Why Sleep Matters in Building Mental Resilience

Numerous studies have shown that sleep is critical for physical health, but its importance in mental resilience is often overlooked. Quality sleep improves decision-making skills, stress management, and emotional stability.

When you focus on improving sleep quality, you’re also investing in mental resilience and better stress management techniques.

The Sleep Resilience Pyramid

But you might be asking yourself what you can do to build your personal mental resilience? Let me walk you through a simple model that will help you to build unshakable metal resilience. To do so I want to invite you to Imagine a pyramid that is built on three layers for good sleep, which ultimately leads to improved mental resilience:

Layer 1: Setting Sleep Goals

Without a specific goal it is hard to reach success in any area of life. This is also true for sleep. Instead of setting a goal of “sleeping better” or “feeling good” you want to become specific. A simple way to do so is to set yourself a sleep quality goal on a scale from 1 (lowest sleep quality) to 10 (highest sleep quality). Go with your gut feeling and write that number down. Now you have a clear sleep goal that you can measure your daily sleep quality against.
Here are some things you want to bring into life once you have set your sleep goal:

• Have a consistent bedtime and wake-up time
• Aim for at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night

Layer 2: Addressing Limiting Beliefs

Aligning with the famous quote from Henry Ford that says that it doesn’t matter if you believe that you can do something – or not – you will always be right. Negative beliefs can be your biggest enemy in finding back to great sleep and well being. This is why we need to digest if they are working for or against us. Here are two things that can be helpful to have your beliefs working for you:

• Identify negative thoughts about sleep and replace them with positive affirmations
• Understand the correlation between good sleep and mental resilience

Layer 3: Managing Stress

Stress can have a major impact on our sleep quality and vice versa. There is no magic switch to turn off stress from one second to another. But there are simple things that will help you to reduce your stress and improve your mental resilience capabilities. These two actions can serve real magic:

• Exercise regularly but not too close to bedtime (30+ minutes)
• Consider mindfulness meditation to lower stress levels before sleep

A Real-World Case Study

Sarah, a busy entrepreneur. Sarah was constantly tired and stressed. She was working long hours and found that “sleep is for the week”. At some point she noticed that she was not only feeling horrible – but her work was also suffering. From feeling like a high performer she felt that she was not getting anything meaningful done in a recent amount of time. She decided to implement the Sleep Resilience Pyramid into her life. She started with setting sleep goals, moved on to addressing limiting beliefs, and finally mastered stress management. The result? Better (and consistent) sleep – increased productivity and a happier, more relaxed life. It took her 4 weeks to implement the things necessary into her daily schedule.

Unlocking Better Sleep and Improved Mental Health

The importance of sleep in building mental resilience can’t be overstated. Without adequate amounts of high quality sleep your amygdala (responsible for fight or flight reactions) will be up to 60% more active. Anything starting with your health, to your well-being and your productivity will be negatively affected over time. To leave the vicious cycle and to build a rock-solid mental resilience you need to prioritize high quality sleep.

Don’t delay—implement the strategies discussed in this blog post to start sleeping better tonight, leading to a happier and more resilient life tomorrow.
Interested in a map that will guide you back to good sleep no matter where you are starting from right now? Giving you not only all of the puzzle pieces, but laying them out in order right in front of you? If this sounds interesting to you – download your version of the Sleeptrust Sleepmap right now.

Sleep well,
Michael