Week 1: Sleep

"Cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another; cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated." -Doctrine and Covenants 88:124.

"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." - Benjamin Franklin.

Sleep is one of the most important things to do to function on a basic human level. When I don't sleep enough, I instantly turn into a five year old, and I just know that if I don't take a nap, I will end up having a mental breakdown and cry for pretty much no reason. I don't really need to make an argument about why sleep is important, because I'm sure you can provide sufficient anecdotal evidence of how much we all need sleep in our lives. But here's some fun facts that I got from the internet: From the magazine Shape: Sleep controls your diet. Lack of sleep can cause you to crave unhealthy foods, and lowers your self control, so you'll eat them. It also sabotages exercising and pretty much any other good thing you want to do with your life. A pretty good goal to start out with, huh? 
Waking up EARLY increases those benefits, plus gives you more time to do stuff. Plus, the scriptures say that your bodies and minds will be invigorated, so that's cool too. 
So, this week, I've been trying to get into a sleep schedule that is fairly regular, and involves earlier waking up times. Things did not go as well as I would have liked. I DID manage to get into a bit of a routine, and with the exception of one night that I stayed up till 3 in the morning (extenuating circumstances, whatcha gonna do?) I did manage to at least get into bed before midnight every night, and started turning off screens at least half an hour before bed. For benefits on that, click here. Plus, I'm getting myself to read for half an hour before bed which is like, my favorite thing. 
Waking up early... was kind of a total wash. But, every day is a new day, and I shall keep working hard! I think what went wrong this week was

1.  It was finals week. 
2. I did not set a firm bedtime
3. I DEFINITELY didn't set a firm wakeup time. Half the time, there wasn't even an alarm involved.
4. I let other people interfere.

This next week, hopefully will go better. Here's the accountability part. This week, I will begin getting ready for bed at 10:00 PM each night, and go to bed by 10:30. I will then wake up each morning at 6:30 AM. I'll report back next week along with my new goal: Exercising 5 days out of 7 for at least half an hour, and sweating. 

Till then, love you all,

~Alicia