It’s tough being tired all day. I’ve had days where I struggled to make it through the day and didn’t have the energy to tackle anything that matters.

Hell, I’ve had years like that.

When you’re tired, not much seems appealing. Life is dulled, and you don’t get much accomplished. Worse still, you don’t have the energy to change the situation.

These days I don’t have many days like this, but when I do, I rest. We have gotten good at ignoring our body’s signals—much of our lives are spent training our minds to pretend as if our bodies aren’t tired, so we can be more productive.

This is wrong. It ends up in burnout and reduced productivity, because we inevitably run out of energy. Listen to your body—your long-term health and sanity depend on it.

Why we are tired

We are exhausted because we don’t rest enough. We think rest is not as important as other things like waking early, getting stuff done, attending a thousand meetings, being sucked into the world of online connections, reading and of course watching our all-important TV programmes.

So we cut down on our sleep in favour of these other things that are much more essential, and then wonder why our energy levels are low.

Sleep problems

Let’s take a quick look at some of the problems that keep people tossing in bed:

Not tired yet: If your sleeping pattern is set so that you usually sleep later, when you do attempt to go to bed earlier, you’re not tired enough to fall asleep.

Too tired: It’s possible to be so exhausted that falling asleep is difficult. This tends to be a problem less often than ‘not tired enough’ though.

Worries: You’ve got something spinning around in your head, so the sleep doesn’t come. Sometimes it’s replaying something that’s happened, or things that someone said, and at other times it’s worrying about something coming up or planning an event.

Electronic devices: If you’re using your computer, smartphone, tab or any other device in bed, you might be tired but have a hard time sleeping because your mind isn’t unwinding.

There are other issues, but I’ve found these to be the most common.

1. Formula for becoming a baby

So how do we solve these problems and sleep like babies? I don’t have all the answers, but let me share some of the things that have worked for me.

2. Exercise: A good hard workout or run, bike or swim will get you nice and tired. A good yoga workout is a wonderful way to exercise, as you learn mindfulness at the same time. Even if my workout is early in the day, I often go to bed with a tired body, and look forward to the rest. Don’t workout right before bed though.

3. Get up early: You can get your body to shift its sleeping schedule by slowly getting up earlier. Try 15 minutes earlier than normal for a week, then another 15 minutes. If you get up earlier, you’ll be a bit tired during the day, and when it’s time to go to sleep, you’ll enjoy the rest.

4. Establish a bedtime ritual: It takes time to unwind the body and mind. At least an hour before bedtime, start slowing down. Turn off the computer, TV or smartphone. Floss and brush your teeth. Put away things you were using in the evening. Sit down and read a book [not on your laptop]. This kind of ritual helps establish in your mind that it’s time to sleep, and your body takes this cue and begins to prepare itself.

5. Keep your room only for sleeping: Don’t eat, watch TV, use your computer, or do other kinds of activities in your room. Restrict those activities to the living and dining rooms, so that when you go to bed, there’s just one thing to do. Be sure to make the room dark when you go to sleep too—your body reacts to light.

6. Focus your attention: Once you’ve gone through your bedtime ritual and unwound, and your body is nice and tired, you need to quiet your mind. Here’s my trick for doing that—close your eyes and visualise the first thing you did today. That might be opening your eyes and getting out of bed. Then visualise the second thing you did—let’s say you washed your face or drank a glass of water. Then you started the coffee but first had to grind the beans. Visualise these tiny steps in detail. I never get past the first hour of my day before I’m asleep.

7. Change slowly: Be patient with sleeping changes—they are difficult, because when you are tired, your mind doesn’t have the discipline to stick to changes. Your body and mind want to do what it’s used to doing. But if you change a little at a time, and forgive yourself for ‘messing up’ [there’s no messing up, actually], then you can make changes.

This cure for insomnia didn’t work overnight for me. But I don’t think it took that long before it did begin to work. You can only go without adequate sleep for so long before your body and mind force you to catch up. So catch up by going to sleep earlier.

Another thing I noticed was that when I began to sleep earlier and wake earlier, it threw my sleeping patterns off for a while. It was a bit weird and took a little while to adjust, but finally getting a good night’s rest was rewarding.

This was first published in the April 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Abhishek Sohni looked stressed out. He had confided in his counsellor Ravi Mazumdar that lately he just couldn’t get himself to focus on his work. Abhishek loved to work; he was the driven type who regularly went beyond the call of his duty. Over the years, he had become known for his work ethic: the guy who never complained about excess work. Not surprisingly he had risen up the ranks quite early in his career.

How could someone like Abhishek suddenly lose all interest in his job? At first Ravi thought it was a case of exhaustion. After all, that is what his symptoms—lethargy, lack of focus and a general disinterest at work—pointed to. But digging deeper he discovered that the cause of Abhishek’s increasing sense of dissatisfaction was not excessive stress but the lack of it. The work that once challenged him now made him weary. He no longer derived any sense of satisfaction from his job, so much so that he had started thinking of retirement although he was only 44. Abhishek was suffering from a different kind of burnout, a phenomenon that results from boredom and lack of eustress or beneficial stress.

We tend to associate the term “burnout” with too much work-related stress. But this is a limited view of a much broader phenomenon. In this issue’s cover story, Dr Steven Berglas tells us the other side of the burnout story—when lack of enough stress and paucity of challenges leads to extended boredom which, in turn, causes burnout. According to him, no matter how good you are at your job and how much you enjoy doing something, after a while you will get bored of doing the same thing over and over again.

Giving examples of athletes who compete against top competitors, salespeople who exceed quotas, and managers who beat deadlines, he says, “Humans are innately challenge-hungry organisms who are rewarded [at a neurological level] by doing something ‘better’ every day… however, should an Olympic-calibre athlete compete against a high school student in his preferred sport, or a salesman reach his annual quota in a few months simply by filing orders from repeat customers, neither individual will derive eustress.”

One could say that true happiness and bliss result from good stress, which absorbs our attention thoroughly and makes us feel worthy. On the other hand, not being challenged enough is bound to make you feel disengaged, causing boredom which ultimately leads to burnout. He calls such burnout Supernova Burnout.

While explaining the concept of Supernova Burnout in detail, Dr Berglas offers a few unique techniques to address it, should you face such a problem in your life. Use these techniques to keep boredom in check while finding new ways to keep your work stimulating and challenging. Because, monotony isn’t good for your wellbeing.

The post February 2016 issue: Preventing burnouts appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Something similar happens with my laptop. Often it just ‘hangs’ and  no key I press seems to make it work. But all I have to do is ‘hard boot’ the computer and it starts working as though nothing had ever been the matter!

Do humans need to reboot?

This set me thinking… just like our electronic devices need a complete system reboot once in a while to function optimally, isn’t it the same with us as well? There are times when there is an overload in our lives—of information, emotions and endless chores. And everything seems to keep on piling. Isn’t it inevitable then, that even this inimitable brain of ours is going to just ‘hang’ occasionally?

Indeed, our systems do get overloaded and do ‘hang’. But being such amazing creatures, we work even on a ‘hung’ system. Our mind may be fatigued with the sheer processing it has to do, but we still manage to carry on with our tasks. Our hearts may be overwhelmed with the daily barrage of feelings and emotions, but cover them to face each new day. The abuse we heap on our poor exhausted bodies is beyond description. So driven are we with our tasks, duties, responsibilities and priorities that we carry on with a full load for as much as we can, until our body comes crashing down with a major illness!

The incident with my phone got me thinking… I asked myself, do we need to wait till we reach that stage of exhaustion before we take a break? Does it not make infinitely more sense to simply ‘reboot’ our systems occasionally so that we are ready to face the world ‘as good as new’?

So how does one reboot one’s system?

How do we disengage ourselves from the multiple connections that we make with the world outside? Sure, one can go off for a long holiday or retreat, but that isn’t always possible. So, how do we reboot and recharge?

I was struggling with the ‘how’ for a very long time and could not come up with any ideas. One day, sitting at the airport terminal with my flight delayed by two hours, I had my ‘eureka’ moment. I realised this moment was what I had, and it was up to me how I made the most of it. So instead of opening my laptop and working on that presentation, I decided to just close my eyes and let my thoughts meander. And as I felt my mind unwind, it occurred to me that it wasn’t all that difficult to reboot my system.

Here are some ways in which I have eventually learnt to do it.

Meditate. This is one of the best ways in which you can withdraw from the world and retreat into yourself. There are some people who will tell you that you need to meditate an hour daily, while others will say that meditation is a discipline which must be followed rigidly. Sure, if you can find the space to prioritise an hour’s meditation daily, nothing like it! But most of us, who are slaves to our schedules, cannot! No matter. Whatever time you can devote for meditation, wherever you are, it’s good enough. Just close your eyes, clear your mind, and BREATHE. Even if you can squeeze in 10 minutes of it in your day, it will be a quick reboot for your system. So do it!

Treat yourself to a Spa Day! A good facial, a leisurely pedicure or an aromatherapy treatment not only rejuvenates your body, but also puts you in a relaxed state of mind. It acts like a speed-breaker and slows down the breakneck speed with which you are going ahead with life. If you don’t believe me, just experience the light-heartedness that you feel after a massage or a facial. It is truly uplifting.

Connect to Nature. Mother Earth provides us with all the energy we need to go through life. Just connecting to her is a wonderful way of recharging yourself. Whether it is taking a few minutes to smell the roses on your balcony, or a moonlit walk along the beach, or simply watching the horizon as you travel down the highway to your office is enough. The important thing is to let go of all other thoughts whirling in your mind and connect completely with Nature for those few moments.

Take a day off. Do nothing but laze around. I know, I know, this is hard for most of us. We would rather save that leave for something that might come up later. I have this problem myself, and can tell you from experience. As my husband says, I can never relax or let go. Even on a weekend, I just cannot relax. I will check if something has to be done and if there’s nothing, I start cleaning up! There’s always something to be done
So one day he told me, “Just take a day off! It’s okay if you waste a day!” With much reluctance, I did that. I was amazed at how good I felt at the end of the day. So if possible, prioritise yourself for a change and take a day off. Preferably your holiday on a weekday, when the kids will be at school and your spouse is at work. Just loaf about, browse through magazines, listen to music or watch TV. Do all the things that you normally don’t ‘waste’ your time doing. The amount of good it will do to your mind and your energy levels will be well worth wasting that holiday.

Have a gadget free weekend getaway! When you get that long weekend, take off to a place where you have no mobile connectivity and where your portable internet doesn’t work. Most of us are tied to our gadgets, and invaluable as they are in running our lives optimally, they do have a huge flipside, and that is that they don’t allow us to relax. So for a weekend, leave your electronic extensions behind you, and just relax. Trust me, the world will not come to an end if you decide to take a break!

These are just a few ways I have figured out how I can snatch a few minutes to rejuvenate and recharge myself. Some of these may work for you, some may not. You know best how you can reboot your system and get it ‘good as new’. A rested mind and body will allow you to face life with joy, energy, and enthusiasm. Happy rebooting!

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