Rest and Recovery = Better Performance

Many of us are experiencing symptoms from loss or lack of sleep with the most common behaviours cited as feeling anxious, lack of motivation, ‘flitting about’, loss of patience and feeling stressed.

When this happens, we feel negative emotion towards ourselves and this impacts our lives. When we are stressed, we release cortisol into our system and our bodies goes into fight or flight mode. Given that we are experiencing a constant state of stress, it is little wonder many of us are experiencing behavioural symptoms which make us feel bad.

What can we do? Build and develop our skills to alleviate the stress factor and increase our rest and recovery state.

Why? The research shows that ‘Sleep is the number one performance enhancer’.

It impacts our mood, makes us more resilient, helps us to maintain mental toughness, have better memory recall and make good/better decisions.

Here’s the plan I’m working (and adapting if required):

1. Making time to nap for 20 minutes each day to re-energise and stay focussed.

2. Exercising outside and walking around when I’m on the phone so that I can increase blood flow to the brain.

3. Performing breathing exercises, telling my brain when it’s time to rest and recover.

4. Remembering to laugh!