getting.
So chin up, remember that you’re starting a new pattern, and keep going on that sleep retraining (for yourself!) – remembering that you’ve got potentially *years* of sleep debt to make up for.
Don’t be surprised if it takes your body a little while to catch on that yes, you’re really allowing yourself to rest now.
And don’t be alarmed if you go through a period of a few months of what feels like way too much sleep. It’s your body’s way of compensating for that years-long sleep debt.
Okay?
So back to you – what’s the hard part about giving yourself more space in your new schedule? Yeah, that one. Uh uh, no backing out – your coach says you have to do it. 😉
Sit down, and enjoy. (Yes, ma’am!)
You’ll get used to it.
