00:01 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Are you an aspiring leader who knows you have more to offer but you can't seem to get ahead? Do you frequently feel overwhelmed and under-supported? Listen to the Overcome to Become podcast as we talk about actionable tasks and mindsets that you can apply to begin leading yourself. Hi, I'm Dr Angela Buckley, your host and author of the Strength in Nature Leadership Series and Likeable Leadership Reflection Journals. I'm a mother, consultant, triathlete and coach In Overcome to Become. I share with you the science-backed and experienced proven lessons I've learned in my own leadership journey to beat burnout.
00:39
Hey, everyone, welcome back to season three, episode 10. And today I have with me Maria Daniels. She is a dynamic serial entrepreneur with a knack for making life easier for busy business owners. She's the brains behind Reset Business Consulting, where she and her team take the stress out of new projects and bring a touch of fun to the process. Maria is also a holistic nutritionist and restorative fitness coach at Natural Approach Health and Fitness, guiding individuals toward healthier lives through balanced nutrition and restorative fitness.
01:13
Maria's expertise and enthusiasm shine through on her numerous podcasts, including Successfully Chaotic. Her shows are packed with insights on entrepreneurship, wellness and living a balanced life, inspiring listeners to pursue their passions and conquer challenges with confidence. On the home front, maria is a devoted wife and mother of seven living on a charming micro farm. Maria Daniels is a true inspiration, showing that passion, dedication and a holistic approach can bring profits and a happy life. Hello Maria, thank you for joining us. We are in season three of the Overcome to Become podcast, and this season we're focusing on sleep and with all of your crazy, busy, chaotic right Successful chaotic businesses that you run. I also know that you have a huge focus on holistic health, and so I would love to hear you talk about your experiences and also your coaching support with people getting enough sleep in order to keep up with their very busy lives.
02:24 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
Absolutely Well, I know. First of all, this is one thing I tell any of my clients, and it doesn't matter if it's on the business world they come to me, you know, with an issue or on the wellness side, they come to me with an issue. Sleep is the foundation to everything that we do. It doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't matter what your profession is, what your hobbies are, what your day-to-day life looks like. The foundation of every single thing that you do is sleep, and I used to wear my own sleepless nights like a badge of honor, thinking that I was getting ahead. Right, I was. I would stay up all night, you know, getting getting all these things done. So I thought. But the truth was I was sabotaging myself.
03:02
Because sleep, we think about it like resting, and it is rest. But it's not just about resting, it's about resetting. When we sleep, our brains process a lot of information, our body repairs cells, we consolidate memories during sleep, our body detoxes during sleep. There's so many things that go on that we're not even thinking about. And so when we sleep and you know our body's doing all these things it actually is like a tune-up for our body and our mind. And so for busy entrepreneurs or busy professionals, parents, you know. Just people, right? This means that if we're getting enough sleep, we are thinking more clearly, we are making better decisions, we are more creative. So if we are prioritizing our sleep, then our productivity is going to go way, way up. So as much as you think, well, I'm going to stay up extra late tonight. Unquote.
04:03 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Catching up, you're typically going backwards I'm an early morning person so I'm not very good at the catch up at night. I often am willing to throw in the towel pretty early and um try to get up early and cram it all in before 10 am.
04:23 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
Yeah well, and that's the better way to do it, obviously, and and ita it all in before 10 am.
04:25
Yeah, well, that's the better way to do it, obviously, and it's funny, I don't even know how it happened, like, looking back, how I ended up doing the late nights for a while. There's multiple things, right, isn't it? Always multiple things, always multiple things. But you know, in high school even I worked a third shift job. In high school it was in Tennessee, laws were different and I worked a third shift job, so I would start my third shift job at 11 pm and I got off 6 am and so that started all that. But I went to school, I played sports and I needed to make money, and so to be able to do that, I squeezed it in, so I started those bad habits early on. And so going into having children and all of that, that just like furthered my issue. You know, having having kids, obviously, when you have kids you're especially when they're very young, you're, you know, get lots of sleepless nights or up and down, and so that just kind of furthered that problem. And so it took a while until I figured out that that was what was causing a lot of my issues, right, and it took me way too long to actually figure that out, you know, and it's always jokingly say that a lot of times, even if you know these things, we're not really good at putting up that mirror, putting up that mirror looking at ourselves, because you know we'll always like quote unquote, catch up later, figure it out later, take care of ourselves later. And I have seven children, one of those being on the spectrum, and so with that there was a lot of things coming before my own personal needs. And I know, before we went on the recording, we were even talking about boundaries, and that was one of the things that I had to do right.
06:04
My boundaries that I had to start setting wasn't only just with, like, the outside world, outside of my family. It also started with just me realizing within myself that I needed to kind of focus on my own health, that I wasn't doing anybody any favors by being like the martyr of the family and never sleeping and never taking care of myself. And, and you know, I tried to eat healthy, you know, and I exercise. Those were things that I would, I was decent at, but I still didn't like eat enough because I'd forget to eat. I wasn't drinking enough water because I would forget to drink. I wasn't sleeping enough because I always had things I was behind on, and so those things that nurturing, allowing my body to replenish and reset, and all those things. I was terrible at it because I was too busy right now. Right, it's always right now, the later we won't be.
06:49
Well, the right now went for years, and so I had to start setting those boundaries, to say nope, I'm going to start prioritizing my sleep, which that's hard. You're very type A, like I am, and so I have so many things that I'm doing at all times, and then there's other things that's waiting for me to have time to do. Right, I have this like ongoing to do list and I actually love that about myself, but the reality of it is also is that I have to make sure and keep myself accountable to. Nope, I go to bed at a specific time and I'm typically in bed by 9 pm. If I'm not, if it doesn't happen that night, there's a fluke.
07:24
You know what I mean there. Like there was a day last week that I just it just so happened. There's a lot of things going on. Today I didn't get in bed until 11, but I purposely you know like knew that that was going to be happening and I actually made sure that I rested that next day as much as I could. Those things are going to happen, but it shouldn't be the norm, right? It shouldn't be the norm that you're staying up later than you know the normal. I try to make sure that I make that a priority, but it wasn't, you know, an easy thing. It took a little bit of time, so you said that you have seven children.
07:56 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
How do you get them in bed so that you get to bed at nine? I'm struggling with that. You get to bed at nine. I'm struggling with that. I'll be honest. I have a teenager who decided that ADHD means he's allowed to stay up late, and so I often have to, like, basically wake up to tell him to go back to sleep, to go to sleep even so, like I will get into bed, I can work out all my whole day and get, get myself to bed at the hour that I want. But then I have him right, and if I don't, I'll wake up at two o'clock in the morning and he'll still be doing whatever. Or sometimes I'll go to sleep thinking he's asleep and he gets up. Yeah, no, I struggle with figuring out how to get the rest of the household asleep as well.
08:49 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
So I mean there's obviously a lot that we can unpack with that. But right now, at this point in time in my journey, I have four older kids that are quote unquote adults, young adults right Out of those, the 25-year-old she lives in Virginia, she's married, she has two little girls, and then I have 24 year old, a 22 year old and a 19 year old. They're self sufficient. At this point, three of them are moved out, one of them still at home, ish, but she works a lot and, you know, go to school and rarely comes home. But the three that are still at home are 15, 11, and seven. And so you know with them it's funny because I'm a different parent than I was with my older kids too you know when you are, when you're doing this I've been a mom for for over 25 years.
09:35
At this point, so, like a quarter of a century. Trust me, I did the math and I was like, wow, okay, so at this point I'm I know parenting and what I figured out about parenting is that you're never actually going to figure it out. Like you're never going to figure it out right, yes, so you have different kids, different personalities, different times going on just in the world itself. Like everything just changes so rapidly you're never going to quite figure it out. So with my older kids, I tried, like what you said, like just tried to make sure that I was getting them all in bed and whatever. And when they're little it's a different story. Right, you can't leave little kids. But when they were older, I even would try to do the same thing. But I figured out with my younger kids, I do it completely different. It is very much a here's what you're supposed to do. I lay it out what they're supposed to do. You're still going to get up on it. We still have stuff we have to do tomorrow. I let them feel that and the reason that I do that is I figured that out over the course of just parenting that I wasn't doing myself definitely not any favor, and I really wasn't doing them any favor either by not letting them feel the fact that when we stay up really late and have to do something early in the morning, it freaking sucks. We hate ourselves all day long. So I let them figure that out.
10:46
And you know, sometimes you mentioned ADHD and all that Sometimes the way that you know people's brains are it changes our sleep patterns.
10:54
My 15 year old is on the spectrum and so when he was little he would only need about an hour of sleep a night and you know, me and my husband would have to tag team because at that time, you know he he was very delayed on a lot of things and could not be left alone at all, like at all.
11:10
So you know we had to kind of like accommodate, you know, his natural sleep patterns that he had. Now we worked a lot with him over the years with different things and he does a little bit better now. But at 15, he still goes through these patterns and it's really funny that during full moon like a couple of days before the full moon, during the full moon and a few days after the full moon he can't sleep at night. It wires him which, if you start looking into there, actually is some science behind that. Like during the full moon, your brain produces more norepinephrine, you know, which just like increases that like awakeness, and you know it's basically an adrenaline, and so his already differently wired brain just comes alive. And so I have figured out that that's just his normal patterns and we allow for that, which we can do, that because he is, he's homeschooled, he goes to an online STEM based academy that we can kind of cater to what he needs, and so that works for our family.
12:10 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
It doesn't work for every family, like I work for myself, you know.
12:14 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
But you know I think the the point I want everybody to kind of take from this is I don't think there's any hard written rules on these things. You need to look at your family, your family dynamic, like what you need to be able to do just to basically get through life right, and then break that down to what each person definitely needs to be able to kind of be the best version of themselves, including what we're talking about today getting good quality sleep, and so whatever that process looks like for you and your family, that's the best way to do it. I don't think there's like one you know thing that you can do that's going to just like fit in every single family, and most of the time what happens is you see these things and you try to like like fit it into your family like well, that doesn't work for me and then you just give up the whole thing altogether, instead of modifying it to work for your family, and you know.
13:03
So I mean for you. It just, I mean it kind of depends. I mean like for me at your son's age I would be like, well, here's what you need to do. You should get in bed. If you don't, oh well, we're still getting up in the morning. But I'm very much that mom like, do it again, do it anyway.
13:16 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Oh yeah, we, we, we regularly do have those conversations.
13:23
You know it would be nice to have fewer conflicts from time to time. It's the teenage growth and we'll be good for a while and then, you know, it kind of like unravels and we have to reestablish consequences and boundaries do change, like the teenage brain is changing and the summer is different than the school year and there are different things, right, so you know. So I think flexibility to your point is really important and I also agree with you like letting them feel the consequences. I think we had an exchange student here and I think there were, there were one or two mornings where I think I may have surprised her because I did not let him lollygag, right, like we had places to go and we had places to be and he wasn't making alert decisions, like, honestly, in general he makes decent decisions but he wasn't awake and I was not having any of it because it was dragging everybody else down. So yeah, but consequences are real.
14:29 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
Oh yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think, again, with parenting, it is very much that balance of figuring out like, ok, well, why do you want to stay up? Because sometimes I mean there's there's things that we want to do that we want to prioritize, at least for that night, you know, because, like I just mentioned, I love my sleep. I want to go to bed at 9pm but I was willing to stay up until 11 the other night because at that moment for that day, that was a different priority and I think those things are okay sometimes, and it's okay even to work with our kids to realize that, like, sometimes it's okay, right, when there's something special going on that you're willing to stay up for, to be able to know that you're going to be a little bit more tired the next day, that's okay. As adults, we make those decisions right. So it's just encouraging the fact that it's okay. Well, let's, let's have this discussion.
15:12
I think you know that that's a. That's how I parent, differently at this point than I did with my older kids. With my older kids I was very much, you know, just that helicopter-y mom that's trying to like I was helping quote, unquote but in the reality I wasn't really preparing them as much as I could have. On those things I did some things like I was, I did, you know I was able to prepare them for some things, but that was that was one that I had to kind of learn later.
15:33
But you know, with sleep itself, that just kind of circling back to sleep, though, you know it, it's not just like a personal matter, it actually affects everything around us, because you mentioned whenever, you know, he was real tired, he was kind of dragging everybody down, and so you know, that's one thing. Even kind of looking back on my own journey, when I was not sleeping as much, like I definitely wasn't showing up as my best version of myself on anything right, I was cranky, I was more short tempered, I wasn't as patient as I could have been, you know, I definitely wasn't as productive as I could have been, right. So you know, when I started prioritizing my own sleep, I was able to be a little more patient with my kids no-transcript.
16:24 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I think that's really what you know when I'm talking about leadership and I'm talking about learning how parenting and running a household are also the skills that translate into running a team. Like, yeah, some of these conversations that we're having about getting kids in bed or feeling consequences, they're a little bit different. Right, the mechanisms are different, but fundamentally the concepts are the same. When it comes to leading a team and then understanding, when we talk about circle of influence, right, Like I can control myself, I can influence those around me and I have no influence about the greater world Understanding how your sleep decisions impact yourself versus how they influence the others that are around you. I think it's really important from the conversation of both leadership and parenting.
17:16 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
Absolutely Well, and you know, I mentioned earlier in the conversation that even if people come to me on a business side, we end up talking about sleep. Somebody can come to me for marketing, for social media, for website development, and somehow we end up talking about sleep. Somebody can come to me for marketing for social media, for website development, and somehow we end up talking about sleep. And the same thing, like in the wellness world, like obviously people are coming to me with like you know, like nutrition needs or hormonal health needs, or autoimmune needs, we always end up talking about sleep. And it's because, like you just said, it is part of such a big, it's a part of our life, right, we're all humans, we all need good quality sleep and so you need to. If you're listening right now, and maybe you, you know, work at a company or you're an admin or you own your own business, you know it's important that you start to implement these things. And because you know my marketing consulting company, reset Business Consulting, we always encourage a culture of wellness, even though it's not that's not a wellness company, right, but we encourage a culture of wellness because we have seen how a well-rested team on, how you know, a team that really focuses on things like sleep and eating healthy food, how that transforms a business, and so that's the reason that that ends up being something that we discuss, even with our clients.
18:29
Do all of them want to listen? Probably not, but it ends up being something that is brought up right, because it's never just one thing. If somebody's having an issue with their business, it's never just one thing. And those all trickle down to well, how is your team feeling Like? How is the we even hear about company culture right, which is so, so, so important. But it goes deeper than that. Well, you know, randy that's sitting at his desk all cranky all the time. Why is Randy cranky, you know? Is it cranky Cause he's not sleeping enough? You know, is he eating enough? You know healthy foods. Like there, it goes down more, more in depth than just you know, surface level.
19:04 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
And I also think the conversation aligns with the same messages that you telegraph, right? So if your leader is always coming in exhausted, maybe it's because they're working too many hours and maybe it's because they're partying as hard as they work. Neither one of those are helpful or safe to the organization. And the amount of productivity I saw the other day it runs between 5 and 15% productivity loss due to sleep. That's a significant number once you start applying that across all of your employees.
19:42 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
Absolutely, and think of that translating to dollars. Think of all the dollars lost. You know it's interesting. Think of that translating to dollars.
19:49 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Think of all the dollars lost. It's interesting and I wanted to circle back to the conversation you mentioned. You worked third shift. So a lot of the people that listen to me are from manufacturing 25 years manufacturing.
20:01
Engineer Shift work needs to be steady for the employee and the reason it has to be steady is because it is the only way they have a fighting chance to get their circadian rhythms in balance.
20:17
And yes, there is a little bit of extra money associated with second and third shift. But I would like to also point out that there is also a little bit of extra weight associated with second and third shift and it's about 10 to 15% for second shifters and 25% consider that a 25% weight gain for somebody that is working third shift consistently. And then some of these companies that do that cycle, I haven't heard since COVID. I haven't heard people forcing that cycle where you're working one shift, like first shift for two weeks, second shift for two weeks, third shift. People like it from a perception of fairness, where you get to see your family and I like I see that and I hear that, but it is so incredibly hard on your body that I I never endorse it. I have never endorsed it since I started working in manufacturing 16 years old right Like. It is not healthy in the long run for that individual and eventually it is not healthy for the family either.
21:27 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
No, absolutely it's not. It's not sustainable. The family either? No, absolutely it's not sustainable. And I think that's the issue. It's, you know it's looking at sustainability and you know, I think, no matter what type of company that you are in, you need to be looking at this from a big picture to say, okay, well, these decisions because, like you said, a lot of these are decisions like we're going to split these shifts and allow it to be fair, allow it to be whatever, and, again, on one angle, that makes sense.
21:53
But you have to look at that big picture. What's the big picture look like? Because you know much to your point it's going to be really hard to regulate any type of, you know, sleep schedule that's going to be sustainable for that person to function at any type of a high capacity. It's hard enough really on the body because I mean, I have I have a lot of of people that I see in Columbus at the doctor's office, that I see people at for nutrition that are third shifters, and I say a lot. I probably got probably five or whatever, but that's something that they. It's a consistent struggle. They've been doing it for years and years and years, but it's still a consistent struggle, you can see the impact on health and it is even more of an issue if there's not that steady schedule, that steady cycle and I think that that is something that definitely you know needs to be looked at as far as, like, before any decisions are made. You know, like what does this look like for our people?
22:52 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Yeah, so last week I was interviewing an individual and he gave me a really great soundbite and he said sunlight before screen light when you wake up in the morning, right, and I really love that, but I also didn't want to go down that rabbit hole. But since we're talking about shift work, I never had that luxury. My shift started at 630. And I have an hour drive, so I have to leave the house at 530 at the absolute latest, that's if I don't have a meeting before the shift starts and all the other things right. Like there's absolutely no way, when you work the hours that I was working, that you would ever get sunlight before screen light. Do you have any tips of, like, how people can kind of work their circadian rhythms to balance that out?
23:40 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
I mean there's a lot of things that you can end up like a lot of these things, like I like that quote too. That's a great quote and I mean I say lots of things too that in an ideal situation would work perfectly, because a lot of times when somebody is giving you a suggestion like that they're talking about in, you know, this typical scenario. This would be the you don't have a chance to let your eyes, you know, see sunlight, because it is, it is good, you know it's typically good to get morning sunlight. You know, as soon as you can Now, that being said, maybe as soon as you can is after you've been at work for three hours and you, you know, walk outside for five minutes. You know that's still going to be. You know the best that you could do.
24:29
You're still getting some of that sunlight, right, and you know there's some other things that you can do. Just incorporating some different bulbs and stuff into you know your environment, that kind of helps a little bit. You know there are things that can be done. So you know, and I think that's important to kind of think about those kind of things because you know, when you hear all these suggestions on how to keep yourself healthy and you're like, okay, that's never going to work for me. Well, I'm, I'm screwed now because there's no way that I could ever do that. It's important to know that. Yeah, you may not be able to kind of get that I guess that that Cadillac package, but you know you may be able to get something that's nice anyway, you know so, as soon as you can get outside that day.
25:02 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Well, so that's. That's interesting, right? Like I have my blue light turned off, or like the blocker turns on on my phone in the evening, but I don't. I think it resets at midnight. Yeah, like I don't know that I have the blue blocker turned on, but then the whole point of the blue light is that you're waking up and I do actually need to be alert walking into a manufacturing site. So you know, like I always tell people 10 fingers, 10 toes.
25:35 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
That's always the goal right.
25:36 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
That is the goal. I want you to come in with them and I want you to go home with them. But yeah, I'm just trying to think like how do you right? Like what is that opportunity to do a little bit better? Because I really believe that just 1% better learning a little bit more, taking a tip here and taking a tip there, can be enough to turn the tables in your favor.
25:59 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
Yeah, well, and, and there's a lot, I hate to give like specific suggestions on bulbs without knowing, because there's a lot of things that go into it and you know some people are on medications that you know can be photosensitive or all those things.
26:09
But I will say that there are bulbs out there, like for light therapy there are bulbs out there that you can get like therapy lamps, that you can get that mimic, that natural daylight, you know, at least as close as possible, and you know the sun is always going to be the best.
26:27
Because I've had these conversations but sometimes you can't right. So when you can't you can choose different. And you know, typically like if you're looking for like a lamp and again if you're any on any medication, you know, check with somebody because there are some medications that can make you super photosensitive so it could actually burn you. But like a lamp that has a bulb with at least like 10,000 lux is typically what's recommended for mimicking daylight.
26:56
So like there are things to be able to do, because that type of a bulb would trigger the same responses in the brain as natural sunlight would. So if it's something that you know you are like never out in the sunlight, let's go back to, like, the third shift. You're sleeping all day long, you're getting up when it's dark, you're, you know, coming home when it's dark or you know whatever, it's always dark. It may be a good idea to think about getting something like that because you could, you could do some light therapy. You know, take time during your break and do a little bit of light therapy, because it's still going to be something that would help. And you know there's there's a lot of brands you know out there. But you know there are always options. Like, if you look at something that you're wanting to do for your health, your wellness, your business, why, yeah, whatever, there's always options out there to kind of tweak it and make it your own nice.
27:49 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
You know, one of the things that we had used for a while was the uh, philip hue, and you can set it to do the sunrise and the sunset. Yeah, and you can either time it with the sunrise and sunset for your location or and it'll change like through the season or you can set it for a certain time there's also.
28:08 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
I'm trying to think what it's called. I think it's called a circadian optics lumos or something like that. It's, it's close to that, but it's. It is one that's pretty decent for light therapy as well, and it's it's one that's kind of like a little bit cooler temperature, so it's not as hot too, but it still has that same you know, that same daylight mimicking option. So I mean, you know again, there's, there's, so there's so many things out there, and the cool thing is is there's Google.
28:35
You can Google the entire world and read things on it and study on it and you know it's. It's again just trying to remember that the goal here is just to prioritize these things right. Prioritize your sleep, prioritize getting enough light, prioritize, you know, your, your nutrition, and these are good for your mental health, your physical health and your business health. Right, it's just good, good for everything all encompassing. And so, you know, think of it like an investment and just showing up the way you want to show up and living the life the way that you want to live question yes, it's a.
29:14 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
It's a curveball. Okay, you wake up at two o'clock in the morning. You have a great new idea as the entrepreneur. Do you get up and do something about it, or do you try to go back to sleep?
29:26 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
it depends. Um, I don't think there is a dead set thing that you have to do. I have done both. Typically, what I would say is, if you have that idea, I always keep a notebook by my bed, like I have a little like nightstand there, and there's always a notebook and a pen. If it's something that you typically, you know are not going to be able to get out of your head, I just jot it down and I would probably lay down and try to go back to sleep. If you don't fall asleep, though, in like 15, 20 minutes, I would just get up at that point, because it's not going to happen. You're just going to lay there. You're better off just getting up at that point, but I would try. If it was me, you know, doing this, I would try to get back to sleep and then, if I didn't fall back asleep, I would get up and start my day and, if it fit in later, try to take a little bit of a cat nap.
30:15
I've had to actually train myself, which sounds, I know, goofy to some people that are like avid nappers, but I've had to train myself because in the past I couldn't. If the sun was out, I could not get to sleep. But I've trained myself that if I need it I can lay down. It's a short nap Like I'm I'm talking, you know, 15, 20 minutes, but I've trained myself to be able to lay down and that kind of gives me a little bit of reset, you know, to be able to kind of keep me going throughout the day. But that's what I would suggest. I don't think that it has to be like a hard set rule. Yes, it's great to get your minimum of seven hours of sleep at night, and if you're getting up at 2am like chances are probably not going to meet that. But it also is one of those things that if you're waking up that you know and you can't get back to sleep, there's no point laying there, tossing and turning. You're not asleep anyway, right I think I've done.
30:59 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
It's depended right like some days I've been able to kind of get back to sleep, write it down on the notepad and move on. But sometimes there were just times where, like, my body was like no I'm ready and it's time to go.
31:12
And, if it's possible, to your point, like luckily I am a good napper, like my mom passed that along to me, thankfully Like I would rather get up and work from 4 to 6 and then take a slow morning, take a couple hour nap and then get back at it at like 10 am or something, and I feel like I'm just as productive and maybe even more so, because if I was trying to sleep unsuccessfully, then I would be super unproductive throughout the day.
31:40 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
And, honestly, more drowsy, Like that's to me, that's more exhausting. But I'm like you. I am definitely an early morning person. Whether I set my alarm or not, I'm up at five, it's just. I love five. Five is great for me, and that ends up being a discussion that people have to like. They think that to be a successful business person, you have to get above five. It works for me, it works for you, but you can make whatever work you know you can make whatever work, I know people that are that do great late, late evenings, I don't.
32:07
My brain starts falling out about 2 PM and it just slowly falls apart throughout the day. So that's just how it is, like I've got like three brain cells left by the time I go back.
32:16 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I don't know how people do it. Even you know, like even to go out at night, I'm like I have to take a nap so I can go out.
32:25 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
I don't even go out anymore. I have to the point. Like I've. I've aged to the point that I'm just done without that. Like I it's if I actually like was talking to somebody about this the other day. Like I'm to the point now that my going out is just walking out on my property checking my chickens, drinking my tea. I want to be in bed at 9 pm. I'm very excited about my bed time.
32:44 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it just depends on what you have on the schedule, right, and?
32:48 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
who you're meeting, absolutely.
32:55 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
But I agree with you relative to like, as long as you're getting those hours and getting that healthy like. One of the reasons my child wants a later is because his friends live two hours that time zone behind and so they're not even on when I'm telling him to go to bed, right. That happens a lot, and so it's balancing those things right. So we're trying to balance out those needs.
33:12 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
Yep, absolutely, and I think that that's what it is right it's. It's improving your sleep, uncomplicating it and, you know, being able to establish some type of a consistent sleep schedule. You know, again, there's going to be the flukes, but trying to make it at least somewhat consistent, and you know that's going to be huge. And then creating, like a bedtime routine. We talk about morning routines, but creating a bedtime routine too. It's so important to have that bedtime routine and it could be whatever works for you. Right, it could be maybe you read, maybe you take a warm bath, maybe you sit and practice mindfulness, like whatever works for you. Like in my family, if I'm home by myself, it's a different bedtime routine than if the whole you know the whole kids are there too, because you know for them that means sitting down and either reading something or watching a short show together, and you know it, it.
33:59
It just looks different, it's a it's more of like family evening than it is if it's just Maria.
34:04 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Yeah, right, right, right. So I recently um jumped into the ice bath crowd, right Like I've wanted to. I've've often. So I lived in Germany when I was a teenager, so we would go to the saunas and there was often a cold bath.
34:23
that wasn't these ice baths, but you would cycle between cold and hot and then jumping into the cold pool, and so I was excited when the you know, the ice came around to the to the United States, as kind of like a socially acceptable thing, and I finally jumped on the Amazon Prime and found something that I was willing to pay for. So all I have to say about that is that for me, jumping into an ice bath and trying to go to bed, it does not work Like. For me, that is an energizing activity.
34:55 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
I actually do it in the morning. I have one too, and I do it in the morning and it's, it is absolutely part of my morning routine, not part of my evening routine.
35:02 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Evening routine for me is always brushing my teeth before I'm using the restroom. Like my body does not want to go in the other direction. Like I've even gone upstairs and I got that out of order and I had to just like turn around out of habit. My body wants it in disorder. I think it's probably just years of training, right?
35:27 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
Yeah, well, everything is, I mean technically, everything is training, and so that's the thing like you can technically, you know, train yourself differently. But I mean no-transcript, but I mean I'm just saying that to say that's how bad habit you can get out of bad habits by just directing that training, right, right, and I think that that is something like maybe people are listening to this and like my sleep schedule is non-existent, my bedtime routine is non-existent, my morning routine is non-existent, my morning routine is non-existent. There's like not one aspect that I have kind of together right now. That's all right. Right, that's, you're starting somewhere. You can start implementing some of these things, and I would suggest maybe you start slow, right, maybe pick one thing, and I would suggest starting with your sleep because, again, it's the foundation, but thinking about, you know what are some things that you need to be able to get a comfortable night's rest.
36:14
For me, definitely, I need a dark. I want, I don't want it cold, but I want it cool. You know, not hot. I don't like the air to be all thick, even though I love it hot, I love hot weather. I want it cool when I sleep and you know I need it to be quiet. Except for I listened to frequencies. When I sleep, I usually listen to frequencies when, I sleep.
36:33
I usually listen to 432 hertz, to be specific, but sometimes 528. But I listen to frequencies when I sleep, and so that's the only thing I want. On.
36:43 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
And so that is how I like to sleep. Do you listen with headphones or do you have it just running in the room?
36:45 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
I have it running in the room and it's funny. I started doing that with my son, who's on the spectrum, when he was very young, when he was little, and that started really helping him. He would be able to sleep much more deeply when I did that, cause I, you know, I ended up getting I think you know this, but I ended up getting certified in sound healing back years ago just to try to help him, and so that was one of the things that we started implementing in that, like we did a lot of uh Jumbe worked, you know, during the day and I took him to drumming circles and he really would use that to express himself. Before he was, you know, very verbal. And then, you know, some of that also started, including a lot of the frequencies, especially when he's sleeped, and that would really help to kind of calm his nervous system and get him into a deep sleep, and so I was like, well, why am I not doing that?
37:32
for myself and I started noticing that that made such a difference in the quality of my sleep. And so my younger kids, the 11 year old and 17 year old, they've always slept with them. They've never known any different from the time they they you know were born. They have always slept with with frequencies on. And so you know, it's just one of those things that works best for us. And you know, some people may be like, ah, that's not what I want and that's all right, you know. But it's like figuring out what works for you. And if you don't know, try something. And if you're like, nope, this isn't it, then try something else.
38:04 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
And there's a lot to be said for healing frequencies. I think we could probably do an entire podcast on that, and even talking about my instrument of choice, because a lot of people naturally gravitate to it for that very reason, and people have asked me why I haven't released a CD. That's just you should. That would be. That would be a lot of fun. It would be really kind of in line Once again.
38:28
the Venn diagram of everything that is put that on my list of things to do, so now I won't be able to sleep tonight while I think about that.
38:39 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
All right, well, just jot it out before bed, get it all out of your system. Or sometimes I'll even like I have notes on my phone and I'll just pull it up and I'll just brain dump a bunch of stuff in there and I feel like I've checked it off then, cause at least it's out of my brain and more else, and that helps me, depending on if I've got a lot of things like that you know, yeah, yeah.
38:59 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Yeah, okay. So, maria, what are the top things that you recommend? If someone is struggling during the day keeping themselves alert, what do we want to like, just kind of the the top most recommended? Obviously they're not specific to a person, but have you tried this, have you tried that? Where do you start with that top of the checklist?
39:20 - Maria Daniels (Guest)
Well, obviously, making sure you're staying hydrated. That's a big thing. You know, if you're not hydrated, that's going to cause a lot of issues with your energy. Getting up and moving around, you know, I like today is my, like my meeting days, and so during that, during that time, I have a lot of time right here, right in front of my screen, Right. So I have a standing desk so I'm able to use that to stand up and down. But even within that, I will, you know, take some walks and stuff on it's making sure I'm moving your body. You can do like like like chair yoga at the desk. And if you don't even know what that is, just Google chair yoga. You'll find lots of little things moving your body a little bit, making sure you're staying hydrated, making sure you're eating.
39:57
I typically tell people, if they're tired, not to eat a bunch of heavy stuff. You know, eat something light. You know, some salads and fruits, something that's going to be easy to digest, because your body is very exhausted, it doesn't need to work super hard digesting something that's super heavy and then just making sure that you are keeping, you know, the distractions to a minimum, because that's another thing we get overstimulated. A lot of people hear that only with autism, and that was me back before. I had a child that was autistic. I thought that was only reserved for autism. Nope, I get overstimulated. I stem right. I mean, it's those things that we do, just as humans. So it's also trying to, you know, minimize these distractions that are taking our time and our energy. If we're like like low on energy that day, we don't want to give it away. So those are some things that I always, always try to implement during those times.
40:46 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Great Well, thank you very much for spending your time. It's always a pleasure to meet with you. We managed to get through an entire episode without talking about plants that was amazing actually so. So when I get further into some of these uh seasons we'll have to have you back on and you and I can just sort of geek out about the importance of plants and our health and everything else.
41:10
So it's actually pretty amazing. So thank you, thank you very much for joining us today and sharing with my audience everything that you have experienced with helping people keep their energy up and making sure that they get the sleep that they need. Holistically, it was my pleasure. Thanks, talk to you soon. You've just listened to another episode of Overcome to Become. Thank you for joining me, angela Buckley, your host. Thanks, talk to you soon. Skills in your home, at work and in the community. If you'd like to learn more, join us in the Strength in Nature Learning Academy. We are currently featuring the Overcome the Overwhelm course with a 20% off coupon code OTB2024. That's valid until the end of 2024. You can join me in my community at wwwstrengthinnaturecom and on Instagram at creativelyefficient Thanks for listening, icom, and on Instagram at creatively efficient Thanks for listening. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
