Why You Should Sleep With Your Phone
If you’re like a lot of us, the first thing you do when you spend an entire night staring at the ceiling is grab your phone and type in something along the lines of “Why can’t I sleep?” And the answer, invariably, is your phone.
There are a lot of reasons — very good scientific reasons — for keeping your phone off the bedside table or out of the bedroom altogether:
1. The constant barrage of texts and email messages stimulates your brain and keeps you tossing and turning.
2. The eerie blue light emanating from the screen suppresses your body’s supply of melanin, which can affect your sleep cycle.
3. Those alerts from all your apps can interrupt much-needed REM sleep, leaving you feeling tired the next day.
Don’t accuse me of being anti-science if I say that I don’t agree. I mean, I don’t doubt everything that the experts say. I’m just saying that the research was done in a laboratory setting and this is real life.
As the founder of the corporate training firm Balancing Life’s Issues, I encountered a lot of situations during the coronavirus pandemic that can’t be duplicated in the lab. What happens when you suddenly can’t do training sessions in person? How about if someone in the office is positive? It can be scary. I had to make a lot of decisions on the fly, and I wasn’t always sure that I was right. I’m sure every other CEO out there had similar experiences.
Sometimes things at work just can’t wait. If it’s a crisis, you often have to take care of it on the spot. Yes I’ve gotten work calls in the middle of the night, but I don’t regret taking them because my team knows the types of situations where they need to keep me in the loop and the ones that can wait. That’s the type of relationships I like to build with the people around me. The mutual understanding of some things can wait, yet knowing when we receive a call, we don’t hesitate.
That goes for my kids too. I know that I have the type of close knit, unconditional relationships with my children because they know I'm just a phone call away. They don't doubt I won't be there for them because I make sure that they can reach me whenever they need me. That’s not to say that I don’t sometimes grit my teeth when I’m awoken from a deep sleep...hello I’m human. But it also means I fully welcome the sacrifice of a little lost sleep, to ensure the people I love can reach me whenever they need.
The same goes for our parents. The pandemic was tough, especially when we were separated for a year or more from our loved ones, and it was a blessing to know that they were just a phone call away. I know this was true for me and my 86-year-old mother. If there was an emergency on either end, we could let each other know right away.
I don’t mean to make it sound like we can only make late-night calls when the house is on fire. That’s not the only type of calls that are important. Sometimes the most important calls are the ones simply yearning for support and an ear to listen. When I am feeling immensely sad and just need someone to talk to — like the time my daughter was sick and I was distraught with worry — I knew what to do. I called my mom and she answered. There’s no better feeling in the world.
But you don’t have to let your phone run your life. You can stay accessible, without losing sleep, by turning off most of your alarms. You don’t have to always be accessible through every app. If your cousin updates her Facebook profile, it’s not a need-to-know situation. Let the people you care about know they can call or text you and turn off alarms for everything else.
Everything in life is fluid. The definition of unconditional love to me, literally means that you are always there for them and vice versa. Sometimes you sacrifice sleep simply because that’s what it means to be there for someone. And when that’s the case, you’re more than happy to take the call.
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