That Glenroe Feeling
If you grew up in Ireland, you know this feeling. Sunday night, the Glenroe theme music would come on over the credits, and something inside you died. That music meant one thing. Bed. School in the morning. The weekend was over, the fun was done, and Monday was coming whether you wanted it or not.
I felt it every Sunday as a kid, and I never forgot it. That quiet resistance to letting the fun, novelty and ease of the weekend end.
One of the lads wrote a line in his daily review on the last Challenge, and it has stuck with me -
“Getting to bed earlier is so much harder than getting up early.”
Getting up at 6am is hard to argue with when you have to. Getting to bed at 10pm is not hard to argue with when you don’t have to.
Nobody’s coming to make you go to bed. It’s a decision you make against a couch, a quiet house, a phone, a glass of red wine, the next episode, and the first hour all day that has actually belonged to you.
So you take the hour, and at midnight you’re still sitting there, scrolling, not even enjoying it, just not closing the day.
That’s the Glenroe feeling, grown up. The same resistance to stopping the distraction and letting the day close.
Sleep is the lever under everything else you’re chasing. Your mood. Your patience with the kids. Your anxiety. Your energy for work. Your work performance. Your body fat. Your strength. Your 5k. Your marathon. Protect your sleep and all of it gets easier. Lose it, and you’re paying a tax on every goal you have, wondering why the whole thing feels like such a shit show.
Protecting your sleep starts in the morning.
Get daylight into your eyes early. Ten minutes outside as soon as you can, even a grey morning, sets your body clock for that night.
Cut the caffeine by mid-afternoon. That 4pm coffee is still in your system at bedtime, lightening the back half of your night, and you won’t even feel it happening. Same for the booze.
Give yourself a dead stop in the evening. Pick the time the phone goes down. If you watch something, watch something you’ve seen before, nothing new and novel to stimulate the brain.
It’s really a choice. We’re choosing between staying up doing stuff that interferes with our kip, or protecting our sleep and performing better the next day across the board.
Remembering how you’ll feel tomorrow is what helps you make the right call tonight.
The Glenroe music will live on in our memories. Try hit the scratcher when it’s playing in your head tonight.
Gary
If any of this sounded familiar
I send out regular emails, with similar themes to this piece - what actually happens to your body in your forties, and what to do about it. If you want to receive them, just pop your email in below.
If you'd rather just talk, email me at gary@garybrownhere.com.
And if you've already decided you want to do something about it, that's what The Challenge is for. It runs for 4 weeks, and the next dates are on the page.
