I slept 11 hours last night! This is a minor miracle. I slept 4 the night before, particularly little for me in recent times but more normal than 11. I’ve averaged about 6 hours a night for the last couple of years with lots of wakeful early hours. I’ve been patient believing it was a phase and would sort itself out. It seemed to start when I separated from my ex, so I put it down to emotional upset.

However, more recently I’ve noticed a connection between the amount of screen time in a day and the amount/quality of sleep. A lot of one = a little of the other.

Screen time, especially social media has been cropping up in coaching sessions recently. Coaching clients are describing how it makes them feel angry, less than, lack concentration and generally eats up hours of what could be more fruitful life. There was one group coaching session I ran where several people discovered they’d all stopped reading books and put it down to too short attention span from too much scrolling.

Yesterday I had sinusitis and chose to be off screen most of the day. I mainly dozed listening to the radio but also spent a blissful while chopping firewood in my peaceful garden with the sun and birds for company.

I slept 11 hours.

And there it is, the inconvenient truth that I’ve been unwilling to accept but which has been knocking louder and louder on my head, all this screen time is not good for me.

I’ve been ignoring it because it contradicts my best laid plans and demands.

For the last couple of years I’ve been striving to develop my online coaching business. With the aim of a biz that allows me to deliver my brilliant coaching from wherever I choose, I’ve pushed myself past my introvert comfort zone to be visible, show up and share content on a regular basis.

While I am a brilliant coach, I’ve discovered I’m not a brilliant online marketeer, or rather, I’m ok at it and learning all the time, but it doesn’t suit me brilliantly. The business model I’ve pursued requires me to be using tech a lot. This is detrimental to my day to day enjoyment. I prefer more time in the good sleep, wood chopping, garden sunshine, face to face, 3D experience of life.

This is what my New Chapter coaching is all about. Noticing what is working / not working for you in life and making changes towards more of the former.

The commonest malaise of our times is how we’ve let work and achieving goals take over. We sacrifice daily enjoyment for the sake of future dividends. Not to say that it doesn’t take effort and yes, even discomfort, to create results, of course it does. The point is to keep checking in that the results you are heading for will actually suit you and have you thriving along the way and in the long term.

Although initially resistant to my inconvenient truth, I’m grateful for the realisation.

I can now tweak and adjust my approach and draw on all I’ve learned to put the emphasis in slightly different places. More face to face coaching, more face to face networking, being online to share me and my philosophy in a way that feels good rather than with the expectation that all my work comes from that channel, more wood chopping on a work day 😊

How about you? Are you sacrificing your daily enjoyment for the sake of future goals? Are you ignoring how you actually feel and making yourself do something that doesn’t suit you?

It’s easily done.

It’s also easily undone.

If you’d like a conversation with me to uncover what’s working well and less well in your life and how to have more of the former, please give me a shout. If you’re local to Nottingham we can even do it face to face over a real life cup of coffee.

You can go ahead and book in a chat with me here.