Have you ever woken up after a deep sleep and felt like you could accomplish anything? How long ago was that? If it’s been a while since you’ve had some restful sleep this blog is all about you. When we do not get our needed sleep, it can effect our mood, our mental health, our weight and how we treat others. If we get too much sleep, that’s not good either as it can put us at risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and even death according to this blog. The magic lies in finding the sweet spot or balance if you will for your personal sleep needs.
This blog will dive deep into the 5 essentials for better sleep from top medical professionals, current research and practical experiences from my personal and professional careers. If you stay to the end I discuss a program I am proud of. Throughout you’ll see fun GIPHYs to keep the mood light. The goal is to empower you to live a life you’re happy with through getting a good level of sleep. Awareness is the first step to improving our lives. Enjoy!
Sleeping Better and Feeling More Joyful Essential #1: 
Know What It Looks Like To Have Sleep and A Joyful Mindset.
There is an interesting article I found titled “The Weary Founder: Sleep Problems, ADHD-Like Tendencies, And Entrepreneurial Intentions.” What I found most interesting is the connection to sleep issues and the individuals leaning towards an entrepreneurial mindset. The article stated that 90% of sleep problems were not chronic according to the National Sleep Institute.
Personally, I have always kept a very regimented sleep schedule. If it gets off, I know it right away. I am one of those people that gets emotional if I don’t get my sleep. I tear up, get way more sensitive, like PMS on overload 
. As a former state employee my schedule was so regimented and helped with my need for regular sleep. However, when I started my business outside of work hours, I had to stretch myself in the beginning and wasn’t getting the normal level of sleep I was accustomed to.
When I moved across the country I had a full time remote health coaching position M-F 40 hours a week. Then outside of those hours I would post my own content to help build out Move Happy®️ brand, DM people for 3-4 hours a night like Gary Vee said to do on all his social media platforms and spend Saturdays writing my blogs for the weekly topic. That was about all I could handle in the beginning because of pure exhaustion from the week…
I remember I would be crying constantly every weekend thinking, what in the heck am I doing? Should I be causing this pain to myself week after week? But over time, I got more efficient at it, started cutting down my time and the crying became less frequent HA! I spoke with Facebook about it in the beginning when I was being considered to speak on stage and help other entrepreneurs grow their businesses online from my strategies. They have that call recorded and I bet they’ll share it one day publicly…
I’m the same me but a better version today because I kept sleep as a priority and when I didn’t snapped out of it asap! I have too many people counting on my content to get too cray cray with my schedule. For me, my sweet spot is 8 hours but I am human and don’t always get that. If it dips below 5 I know it’ll be a rough few days and I make it an intentional focus to get back on track right away for fear of crying on camera 😂. #Unpredictable
What does it look like to have sleep and a joyful mindset for you? I’d love for you to post on your Facebook and tag me @TheRealMoveHappy. I’ll share your post to my community and give you credits.
Sleeping Better and Feeling More Joyful Essential #2 
What evidence is available connecting sleep with our joyful mindset?
I found a really interesting article from UC Berkeley on the importance of sleep and dreaming. If you remember in Essential Tip #1 I talked about how I get emotional if I don’t get my regular level of sleep for too long. Well the article talks about that as being normal within science PHEW! 
Personally I don’t dream too often that I recall. However, I meditate in the mornings and that is usually when most song ideas and other project ideas come to me. Meditation is a form of sleep just not the deepest level of your subconscious. The article goes on to discuss about the chemical in the brain Noradrenaline. It is only in REM sleep where the chemical is not released. This has to do with emotional repairs within the brain. They discuss further about a medication that was used in a study with Veterans that had debilitating nightmares. They tried this particular medication on them which blocked the Noradrenaline from being released in the brain thus blocking the nightmares.
When I was dealing with some PTSD and angst of a new job working at JBLM my doctor encouraged me to try melatonin. This is something you can get over the counter and is non habit forming. I was concerned about habit forming medicine because of my personality and family history. If you are struggling with sleep and you are trying non medication methods for a while and still aren’t finding resolution, I encourage you to have a discussion with your doctor and see what will work best for you.
What evidence do you have regarding sleep and a joyful mindset you’d like to share? Please post to IGTV/Instagram and tag me @TheRealMoveHappy. I’ll share to my Stories and give you credit.
Sleeping Better and Feeling More Joyful Essential #3: What is the global impact of sleep and a joyful mindset?
I found a really neat article from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) titled: “How a Good Sleep Predicts Life Satisfaction: The Role of Zero-Sum Beliefs About Happiness.” They dive deep into the aspects of sleep, lack of sleep, and their predictions came true. The less sleep one gets, the lower their predicted life satisfaction becomes and the opposite is also true for those who get more sleep.
Personally, I remember Lt. Col. Dave Grossman sharing on the Move Happy Movement Podcast
that a soldier is 5x more likely to end their life because of lack of sleep compared to PTSD from war. That really sunk in my gut when he shared that. Something we often take for granted is our level of sleep.
It reminded me of one summer after college I drove the Wounded Warrior Batallion Active Duty Soldiers at JBLM. I would drive them to their doctors appointments and what not. One day I had one of my regulars in the van started opening up to me about his lack of sleep…
He said he hadn’t slept for 5 days and finally fell asleep out of pure exhaustion 😭. He said how bad he felt for his wife because he just wanted to be able to hold her and go to bed with her but his body would wake up in tremors and he didn’t want to keep her up. So he would sleep on the couch often…
I asked him what helped him sleep other than exhaustion and he told me he was getting into meditation. He said it was new so he wasn’t sure yet…
A few years later I began really taking meditation seriously and that has helped me tremendously during seasons where sleep is not happening easily. When we go through transitions in life (like a new job, new relationship/breakup, new address, or all 3 simultaneously) it can effect our mind’s ability to process everything. If we do not let the stress out in exercise, journaling, talk therapy, calling a friend, etc it can keep us up at night. Even if we do all those things we might have a season where our body sleeps less…
I know this past fall and winter was one of the most challenging seasons I have ever experienced. I was getting some great business opportunities coming through (like multi-million dollar contracts in conversations) and working with celebrities, and a big multi billion dollar medical entity wanted to pay me for my connection skills. I had someone I was dating and thought man this is the life. It’s all going so well…
Then it all kinda came crashing down. My partner and I weren’t doing well (I think there was jealousy on his side but who knows?) someone hacked into my technologies even after 3 scans from Apple last year, all my digital products and emails were deleted or filled with malware tech stuff so bad that I thought for sure my businesses (2) were gone for ever and all my hours of work since 2017 were lost forever…
I woke up in the middle of the night and happened to catch someone in the act of deleting one of my emails I had already sent for a Cease and Desist to someone that was in psychosis and cut me out of the multi-million dollar business deal a few days prior. Hacking into someone’s email account remotely is a Federal offense by the way and punishable by prison. I would not recommend doing it to me or anyone no matter how much someone offers to pay you for the evil deed. I am grateful I woke up randomly in the middle of the night and caught them in the act…
I have to say that was all God waking me because I normally sleep through the night but I believe that God sent angels to protect my reputation and businesses…
I submitted the digital evidence to local authorities and from there had more and more digital attacks and the final straw was a break-in in my home. I was staying in this elderly woman’s home renting a room from her when I had to move because of a familial domestic dispute earlier in the year…
They were getting into illicit drugs and made living with them no longer safe for me physical and emotionally. I called 3 shelters and went to a church and was turned away from having any mediation. They all said I had to call the cops for mediation which to me seems absolutely absurd. In any case I spent a lot of time in prayer and decided a move was the only option I had when my family members were not supporting my well being..
Then Covid shut down the option to move back even if my family member and I could patch things up…
This stranger elderly woman graciously let me stay when everyone went into shutdown and people were kinda stuck wherever they were at…
I was about to move out of her home as she was getting ready to sell it and had about 60 days to move… however with the break in she felt it was safer for her and for me to get to a safe house and have a fresh start…
I think I was getting maybe 1-2 hours of sleep that week and went into temporary safe housing while dealing with identity theft of 2 businesses and personal affairs simultaneously.
Let’s just say it was a very challenging time for me and I am grateful for the person I met that just happened to be a Retired Veteran…
This Veteran did not want any recognition for any of the help they provided me with and wanted me to show support for all our Veterans and First Responders. I have no problem with that because I would not even be writing this blog that you’re reading if it wouldn’t have been for them…
I have no idea who they were or where they’re located, but I am so grateful for all the Veterans and First Responders that helped keep me safe when my safe house time ran out and my businesses were locked up. They restored my digital properties and kept an eye on me when local authorities didn’t seem to take me seriously….
Everything that happened simultaneously really felt like a movie script and not real. I could not believe everything that was happening. I even had a social worker that was assigned to my case that told me she couldn’t help me and I’d need to find my own resources. Talk about sucker punch to the gut!
I believe Covid has really up leveled peoples stress and the lack of compassion some people had in my time of need almost made me give up everything… but those Veterans and First Responders kept me going..
I started to get sleep again and kept my morning and evening routine as best as possible to start gaining more and more sleep every night. I talk more about this in the next bullet below ⬇️. I am so grateful for all those that stepped up to help me and chose to ignore those that didn’t (or talked to their supervisors 😂).
I’m curious what the impact of sleep is on your joyful mindset? Snap your opinions, questions, advice to @TheMoveHappy and I’ll share it on my stories and give you credit.
Sleeping Better and Feeling More Joyful Essential #4: Know what are some simple solutions to bringing joy back into your life through regular levels of sleep.
I know it may sound obvious to you, but routine is everything. I was asked advice this last week from my Instagram DMs (@ The Real Move Happy) on it as I sent out a survey for the weekly topic. They didn’t have a routine at all. They went to bed around the same time but other than that, nadda.
When I was a Health Educator for the Joint Base Lewis McChord Armed Forces Wellness Team I had the blessing of getting trained from one of the top US Army Sleep Specialist Doctors. He dove deep into very specific aspects of sleep and we had some Q and A time. He mentioned we cannot bank our sleep.
Some people believe we can just catch up on the weekend, but think of it like this… the old saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ The saying doesn’t say, just eat all 7 apples on Sunday and call it good. We must do the same thing with our sleep, be consistent on a daily basis if at all possible.
I understand some job schedules fluctuate, and some families have new babies in the house and you’re adjusting. Everyone needs a schedule as best as humanly possible. The last hour before you want to be asleep, turn lights down low. Turn off electronics to reduce the ‘blue light’ stress on the eyes and mind. Get some relaxing meditation sounds on if you like and get your favorite book out (like physical pages). Brush your teeth and all that jazz…
If you have a significant other, sex is the only other thing you should associate in the bed besides sleep according to all experts in sleep 
.
Try it out for 7 days straight and see how your sleep improves.
What gets measured gets improved so write down how many hours of sleep you get day 1 and how many times you’ve woken up. Track your mood also. Track for all 7 days and if it’s going well and you want to keep going, go for it! If you feel like you have the routine down, keep at it and only track on really good or really tough days.
Find out what variables were different on those days and adjust accordingly. I know for me, if I drink anything the last hour before bed I’ll wake up in the middle of the night to have to use the restroom (whether its tea, water, or anything). So I do my best not to.
What does your routine look like? Tweet me @MoveHappyTeam and I’ll retweet and give you credit!. Congratulations to our social media community member for sharing their agreement: 1) Magnus D Spamer wrote “success is in the routine.” Make sure to follow us everywhere on social media! You never know when you’ll get recognized for adding value and helping us build community globally. Magnus is located in South Africa! I am absolutely blown away how many people are finding Move Happy®️ and from where. I cannot reach my mission by myself. I need your help to keep spreading the word 👊
Move Happy®️ Updates:
The Move Happy Movement Podcast©️ is going strong. Check it out on iTunes , podbean Spotify (1st 40 or so episodes- they stopped converting and don’t have the most current episodes sawwy), and someone added it to Listen Notes #NotMe 😂. We are going strong thanks to YOU! No ads, no bots creating fake downloads. You are spreading the word! I hope to help at least 1 person a day with the guests I bring or when I talk about important leadership topics by myself. Thank you for helping spread the mission of empowering depressed people globally to find their own happiness through mindset, community and fitness!
This coming Monday I’ll be releasing an interview with one of my former colleagues at the Psych Hospital, Kathryn Brown, where Move Happy®️ was birthed. She actually helped take my before/after pics on my iPhone 📱 for our station days. We didn’t have a bunch of video screens for 10-15 stations like I wanted the patients to experience so we modified it to the equipment we had available. We spent our 1 day of planning taking pics of probably 60+ different exercises that’s like 120 total images to help the patients know the correct way to move their body for the exercises. I asked her to help because she had a great attitude, was fun at work and outside of work and really felt like a sister. She talks on the show about some rough stuff she has overcome and her new YouTube channel she just launched.
You will LOVE this episode! I seriously think this was one of my most favorite interviews and the energy from her is spiritually evident. Make sure to follow on Twitter @MoveHappyTeam and turn your notifications on for my channel as my podcast distributor website auto tweets when I upload #GottaLoveTechnology
Once we hit 10,000 downloads I’ll be hosting a Private VIP Concert For Those Consistently Sharing Move Happy®️Content and writing reviews on iTunes! 💃 Check out where our downloads are at now ⬇️⬇️⬇️
Sleeping Better and Feeling More Joyful Essential #5: Know how Move Happy
can help you sleep well and feel joyful!
I’m really proud of a program I designed in one of the most sensitive populations in the world; a locked psychiatric hospital. Part of the 16-week program is a journal with daily prompts 4 days a week I created to empower my patients to move towards their own happiness.
The daily prompts are categorized by weekly or bi-weekly focus categories (like kindness, exercise is medicine etc). I never asked my patients specifically if their sleep improved as that wasn’t a major category in the program. I did ask them to fill out a 1-page survey on their happiness levels and perceived control of their mental illness though!
What surprised me was the camaraderie that formed within our group, within our hospital patient body, and within the staff amongst our Active Treatment Mall in addition to the Ward Staff on all 10 floors. I wasn’t planning on making a positive impact on the staff there. I just wanted to help add value to the patients that were so kind to me when my father passed away. The CEO even scheduled a meeting to discuss how I could help add revenue to the hospital (from an initial email I sent her first). You guys, I was only there for 12 months! You don’t have to be in a place for a long time to be able to make a positive impact…
I imagine staff and patients slept better knowing that they were cared for. I used all of my 6.5 years of college and graduate level experience in addition to my knowledge gained working with the US Army and Air Force as a health educator and my years of teaching health and fitness (designing my own curricula oftentimes) in K-12 school systems. I wanted to give the patients the best program possible because it was the right thing to do.
My father always taught me to leave it better than you found it. Their fitness class was the same DVD every day either walking or yoga. Those patients were in a hospital and were not able to leave unless someone unlocked a door for them. Many were serving their time for crime in my hall but are still US Citizens or Refugees whom are under our protection. Many were treated poorly from burned out staff that worked on their wards…
One of those nurses got her car keyed not once but twice… Treat people with dignity and compassion because its the right thing to do and also because payback sometimes is a B$(#&
The staff I worked with were kind compassionate and loving in the treatment mall. I got to not only witness the best mental health treatment and care but also contribute because my boss believed I was capable. She said normally we have to have curricula that is empirically based and backed with white papers. I had to convince her that I was knowledgeable enough to create something that would be sustainable and benefit the patients for years to come…
I never expected to get featured on Good Morning America in 2020 from Gary Vee’s Team for continuing to share the message of kindness and love. I never expected to be included in a Global Mental Health Summit for Depression alongside the Kennedy Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Arianna Huffington, and more because of the network I had built out since having to leave the hospital. I never would have imagined I could shift the focus of a family organization that owns 70+ gyms across the USA from Schizophrenia alone to Depression because of the greater global impact, but I did. You don’t have to be a millionaire to shift people. We all have power within us. I chose to take a little bit of action everyday to keep the momentum going.
I am so incredibly grateful for all the people that have continued to poor love, compassion and encouragement in me and my life purpose. I chose to focus on the good and that is what helps me sleep better and keep moving forward. Even though some evil tried to stop me completely from helping inspire you, I will never give up. I will never surrender this business and this mission unless God says I need to make a shift.
If you would like more information or to purchase the 16-week Move Happy Facilitator Program©️go to the shop here. For every purchase of products or services of Move Happy®️ I donate 30% to a Mental Health organization of your choice and 10% to your local chapter of Big Brothers and Big Sisters. My lifetime goal is to be able to live off of 10% of my income and donate 90% to people in need. We had $100 as staff (15) to split each month for our patients. I created this program that has been featured on Good Morning America with $0. Imagine how many lives I can positively impact when you decide to invest in my company? If you are not in need of the program but would like to be a sponsor, please email me to set up a conversation.
*Note: I will not take money from evil people that pretend to volunteer and then try to steal my intellectual properties. Fool me once, never contact me again ❤️.*
So there you have it folks! Getting regular sleep can help our mood 100%. It can help us balance our weight and help us treat others with kindness too. I hope you learned something from this blog today. If I added any value, it would mean the world to me if you’d take a screenshot and write a few sentences and share it on social media or with someone you care about. The more people that take action from the information and stories I share, the closer to my mission of empowering the world to live a life they are happy with. I want to break the cycle depression’s power has over people with mental illness. I cannot do it by myself. Thank you for your support.
PS: Don’t forget to tell someone you love them today
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