The School of Greatness - 672 Renew Your Energy with Arianna Huffington

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

“HOWEVER BLESSED OUR LIVES MAY BE, EVERY DAY HA STRESS AND CHALLENGES.” Sleep is one of the most important things in life. If you’re not getting a good night sleep, it’ll affect every aspect of your life. Your quality of work will suffer, and you will find that you’re not as productive as usual. You’ll become more irritable, and your relationships will start to strain. Sadly, people won’t want to be around you as much as usual. When you get proper rest, going through your full REM cycle, everything gets better. You’ll find more light at the end of the road. It can help with depression, lower your blood pressure, and has even been shown to help fight diabetes. The importance of sleep is something many people underestimate, but it’s an important step to achieving your greatness. To help you understand good sleeping habits, I wanted to bring you this clip from a previous episode with Arianna Huffington. Arianna’s 15th book is all about sleep. She sat down and gave me some great tips on ensuring you get a solid night’s rest. Learn how you can fully recharge your energy, on Episode 672. In This Episode You Will Learn: Arianna’s sleep routine (00:52) What’s better: a hot bath or a cold shower (1:56) What you should wear to bed (2:27) What to read before bed (2:53) How you need to think before bed (4:07)

This is 5-Minute Friday! Welcome everyone to today's episode. We have a very special guest today. Her name is Ariana Huffington. She's here in the studio in Los Angeles, Greatness Studio. And she is the co-founder and president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post media group and author of 15 books. She's also been named to Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people and the Forbes most powerful women list. Her 15th book is called The Sleep Revolution,

transforming your life one night at a time. And it's all on the science, history, and mystery of sleep. What would be the ideal routine for you in terms of going to bed and then waking up? Great. I love that. So I'll give you my routine. I'll give you my nightly ritual. But what I recommend for everybody watching is to create your own ritual. I mean, it's almost like I give you a menu and you need to experiment and see what is it that does it for you. Sure. For me, it's like 30 minutes before I'm going to go to sleep, turning off all my devices and gently escorting them out of the bedroom.

Escorting them out. They'll be there in the morning. You put them on a horse. You put them in their little homes outside the bedroom. Turning off the lights, you know, the bright lights, making it sort of, I just have one nightstand light and one light in the bathroom. Then having a really, really hot, wonderful bath. Really?

Warm bath? Yeah. With Epsom salts, which are very relaxing, and flickering candles. But if you guys don't like baths, have a shower. I don't like baths. Okay. I've got one. I've never used it.

Yeah. You're going to have a shower. Yeah. And hot is better than cold. Oh, yeah. than coal oh yeah you're you're basically you basically want to slow down your brain and soothe your muscles you know everything is like powering it down i guess when you're going to a hot tub later tonight i always feel ready to sleep exactly you feel exactly the hot tub is in a perfect to do a hot tub if you have a hot tub go to a hot tub i don't have a hot tub so

If you have a hot tub, go to a hot tub. I don't have a hot tub, so I do the bath. And then put on, if you sleep naked, you sleep naked. But if you wear PJs or a nightdress or whatever, make sure that you wear clothes for bed. I used to sleep in my gym clothes. Really? And then your brain gets these confusing messages.

I'm supposed to go work out. Are we going to the gym or are we powering down? So even if you're a t-shirt, make sure it's not a t-shirt you wear to the gym. And then in bed, I only read physical books. I don't read anything on screens. Anybody who is reading

The Sleep Revolution in bed, I would consider it a personal victory if you actually fall asleep while reading it read 20 20 pages a night fall asleep whatever 10 pages you get drowsy you let the book drop you turn off the light you're asleep so that is incredibly important for those who have children you know that that's how you put your child to bed. You don't just drop your child in bed. You give them a bath, you put them in their PJs, you read to them. You kind of transition.

It's like the good night moon. You say good night to everything, which is really a demarcation line between your day with all its stresses, blessed our lives may be every day has stresses challenges difficult things and incompletions there's nobody who has any interest in job or is a busy mom who finishes the day and says i did absolutely everything it's always something that Absolutely everything that was on my list or I should have done. Never. So you need to somehow tell your brain and your body, we did what we did this day. And now the day has come to a close.

And we need to fully recharge. Cross the line. We need to cross that line. Not be in bed on the screen thinking about work and then trying to sleep at the same time, couldn't even cut off line. I just really, I wish I could sort of convey that feeling that I absolutely, totally believe now to everybody watching

because I promise that if you do this, every aspect of your life will improve. If you have any lingering doubt that you're not going to be as productive, just try it. Yeah. Because it's like getting in the Tesla. You're going to get to your destination faster. Right? Smoother.

Smoother. Cleaner. With kind of consuming less energy. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And also the advantage of kind of energy that is self-renewing is a little bit like the self-renewing energy of sleep.