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Episode Summary: 

Ian emphasises the significance of establishing a sleep regimen, drawing comparisons to putting children on a schedule for better sleep. He emphasises the need of proper sleep hygiene, such as shutting off gadgets before bed and following a consistent regimen.

• Understand the concept of "sport is life," focusing on vision, voice, connections, and trusting the body.
• Learn the importance of good sleep hygiene, including turning off devices well before bed and not having them in the bedroom.
• Discover the benefits of meditation for calming the mind and improving focus, balance, and sleep.

About the Host: 

Ian Hawkins, host of "Sport Is Life," is dedicated to showing how sports can transform lives. With extensive experience as an athlete, a coach, PE teacher, community volunteer, and manager at Fox Sports, Ian brings a wealth of knowledge to the podcast. His journey began in his backyard, mentored by his older brother, and has since evolved into coaching elite athletes and business leaders. Ian's commitment to sports and personal development is evident in his roles as a performance coach and active community member. Through "Sport Is Life," Ian shares inspiring stories and valuable lessons to help listeners apply sports principles to all areas of life. 

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And getting yourself in a routine.

If you've had children, you know how important it is to get them into a routine as quickly as possible, and how much better they sleep when you do and you are the same. So have steps for your brain to start to realize you are winding it down. I'm Ian Hawkins, and this is sport. Is life. The purpose of sport, as I see it, is to see your vision become a reality, find your voice, create strong connections and learn to trust your body.

You are you currently having challenges with your sleep, like a lot of the people I've been speaking to at the moment now, today, I'm going to share with you what is happening for a lot of people I'm talking to. It might be something that's happening for you, and also what you can do about it. Now, usually, this last episode of the week, I share my thoughts and lessons on something that's going on in the world of sport, given the importance of this particular topic, and how many people I'm speaking to at the moment who are having challenges with this. I thought it better to focus here. And one thing I learned, I've learned it from my own experience around sleep. I got to adrenal fatigue, completely cooked my nervous system. I wasn't getting enough sleep for one but I will also learn when I was at the Bulldogs in 2020 they have a very clear well being process. It's nine things that they cover. But the expert there that I spoke to said, unless you are dealing with sleep, and your sleep is at an optimum, then you may as well throw the other eight out. So that's how important it was, nine areas of well being, and sleep was the driver of all of them. So that's how important it is to you. Now, really basic ways to get your sleep back on track, and you might have tried some of these already, is having good sleep hygiene. So what does that mean? Firstly, making sure you're turning off your device well and truly before bed, not having it anywhere near your bedroom where you are asleep, not having any device in your bedroom where you sleep. If you can turn it to do not disturb. If there's someone that you want to be able to reach you, you can set your phone so that they can reach you, but they're the only people that can come through. Put your phone in the office somewhere, another room in the house, where it's away from you, and you're not going to get any of that looking out of the sides of it. But whatever the phone's doing and the and the distraction if you wake up that you might grab it, which I know a lot of people are doing. So get your phone away, get it away good couple of hours before you go to sleep, and having discipline around that, then getting yourself in a routine. If you've had children, you know how important it is to get them into a routine as quickly as possible, and how much better they sleep when you do and you are the same. So have steps for your brain to start to realize you are winding it down. So that means try and have less light if you can, maybe something like gentle stretching, some mindfulness, just slowing down your body, if you've got time, energy, some meditation. Or, like I said, even just the stretching and just doing it in a really gentle way, and starting to slow yourself down, it's going to get you in the right space for sleeping. Something else that could be playing out for you at the moment, one of the things that could be happening is burnout, and it is so prevalent this time of year, I get my Facebook memories come up, and the last two weeks, it's all been about burnout. And the people I'm talking to at the moment are at that time of exhaustion. It's been a long year. It always is. Often it's like post school holidays, still feeling tired. You're in that final run and probably pushed yourself to the absolute limit in a lot of different ways. Now, burnout happens usually when you are burning too many fires. You've got too many fires on the go, and what happens is you're taking a lot of energy to try and keep those fires burning. Some of those fires might not even be yours. You're running around trying to tend to these things, giving them oxygen. It's hard work. What happens there is that, yes, it causes exhaustion, but not in a good way, like if you've been working out or something that will help you to sleep. There's another good bit of sleep hygiene, by the way, making sure you get in your exercise. But not, not too late, not too late in the day, of course, before bed. But yeah, if you, if you are burnt out, then your brain goes, actually goes into overdrive, because it's trying to think of. All of the different things that you've got to do to keep you afloat the next day. So one of the best ways to get yourself around that is just a brain dump, pen and paper. Get it out of your head. I talk about journaling all the time. Get yourself a journal or just a notebook or just paper or whatever. What if you must type it, but it works way better if you're using your handwritten notes. There's something about the doing that has a process of helping your subconscious brain to start to switch off. You've seen it, you've done it yourself. It helps you clear space. Now, there could be other things playing out, usually, that you've got an overactive mind. There might be something that's playing on your mind, there could be a number of different things coming to the surface, and one of the best ways to get around that is meditation. And that meditation doesn't have to be at the end of the day, just at some point in the day. It helps you come to a place of focus, to a place of balance, to a place of calm, and those things are always going to help you get better sleep. Now I want to keep this short, because part of me, if you're someone that's struggling to sleep, I have no doubt that you've probably got a lot on already, right? It's usually for those overactive people, overactive mind. So what I want to give you an opportunity to do is, I've got my new performance meditation that I'm just putting the final touches on. I've done other meditation training in the past. What I've found my own journey around meditation. It's helped me with those things I mentioned before, to find the focus, clarity, calm and be feeling more balanced, and it definitely helps with my sleep. So this performance meditation will help you throughout the day, which will help you relax more in the evening. And it is something that I'll be having a price of around $55 but if you want to jump in now, it'll only be $11 in return for a review. Let me know how it goes. What I know is it will help you to find those things and the calm, the focus, the balance, and they will help you get more sleep. Now, there may be other things playing out, but if you get the meditation part right, you'll at least know if it was just calming my mind, reducing that activity before bed, then I'm good. I'll get more sleep. If there's something else going on, well then that's something you can then address after that. But to me, this is the simplest way to get yourself sleeping, well, the quickest way to get it happening. If you're not ready to dive into something like this, then, of course, just find you yourself meditate. There's so many different meditation apps. You can go to YouTube, you can find anything else. What I do know also is there's a whole lot of people I speak to that either they don't feel like they're doing a great job of it, they don't really know what they're doing, they haven't been given a good explanation. That was my experience. I've learned a heap over the last 11 or 12 years of meditating. I've learned what instructions don't work, and I've found what does work. And the people I've coached over these years, over those 10 years, have taken a great deal from having those instructions. Like I said, if it's something you're ready for, let me know. Either, email me info at Ian Hawkins coaching.com if you are watching this on one of my social platforms, because I think I'm going to put this one out this week on there as well. Then just comment below or message me directly and I'll hook you up, just putting final touches on it. Now, I've got one more video to go, which will be done by tomorrow, and so if you watch it this year, it's probably already done. Let me know. Otherwise. I'll see you in the next one. You've taken the time to listen to this whole episode. Now it's time to take action, commit to one thing you've learned today and make it happen, and to avoid any obstructions, join the sport is life movement by clicking on the link in the show notes. You