Why I Stopped Writing Off the Day After a Bad Night

I used to wake up foggy. Counted the hours. And then decided that the day is going to be ruined.

During my 5 brutal years of insomnia, just a couple of hours of work tired me out completely. I was burned out all the time. So I know exactly what you’re going through.

But here’s what I know now. How you feel in the first hour after a bad night tells you almost nothing about the rest of your day.

Our energy goes up and down all day, even for people who sleep great. Everybody gets tired in the afternoon. It’s completely normal.

And the brain fog usually gets better once you start moving. So don’t decide at 7 am how your whole day is going to go.

Molding your day around your sleep

A lot of people with insomnia start molding their entire day around how they slept the night before.

Good night? You do the important stuff. Bad night? You only do the bare minimum.

And every time you do that, you teach your brain that your whole day depends on last night. Which means tonight becomes a test. And a test is pressure.

And pressure is exactly what keeps the alarm in our brain switched on. So the more your day depends on your sleep, the harder it gets to sleep.

So do the important stuff anyway, even after a bad night. Even if you’re not feeling like a million bucks.

That’s how you prove to yourself that insomnia doesn’t get to dictate what you do and what you don’t do.

It usually goes better than you expect.

And every time you get it done, you build evidence that you can do way more on bad sleep than you think. I keep telling my clients this: confidence comes from evidence.

You still showed up

The goal is to live your day as normally as possible, even when you’re tired.

That doesn’t mean you have to pretend everything is great. Being tired is completely normal. Yes it sucks, but it’s 100% doable.

Think back to the time before insomnia. You probably had a bad night here and there. And the next day you still went to work without even thinking about it.

So after a bad night, you still show up. You still do the thing. You still go to work. You still spend time with your family.

And at the end of the day you look back and go, okay, the world didn’t end. It was actually a pretty good day.

That in itself starts to lower the stakes on sleep. Because once your day stops depending on your night, the night gets a lot less scary. And that’s when the alarm in your brain can finally start to switch off.

What about big days?

Me personally, I NEVER sleep before an early flight. My brain just won’t let me. It’s like, “hey, if I let you sleep, you’ll miss it 100%.”

And that’s TOTALLY fine. Because the next night, things just go back to normal.

Think about the people who compete in the the Olympics. Do you think anybody sleeps the night before? Nobody does. And they still crush records.

Because our bodies are resilient. Way more resilient than insomnia makes us believe.

So before a big day, you go anyway. You show up, and you let the day happen.

And when you crush it on a bad night of sleep, you prove to yourself that you can handle whatever comes. Every time you do that, the fear before the next big day gets a little smaller.

So here’s my challenge for you.

Today, whatever kind of night you have, pick one thing you’d normally save for a good night. And do it anyway.

If you want my personal help ending insomnia, join me inside the End Insomnia Program on Skool👇

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To peaceful sleep,

Ivo at End Insomnia

Why should you listen to me?

I recovered from insomnia after 5 brutal years of suffering. I've now coached 100s like you to end their insomnia for good, 100% naturally, by fixing the root cause: hyper-arousal.