Sleep

During high school, college and a bit into my early career, I numbed the pain through too much drinking and partying. I sought negative attention, unhealthy relationships, and had days where cleaning the kitchen, leaving the house, pretty much “doing life,” felt next to impossible.

Simultaneously I somehow managed to get good grades in school, keep up on work and get that next job or promotion. I even worked in Europe on my own for a year.

If you only knew me on paper, I was doing pretty great.

Sure, there were many people in my life that knew I, in fact, wasn’t doing great (especially those that knew me in my party days). But for the most part, I’d say I was a silent sufferer. And much of that suffering occurred in the wee hours of the night.

I was a raging insomniac. Those depressive thoughts became relentless when I lay down to sleep. Soon I would find myself giving in, watching TV or writing all night, making breakfast as soon as the sun rose and heading to work. Sometimes this would happen a day or two a week, and sometimes it would stretch on for several days of zero sleep.

A lot of times I would convince myself that if I stayed up just one more night, surely I’d be able to sleep the next. Not so much.

Those insomnia stretches were the absolute worst. Lack of sleep made my thoughts worse, my diet atrocious, my activity little to none, and only encouraged more late-night antics. What’s the point in going home if you know you’ll just sit and stew in your thoughts?

Mindfulness meditation was key in getting through this stage of my depression. Slowing down those thoughts, understanding they had little to no value, allowed me to find sleep faster and for longer.

Once I could sleep, it is not an understatement to say it felt like my whole world opened up.

Sleep allowed me to be more active, to simply enjoy my daily life more. Sleep lead to my ability to start exercising, which in turn made me want to eat a little better, and started to spark my desire for a more balanced life. That life included healthier relationships, a slightly more balanced approach to my nightlife, and baby steps, year over year, to how I live now.

Sleep is KEY to balance.

I could sit here and spout study after study on the importance of sleep to every bit of your well-being. But there are hundreds of books out there that do that far better than I ever could. And if you’re a person who might have convinced yourself you can do with less sleep, there are studies that will tell you that’s only true for 3-5% of the entire world’s population.

So I’ll leave it at this, if sleep is elusive in your life, I would encourage you to keep fighting for it.

Keep seeking until you find your key weapon to combat sleeplessness. You may find yourself as shocked as I was at how significant of a change it can make on this crazy journey.

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Balancing a Brain that’s Fighting Back

By Katherine Warren • April 6, 2025

Your brain will straight up lie to you. There’s no way to sugar coat that, friends, there just isn’t. But your brain also creates beautiful ideas and inventions, and well, everything you see that surrounds us. It’s the power of the AND. Your brain is the king of the “and.” The first step in finding balance is recognizing this. The second step is discerning the beautiful part of your brain from the beast. The third is not reacting to, judging or negotiating with the beastly part. It’s tough, tough work. It’s lifelong work. And even if your friends start calling you things like the “definition of balance” (a term so kindly bestowed on me by some friends recently). You’re still gonna have to work your a** off on this part for the rest of your life as you sway back and forth, in and out of balance. Does it get easier? Yes and no. The beauty of understanding the feeling of balance is that you don’t have to rely on your brain so much. You know how it feels to be in a place of solid, grounded peace, no matter what your brain is shouting you “should” or “could” be doing. The harder part is that the more you find balance, the more likely it is that you are upleveling your life. Your focus and pure presence have likely brought about more of whatever you define as a successful life--mentally, physically, or materially. That uplevel can mean those brain lies cut a little deeper, make you question every decision you make to protect your peace. If you’ve learned to sit with that pain in your belly, it might fight a little harder to make you pay attention to it. It might put up a bigger fight to try to force you to listen to those untruths. This is when you have to remind yourself, your brain will straight up lie to you. Under no circumstances should you negotiate with these thoughts. That’s where spiraling lives, that’s where lack of balance lies. Sometimes holding hard to your balanced routines will do the trick.