This week I'm going to fix my sleeping schedule.
Hey guys!
Welcome back to Lavendaire.
It's Aileen.
I want to jumpstart a series called "Get Your Life Together".
It's a series / challenge where I'm going to try to work on
improving my life in a certain area each week.
So you guys, feel free to follow along.
Each week we're going to tackle something different.
So we're going to tackle getting your life together in your habits,
in your health, in your digital space, your work, your home life, everything.
So this week we're going to start with something that is personally my weak point:
sleep, my sleep schedule.
I know I'm probably going to be judged for this video,
but I'm just gonna put it out there: I've always been a night owl.
I sleep very late and I wake up very late.
And I've always had problems with this,
in school, in college, even the internships that I've worked,
because it's just so hard for me to wake up consistently at an early time,
that I have this limiting belief that I simply can't do it.
And it's such a strong limiting belief that I shaped my whole life and career
around this "fact" in my mind that I can't wake up early.
So that's why my path led me to be my own boss
and I like having the freedom to sleep and wake up whenever I want,
but I do know that I can go overboard with it
and it can really hurt my productivity if it gets really bad.
So to give you a little background, I would typically sleep between 2:00 to 5:00 AM
and wake up between 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM.
And it can get pretty bad because if I'm waking up at 1:00 PM,
then I don't really start my day until 2:00,
and in the fall and winter the sun sets at like 4:00 or 4:30,
so you can see how little time I have to be productive and shoot videos
because I like to use natural lighting.
It's just not ideal and I know I can do better.
And I also know I can perform better when I have time for a morning routine,
when I have a couple hours in the morning to journal, meditate,
and do all of these things for myself.
But when I tend to sleep late, I have the bad habit of just waking up when I have to,
like when my first meeting or call is.
So when I wake up I immediately get to work
and I don't make the time for my self care in the morning.
So the goal this week is to wake up before 10:00 AM.
I think my ideal time to wake up is between 9:30 or 10:00 AM
because that gives me a couple hours to do my morning routine
and then I can get to work around noon or after.
I know it sounds so ridiculous to most people because it's already so late.
I just don't see myself being the "wake up at 7:00, 6:00 AM" kind of person.
It's not something that I want to do.
I do enjoy working at night and I get the most things done at night.
I'm so productive at night.
And I think 12:30 is a good time to go to bed for me.
So 12:30 to 9:30 is nine hours of sleep
and I want to give myself nine hours of sleep a night.
So that's going to be my schedule.
But if you're doing the sleep challenge, feel free to change
and edit it to whatever works for you, whatever your ideal time is.
So to put it simple: Get into bed by 12:30 AM, wake up at 9:30 AM,
and when I wake up, do not immediately check my phone,
don't go on social media, just get up.
Let's see how I do.
Okay, so it is the night before my first day of the change your sleeping schedule challenge.
I was going to let myself sleep in until I naturally wake up,
just to get a good time to start with, but I realized that I have a 10:00 AM call tomorrow
so I just might have to wake up for that.
Setting my alarms to 9:30ish, so we'll see what happens.
So today I woke up at 9:40 because I thought I had a call at 10:00.
I kind of waited around in bed, half asleep and then 10:00 came and the call didn't happen.
So I think there was a time difference discrepancy
since I was organizing with some friends who are in the UK.
So because it didn't happen, I went back to sleep
and I woke up at almost 12:00 basically.
And I'm glad we started off this way so you can see where I'm at.
I slept at like 3:00-3:30 and then I couldn't wake up or get out of bed
until 12:00 because I need 8-9 hours of sleep.
Alright guys, it is 12:21 and I said that I would be in bed by 12:30
so I just put some moisturizer, brushed my teeth, and I'm in bed.
Let's see if I can fall asleep and wake up early.
I'll set my alarm for 9:30 tomorrow.
Day 2.
I think Wilson woke me up when he woke up,
so it was like 7:30 and I was like, "This is way too early to be up."
I think when I wake up earlier than necessary, it makes me want to sleep in even more.
Anyway, fast forward to my two alarms.
I believe I woke up at 10:00 AM which is actually not that bad
because it's around the ideal time to wake up.
It's still not easy to wake up.
I still feel like snoozing.
Honestly, I think if I didn't have to vlog, I would probably would have gone back to sleep
but because I had to record my waking up,
I think it made me wake up a little more and force me to start my day.
Day 3 was a total, total fail, and I'm realizing how bad I am doing at this challenge
because I just had no urgency to wake up, no reason to get up, so I just slept in.
And I think I got up, finally, at like 1:00 PM.
So I felt pretty bad about myself, very "Ugh, just feel disgusting."
But I did my best to just go about my day, but I was pretty disappointed at myself.
I think because I had such a late start and I felt like I failed at the start of my day,
it made me a lot less productive and a lot more distracted throughout that day
because I remember Day 3 was very, very unproductive.
So starting your day not right and starting your day
disappointed at yourself is really not a great way to start.
Day 4, I was finally able to get up at 9:30.
I think the trick was that I set an earlier alarm at like 9:18
and then I woke up on the second alarm at 9:30.
So I always need a pre-alarm before my actual alarm.
And I think because I disappointed myself the day before,
I was like, "No, I have to do this right."
So I had a very productive morning on Day 4, even tidied up my kitchen and everything.
I'm feeling good.
It's about 11:00 AM.
I just finished my full morning routine of journaling, making tea, meditating,
I even pulled some tarot cards for my day.
So it's just a reminder that I need an hour and a half to myself in the morning to feel good.
And now I'm just going to tidy up a little bit and get to work, so see you tonight.
In bed – look what time it is.
Yay!
Day 5, woke up at 10:30 which was after a few alarms,
but 10:30, I'll give myself a B on that.
For some reason, I did end up feeling sleepy during the day so I did end up taking a nap.
I guess you could say I really like sleep.
Hello there!
It is 12:39.
I'm supposed to be in bed but tomorrow is the Lavendaire launch event
and I still have work to prepare.
I have to sign some workbooks and prepare my workshop for tomorrow.
So I won't be sleeping that early.
Also, I'll be waking up earlier than usual because I have to get ready for the event.
So Day 6 was the Lavendaire launch event and I had to wake up early for that.
And I just had to get ready, put on makeup, and start a really eventful and epic day.
It was a very fulfilling day, but I was exhausted
because I only got like four hours of sleep, as did all my friends who slept over,
but it was a super fun day where we got to celebrate
the launch of the Artist of Life Workbook and the Daily Planner,
and I got to meet a lot of you face-to-face for the first time, so that was a real treat.
The time is 12:00, 12:02.
And I just had my event today.
The best part of the day is to not have to look pretty
and just to put all my hair up, my makeup off.
And I feel the best like this, really.
I'm just pretty exhausted, looking through my Stories from today.
And yeah, I think I'm going to call it an early night!
So Day 7, I actually purposely let myself sleep in
because I didn't get enough sleep the night before
and I wanted to recover from a very exhausting event.
So I slept until I woke up naturally at 11:00 AM
which is a good natural time for me to wake up.
But I just kind of wanted to let myself go,
off the hook for this challenge because I felt like I deserved it.
Honestly, at the end of this Get Your Life Together challenge,
I don't feel like I performed that well and it's a little disappointing because,
you know, I wanted to show you guys improvement.
But I think the improvement was a little bit, it wasn't as dramatic, but it is real.
And it is something that I feel like I have to keep working on.
I still need time to adapt my sleeping schedule
because I don't want to force myself to wake up super early.
That's why I didn't want to do any "wake up at 5:00 AM" challenge,
because I knew it wasn't realistic.
But I still think that 9:30 is a realistic time for me to wake up.
The benefits of this is, I think after a week of setting my alarm at that time,
I don't feel like it's as early in my mind as I originally thought it was.
I feel like, "Oh, that's not that bad."
I think in the beginning of the week, I was like,
"Ugh, I haven't woken up at 9:00 for a while," on my own when I don't have something to do.
But it's nice to wake up early even when I don't have an obligation or event or meeting
because I love having that 1-2 hours of morning routine time
which is so good for my soul and my self care.
So having that extra time really made a big difference.
Also, a positive from this challenge is:
I actually did a really good job at kicking the habit of looking at my phone
and spending time on my phone every morning.
My previous habit was to open Instagram when I woke up,
or my email or my messages, and spend at least 30 minutes
looking at my phone just to wake me up.
And this whole week I didn't do that.
Maybe I did it once, but for the most part I didn't check my phone
and I was able to wake up whether it's with music or without music.
And even after this challenge, this morning, I realized that I did the same thing.
And something that I decided to change after this week was
moving all of my social media apps, including Instagram,
onto the second page of my phone, and I labeled the folder [this emoji] (Don't check).
And surprisingly, in the morning, I didn't check Instagram or anything
and throughout today – the entire day – I did not check Instagram.
I haven't opened any social media apps.
I've just been working.
So that's productive, and that is a win.
So I think checking your phone kind of goes hand-in-hand with waking up productively.
So that's good.
I'm going to keep working on the waking up at 9:30.
I'm going to keep setting my alarm,
and I'll give you guys an update for how I'm doing later on in the weeks.
But just so you know, the next week of the Get Your Life Together challenge is going to be
on being consistent with habits and self care
because that's the next area that I need to work on.
Wish me luck and if you want to join in with me, do the sleep challenge this week.
Wake up earlier.
Do your best.
Let me know how you do down below in the comments.
Love you guys.
Hope you don't think I'm too lazy and I'm a slob after this video,
but now you know the real me who likes to sleep and likes to stay up at night.
I guess some things don't change, but we can always improve, right?
If you do decide to post anything about this Get Your Life Together challenge,
I like the acronym "GYLT".
It kind of reminds me of Get Ready With Me, GRWM.
So this whole series will be like Get Your Life Together,
#GYLT or #GYLTchallenge.
I'll write it down below.
But that's it for today.
Love you guys so much.
Bye!