Sleep like a baby
I have trouble sleeping once in a while, don’t you? Whether it’s getting to sleep, staying asleep without waking up at 3:40am, or waking up too early. So what gives? I’ve done my workout at the gym, my bed is comfortable, my room suitably chilled, I didn’t drink alcohol too soon before bed, nor did I eat too late or have caffeine after 4pm and most likely I got in the recommended 10k steps. In other words, I’ve set myself up for the perfect sleep, yet there I am in the middle of the night, staring at the blackness.
When this happens the first thing I’m going to do is laugh at myself. You did everything right, but still got dealt a crappy hand. Sometimes that’s life. The second thing I’ll do is remind myself that it’s not that important, I can sleep more the next day.
As I walk down Sukhumvit Road (Bangkok’s busiest road) thinking about all this, I see a curious sight. A man is snaking his way through the three lines of traffic on a motorbike, with a small child sat in front of him. The child has his head resting on the handlebars of this motorbike and is fast asleep. So let me get this straight… amidst this roaring stream of traffic, with ancient buses pouring out black smoke, tuktuks with blarring music, motorbikes with augmented Formula 1 sounding exhausts and cars banked up for kilometres, this child is sleeping soundly. And yet I can’t get a good sleep in the equivalent of a cloud floating in the sky (my bed).
You have to ask yourself, why?
Because I’m an “adult” now. And as an adult my mind has grown into a formidable device, the power of which, science in all it’s brilliance, can scarcely comprehend. But like all the other adults around me, while I have inherited this great power, I’ve failed utterly to manage it well. The result is that as I lay my head down on this floating cloud, my mismanaged mind throws off my preparation and the baby-like sleep eludes me once again.
It strikes me that what we consider as adult, is actually more like adolescence. An intermediate stage, where we have assumed our full physical and mental power, but not the mastery to use them well. This is the stage that the vast majority of humanity finds itself in. Our job, whether we know it or not, is to move into the final stage of development. A meta-adult, where we have all the capacity of fully fledged adults but also the peace and equanimity of the child who can sleep on motorbike handlebars. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Would there be arguments, turf wars and bloody conflicts if this were the case? I doubt it.
The minimum effective dose
“I have responsibilities though, I don’t have time to meditate every day, consult sages and visit ashrams in India”. I think it’s a matter of priorities. Once you realise that this kind of progress is the most important thing you can do for yourself and for everyone else, you’ll find the time. One method I’ve used to great effect lately to free up time is the concept I call the minimum effective dose.
That involves working out what your goals are, and how to achieve them with the minimum time and effort. For example I used to train at the gym 5 days a week, by changing my training I found that I can achieve the same results with 3 days of training per week. That’s just 3 hours a week! Or with my investments, instead of actively hunting for new opportunities on a daily basis, I realised I can achieve my goals by spending 1-2 days a week making sure things are on track. All of a sudden I have all this extra time.
All those roads that we think are so important, fitness, wealth, career, relationships: the longing for progress with these everyday things is just a proxy for our core drive, which is to step into the next level of development. To become fully fledged. Powerful and peaceful at the same time.