For most of us striving for success,
For most of us striving for success, particularly self-employed or small business owners, sleep is a second thought that never gets realized. It’s not until something profound occurs that we realize there is more to success than mere money and power. Such was the case with Arianna Huffington, the author, entrepreneur, and activist responsible for “Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating A Life Of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder”
In this book, Huffington goes into detail about how her own sleep deprivation, stress overload, and work compulsions brought her to a bottoming out stage and caused her to experience an accidental fall injuring her seriously. This forced her to reevaluate the meaning of success and how important having a healthy lifestyle is over maintaining a particular status or having material rewards.
Focus On Well Being, Wisdom, Wonder, and Sleep
Money and power are two of the metrics on the scale that makes up our success but the third is health and well being leading into wisdom, wonder, and sleep. We fail ourselves by ignoring the third metric to the detriment of our success. Without the necessary sleep, we’re not capable of wisdom. We become irrational in our reactions with others and our thought-process becomes rash. Too often we see people in high-ranking positions making illogical decisions not based on unintelligence but because they are not wise.
There is a tunnel vision that comes with our unbalanced scale of success being focused so intently on the money and power side and so little on the sleep side. We are missing the beauty that surrounds us. We don’t get to see the world with the wonder of a child’s eyes. When the sun is coming up as we’re drinking our coffee in the morning, we don’t experience that awe because we’re in a rush to work. On the drive, we don’t see the wonder of nature around us most likely due to our focus on a business call. Rather than take a nice walk for exercise and breathe in the freshness of the air, we go to a gym and get on a machine.
With the world as we know it, most folks are more concerned with their smartphones and electronic devices than they are with taking care of their own health and well being. They go to bed with their phone right by their side, so it’s the first thing they see when they wake in the morning and helps them fall asleep at night. The problem is statistics show sleep is greatly affected by these devices. It’s time to put them away and get back to focusing more on the third metric of the success scale.
The more you begin to rest and nurture your body, mind, and soul, the more success you will actually start to bring into your life. You’ll be making decisions with a clear mind which will bring you back to the wise person that you need to be for your business. Sleep and rest bring calm and peace which brings happiness and with that comes wonder as you drink your coffee and look out at the day as it starts each morning. All of this will make you more productive, less harried, and better able to achieve the other aspects of the scale to your success.