Hello everyone, I am jumping on today because I want to talk to you about business insomnia.
If you have ever woken up in the middle of the night thinking about your business when you should be sleeping, then this is for you.
So the reason I'm jumping on to talk about this today is because it has been happening to me in the last couple of weeks.
I am going into launch mode, well I'm in launch mode, I've just begun a launch for the next round of Thrive Group.
So I'll tell you very briefly about that before I tell you all about Business Insomnia. Thrive Group is my six-month group program for coaches to come and build and grow their coaching business with my support, direction, with strategy and embodiment.
It is a really beautiful space for you to come and be lusciously supported and You're going to have access to all of my trainings.
You're going to have access to the strategy sessions that kick off the group container for six months.
And then, of course, we have weekly coaching and in-between session support. And what you do in that time is we refine your offer, your price, your marketing sales strategy and your messaging.
And most importantly, we support your embodiment in how you show up so that you can build the momentum, the consistency and the belief in what you're doing as a coaching business owner so that you can go out there and start signing some more fricking clients and having fun in your business and enjoying the process of building your coaching business with the right support in your corner over a long-term period so that you can really embody and embed and really integrate everything that you know and really put it into place.
This isn't a program for brand new beginners. This is a program for coaches who have already started And I'm sharing a little bit more about what it means to be in that stage of starting your business, building and growing your business and then scaling your business on my podcast this week.
So definitely check out that episode if you're wondering if this is relevant to you. But let's dive into business insomnia, shall we? Because it has been happening for me.
So business insomnia, as I said, is when you wake up in the middle of the night when you should be sleeping and all you're thinking about is your coaching business.
If you've ever done that, let me know in the comments and say hello. If you haven't already say hi, if you're on the replay, say hello, move my hair out the way.
Cause it's covering my face as usual. So this happens to me and I go, and I, it's funny. I've, I really started paying attention to it this time and I've mentioned it a couple of times over the podcast, but I really started paying attention to it as it started happening again, happening again, this round.
Because the frequency of this business insomnia is completely different to how it used to be when I was starting and building the foundations of my business.
And I thought, you know what, this is possibly really relevant to you. Because when I started my coaching business, as you know, I was in a career.
I was in an established career working. Let's face it, it wasn't nine to five. It was 8 a.m. till 7 p.m., I'd finish, I worked from home a lot. So I'd finish, I'd eat, and then I'd go straight into my coaching business.
And when you go back to the early days of my Instagram, you will see that there are lots of reels, lots of content where I'm clearly operating and working in the nighttime.
You can tell it's like artificial light. You can tell I'm not in the daytime like I am today. And that was because that's what I had to do. I had to find nuggets of time and find nuggets of personal power to find the energy, find the drive, find the commitment, note how I didn't say motivation or inspiration there, to work on my business and to get to where I am today.
And at the time, I found I experienced a decent amount of business insomnia. And that meant for me waking up, feeling anxious, waking up in the middle of the night with content ideas, waking up in the Hi Rose, thanks for joining.
Waking up in the middle of the night with my brain going at a million miles an hour, thinking about the things that I had to do at work, thinking about content ideas, thinking about my clients, thinking about showing up the next day, thinking about things like my bio, my niche, my branding.
Oh my God, it was entirely unaffected, unproductive, not ideal, not ideal because I would wake up the next day fatigued, already brain tired because my brain hadn't stopped.
And it just felt like I was always on the go. And I knew very early on that that wasn't a good sign for me because I'd experienced burnout before.
And I knew what it was to wake up in the middle of the night, already thinking about my nine to five, already stressed out, already thinking about tomorrow's problems.
And so one of my early steps into coaching and personal power and personal development was actually shifting lots of my behaviors and lots of my mindset around my nine to five so that I could have better sleep.
And it started working. I was looking after myself. I had a powerful morning routine. Hi, Sinead. Thanks for joining. I had really much better boundaries, better systems and processes in place to allow me to sleep better in the night.
and then enter starting a coaching business on top of an already established career, it was like, okay, my life is already full.
And maybe you can relate if you're in a nine to five where you've been through that process. Your life is already full when you have a career. Add in the coaching business aspect, then suddenly you are having, you are forced to expand your capacity physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you're holding a lot more.
So It is very normal if you are, especially in the early days of your coaching business or less than 50k revenue, even if you've been at this for a while, for you to feel the weight of that extra load.
Because it is an extra mental load. It's an extra responsibility. And it's not like you didn't have responsibilities already. So if you're seeing that happen and that ripple effect go into your sleep and affect your your sleep, so that you're ending up with this thing that I call business insomnia, then it is something that A, is normal, but shouldn't be something that you tolerate.
And it certainly shouldn't be something that you allow to persist. Because when you allow that to persist, you're not getting enough rest.
We all know the value of rest and good sleep. You're not going to be operating at your finest. It is going to become harder. And the more we allow that, it compounds.
And it has a ripple effect. It doesn't just impact our performance, our ability to be creative, to come up with new ideas.
It impacts our ability to execute. It can impact those of you in a nine to five still. It will impact your nine to five and the ability to do that.
And if that is taking up the majority and the priority of your energetic capacity because you have to get up and go to work.
and you're hoping to use what's left at the end of the day to build your coaching business, then you're running on fumes.
And those of you who don't have a nine to five, you know how hard it is to wake up and feel fatigued, to wake up and feel tired, to wake up and not feel as alive, as nourished as you know you can be.
And what that can create is a big dissonance. It can create a lot of frustration. We add stories onto an already challenging time We add stories of, well, it would be easier if I had more time.
It would be easier if I had more energy. And the challenge is that we don't want to be allowing things that we potentially have control over to impact our ability to perform effectively in our business when we already have lots of challenges going on.
So this is essential. And I recognized this really, really early on. And what has been fascinating is to experience how it still happens.
It's happened for me, obviously, in the last couple of weeks that I've gone into launch mode. I have experienced business insomnia, but this time it has been so different.
And so I wanted to come on here to show you how it can look when it's in a destructive or degenerative way, but how things like business insomnia can still happen even when you are successful or whenever you're relatively...
I don't know, how would I describe myself right now? Like in a really high value, productive, generative, happy, constructive place, it can still happen.
So why is it happening for me now? And what is the difference in this frequency versus the frequency that I just described to you?
And the frequency differences is that I have actually, I'm in a place in my life and guys, I share this as an inspiration.
And look, this is something I have to work at. As you can tell, I wasn't always like this. This is something that I put a lot of intentional effort into, but it serves me and sets me up for success.
It sets me up to be able to maintain the level of output that I do, the level of creativity that I do, the level of happiness and contentment that I experience.
And look, my life is far from perfect. There are still plenty of days where I wake up, And I still feel like I haven't rested as well as I would like to.
And I still have to check myself to not compare myself to my best days, to not get frustrated or angry at myself if I've let myself down.
I'm always a work in progress. But if I look at the general trajectory of the way that I experience my life and the way that I experience my vitality, it is hands down exponentially stronger and more...
more generative than it ever was when I was doing the things that weren't serving me before and I was making these shifts even with a nine to five so I want you I don't want you to start using the nine to five against you you know that we don't do that in my spaces if you have one but these are some of the things that shift and this is what it can look like even when you have business insomnia but it isn't a destructive thing but it's as I was like going through this over the last couple of days and like, it's not been every day, but over the last couple of weeks, I've had it like every, every couple of days for a couple of days at a time.
And what I've noticed is that when I'm waking up and it's 3am and my mind is like, ah, it's 7am. And I have a sneaky suspicion based on how dark it is outside that it absolutely is not 7am.
And it's probably more like one, two or 3am. When I get over that initial frustration and that initial like fucking hell, here we go again.
I then check in with myself and I'm like, okay, what's actually going on here? And often like 70%, actually no more than that, 80 to 90% of the time, what I'm feeling is that I'm fucking ready to start my day.
I'm feeling alive in myself. When I was waking up at that ridiculous hour, back in the day when I was in that destructive phase of business insomnia, I was waking up and I was panicked.
It was a wake up and it felt like I was already late. I was waking up and I felt like I had missed my alarm. I was waking up and I felt like that I needed to get something done and that it had that feeling of urgency.
It hasn't been like that the last two weeks. When I've been waking up the last two weeks, I've been waking up, And I've been like, fucking let's go.
Got shit to do. Got things to create. Completely different. Completely different. Do you feel that? Let me know in the comments if this is resonating or if this is something that you've experienced.
Or maybe you go through waves of this. Sometimes you wake up, if you wake up at all, you wake up and it's like, oh shit, I'm late.
I've missed something. Oh God, I forgot to send that email. And then other times maybe you wake up with creative ideas. This is a good thing. Notice the difference because I don't know about you, but I went through a time where waking up in the middle of the night for me was just a hands down negative thing.
And immediately my attitude about it would be destructive. Now I take a pause, power in the pause always. I take a pause and I check in with myself and I'm like, okay, what is the frequency here?
And what I've noticed is that the fucking ideas, it's like a portal opens up, the ideas drop in. And I'm in two minds now. Like, do I write it down? Do I trust myself to remember in the morning?
Probably not. So what I do and use this as a tip for yourself, I try not to open my phone because habits die hard.
The addictive part of my brain, the dopamine need kicks in. Next thing you know, you're on freaking Instagram. You're scrolling on Facebook. It's not ideal. And on the occasion that I give into it, the worst thing is, is that I want to send memes to my partner and And then he'll obviously find out that I was awake at 2 a.m.
and give me stick for it. But also I'm not going to not send him the memes that crack me up. And then the worst thing that happens is that somebody sends me a message that makes me laugh or I open to some kind of ridiculous reel or meme or TikTok that makes me laugh.
And I'm sat there trying to stifle my giggles at 2 a.m., trying not to wake my partner up. It's an absolute nightmare. So I do not recommend going on your phone.
Trust me, as a 3-5 in human design... who has to learn these things by experiment and by trial and error, I'm telling you, try not to touch your phone.
Instead, I have a notebook dedicated to nighttime scribbles. And I've actually got quite good at taking my time to write in the dark because it's actually surprisingly hard to write in the dark and to capture the ideas that I have.
The reason this is so powerful is is because it helps empty your brain. And for those of you who have known me a long time will already know that, and testament to how much I've totally let this drop recently, so I'm going to revisit this tonight and moving forward, especially during launch periods, is in this same notebook that I keep by my bed, it's like my scribble pad.
And what I do before bed is I will write down everything that's in my brain. everything, I will empty it out into my notepad and just empty my brain.
What that tends to do is open up the channel for the subconscious to work while I'm sleeping for new ideas to drop in.
This is regardless of waking up in the middle of the night or not. When I'm in the habit of doing this, fuck, I wake up with the best ideas.
I wake up with answers to questions that I had the previous day. I wake up with new inspiration, new perspective. new outlook. It is a game changer. But I also use this notepad for business insomnia.
And when I wake up in the middle of the night with ideas, thoughts, I have woken up in the night and tell me if you've ever experienced this too.
So I'll be gobsmacked if you haven't. And look, don't judge yourself if you haven't. It'll come that you will totally have this and you'll be like, yes, I've reached that milestone.
But I have woken up in the middle of the night with full downloads of entire programs and If you meditate a lot, you've probably had these experiences too.
Like something happens, you get a hit of inspiration, you meet someone, somebody says something, or you're watching a training or listening to a podcast, you're just going about your merry way.
For me, the shower and cleaning, really, this really does happen when I do those things. Ideas drop in, but it's the same when you're sleeping. Because when you're sleeping, what is going on is that your cognitive function is resting, but your subconscious is always, always working.
So when you set yourself up for this kind of channel, for this opportunity in the middle of the night, these things can come through.
And what I have noticed is when I am in launch energy, especially versus just the regular rhythm of marketing and selling and day-to-day business, when I'm in launch energy, I'm a lot more present.
I'm a lot more activated in my marketing. I'm a lot more creative because I'm working towards a common goal and and working towards something that does require a bit more of a spike, does bring out a bit more drive in me, which I really fucking love.
I really love launch energy. It's one of my favorite energies to get into. I don't have a business model where I'm always launching and I do that very intentionally because it doesn't suit my energy.
I am a projector after all. So short bursts of energy really, really work for me. And when I'm doing that over a short term, but sustained within that period, period of time, I tend to find my creative juices go fucking crazy.
The ideas for podcasts, the ideas for programs, the ideas of like people that I haven't thought of drop in business insomnia.
But the frequency of that is just so much more exciting. And the way that I leverage that is that, like I said earlier, I don't get mad at myself for waking up.
I check in with myself and the energy that I'm operating in and I say to myself, okay, interesting, what's going on here?
What is on my mind? Are there things I need to remember? Is it that there are shit that I forgot and it's on my mind and it's jolting me awake?
It's giving me, what's happening is your cortisol is spiking, you're getting an adrenaline hit, your nervous system's going into overdrive, you're forced awake.
That's why you're waking up. So even when Like me, you're seeing your business insomnia experience as a generative and positive thing because of your mindset.
It's very important to recognize that your physiology is still telling you that there's cortisol running here.
We're kind of in overdrive. We're not resting and really you should be resting, okay? So even when I am seeing this through the positivity lens and the generative lens and the let's grab these sexy ideas while they're downloading and I'll write them in my nighttime journal, I then empty my mind and then I force myself to really come and ground, to really rest, to really come into a place of calm and a place of self-talk where I literally say to myself, it's now time to rest.
It's now time to relax. It is safe to relax. Those of you who know EFT, it can be a really beautiful thing to do. I have a partner. So sometimes it's like, oh, I don't want to like go too hectic on the tapping because that can obviously wake them up.
But if you have anchor points, you can still use your meridian centers to leverage those. You can use anchor points in your meridian centers to leverage the same experience.
So a nice thing that I do when I'm sleeping is sometimes I rub instead of pat. I rub the center. and then you can give yourself the positive frameworks of it is safe to rest.
It is safe, safe to rest. It is safe to sleep. It is safe to sleep. I'm ready to sleep. Now I'm ready to sleep. Now you might want to just like rub your forehead, rub your temples, rub under your eyes, rub your nose, rub your chin.
So you can still leverage those Meridian points in EFT, but in a much more gentle way that is suitable if you happen to be sharing a bed, but also, It's the night.
I still do that sometimes, even when I'm alone, if my partner's away. And I use that as a self-soothing technique and a comforting technique.
What else did I want to make sure I tell you today before I wrap up? So other things that I really noticed shifted between, especially in the contrast of those of you who wake up a lot and you are waking up not with ideas, not with these beautiful downloads, but you're waking up from this place of urgency and this place of fuck, like, am I going to get there?
And, and it's kind of positive because you love your business and you love coaching and you love what you do, but it's also kind of frustrating and you just want to sleep and there's lots going on in your head and you feel that kind of anxious, stressful state.
One of the things that I definitely would encourage is to really get honest with yourself about the level of support that you have.
Obviously I'm, recruiting for Thrive Group at the moment, if you want to come and get supported, come and get supported.
It's available to you. But even if you are in spaces already and you already have support, are you leveraging it?
Are you really leaning into the support that's available to you? And do you have good support structures beyond just hiring coaches and mentors?
But are you actually allowing yourself to be vulnerable with the people that you can trust and have these conversations with?
because it really does help, even if you don't share it in your night journal before bed and empty your mind, making sure that you have an outlet to release from the mental, emotional, spiritual, physical stress, and not all stress is bad, so don't just take that as a negative word, but do you have those outlets to generatively move through the stresses that you experienced whilst you're building a business, because it's a big freaking deal, okay?
The next thing is, is there clarity that you are seeking? And is your mind whirling with the next 10 steps? I do this a lot. I can easily go into overdrive with like planning out the entire launch, figuring out all 10 steps, when in reality, all that's needed is the next one step.
Especially at night, especially when we go into those overdrive, planning mode, be onto yourself. Make sure that you're not overthinking unnecessarily.
This is where it does require an element of self-awareness and discipline. And it doesn't matter if you haven't noticed that you've been thinking about this for the last 30 minutes.
The minute it comes into your awareness and you're like, oh, okay, I'm on step 20 here and I only really need to worry about getting back to sleep and just capturing what I need to do tomorrow.
And the one step that's a priority right now and doing it. And just reminding myself and then telling my subconscious, it is safe.
It is safe to sleep. It is safe to rest. I've written down what I need to do. It's okay. We've got this. And just allowing yourself to come back to that safety.
I've already mentioned practices before bed. And look, good bedtime hygiene is really, really important. And this was a struggle for me, especially when I had a nine to five.
And then I, like I say, I was finishing work at seven. I was eating. I was doing a few hours of business. Then I didn't really have time to wind down because I wanted to be asleep already.
But what I found is that when I took the time to wind down and I gave myself ideally an hour, ideally two, but at least 30 minutes, no screen time, good hygiene before sleeping, that made a massive difference to my quality of sleep.
Because what I would find is that I was so fatigued, it would take me seconds to fall asleep. But then I was waking up in the middle of the night.
So now I'm very aware if I know that if I hit the pillow and I'm like, I knock myself out, I'm probably going to end up waking up in the middle of the night.
So now one thing that I definitely started doing in the last couple of years that has made a massive difference is not reading business books before bed, not reading books books about creativity and unleashing your creativity.
Like I remember when i read big magic for the first time by elizabeth Gilbert, I think it is. Oh my gosh, it cracked open, it cracked me open creatively so beautifully.
But when i read it or listened to it before bed, oh my God, the creative ideas were like, it was the wrong time to be opening that channel.
So be wise about what you're reading. And here's another hint that i learned a little bit later on. And my science isn't, um, precise with this, but it goes something like this.
When you are reading non-fiction when you're reading factual stuff like business, spirituality, marketing, messaging, whatever it is you're reading, when you're reading stuff that is that is practical technical logical implementable then you're still engaging the side of your brain that requires logic, that requires processing and thinking and When you are reading a novel, when you're reading something that is story-based, then you're engaging the other side of your brain that allows you to actually rest and relax and go into just relaxation and story mode.
I must admit, I didn't go into any of the left side, right side, because I always get it wrong and I didn't want to give you the wrong information.
Sinead says Big Magic is a great book. It absolutely is. And it is amazing. important to think about the stimuli that you have before sleeping.
Are you in the habit of scrolling and then turning the light off and trying to sleep? Notice that. Okay, the next thing is deconditioning. Deconditioning from that employee mindset.
A big thing that I see, even for people who haven't really had a corporate career or anything, or aren't in a nine to five anymore, but still completely applies to you, is recognizing where you are still upholding belief systems that mean that your value is, sorry, your worth is very closely linked to your outcomes, to your productivity, to how much you get done.
This is tough, especially when you're still in a nine to five. This is what I do with my clients. Those who are still in a nine to five and work with me, we are working to actively decondition you from the employee mindset of productivity equals success, productivity equals value, productivity equals worth.
When you decondition from that paradigm, which isn't your fault, we've all been raised this way. When you decondition from that, you start to recognize actually what are my measures of success.
You're less likely to be waking up with business insomnia and when you're not waking up thinking, fuck, I've missed something, or there's something I need to do, or there's something else that I've missed.
Oh, maybe if I can do this, this, this, this, this, this, then I'll get the clients, then I'll have the success, then I'll reach 10K.
That is a conditional scarcity-based mindset. And that is creating that self-perpetuating cycle of the more you do, the more you'll win, but it's a losing game because there's always more to do.
There's always more to have. There's always even more to be. But when you keep matching your worthiness with your productiveness, that is a recipe for business insomnia.
So we don't want to be doing that anymore. And anytime you notice your thoughts are going to the to-do list, the checklist, the things that you need to do, then that's going to continue to perpetuate that.
And then the last one, this is a really interesting one because I've spoken a lot about the value of being in a generative mindset when you experience business insomnia, making it a positive thing.
But I also noticed this. If you haven't allowed yourself to be creatively spent every single day, and you're not fully in your power, and you're not fully unleashing what is available to you, then you're going to bed with a half full cup, but not in the good sense.
You're going to bed with magic inside you that is still waiting to be released. Of course you're waking up in the night. Of course your soul is going, there's more we could be doing here.
Are you tapping into your potential? Are you tapping into your power? So we want to notice the nuance here of the employee mindset, where it's productivity equals self-worth and oh my God, I haven't done enough.
So maybe I'll get there if I do enough. But also there is another side of that same coin where I want to challenge you.
Have you fucking done enough? Are you shoving the fuck up in your business? Are you allowing yourself to be creatively spent or are you bottling up in fear that, oh God, what if I give all my best ideas away, then I'll run out of ideas.
Are you scared to go live just in case you don't have another thing to share? Are you scared to sell today in case you don't know what to say tomorrow?
Are you holding back from being as powerful, as alive, as vitalized in your business as you could be with a slight worry at the back of your mind?
I don't want to burn out. I don't want to creatively run out of ideas. I don't want to give it all away because what if that's all I've got?
Do you see the scarcity in that? No wonder you're waking up in the middle of the night with business insomnia with more to give.
I challenge you, when you have so much to give, empty yourself every day. Then when you do wake up with business insomnia, if it happens, and you're waking up with fresh ideas, instead of that same idea nagging at you saying, girl, come on, girl, are you going to do this?
Girl, what's going on here? Are you going to move? Are you going to move? Are you going to move? Do you want this? Do you want this? Do you want this? Say fucking yes. Say yes to the whispers of your soul that speak to you in the middle of the night and go after it.
Make that resolution in the night and say to yourself, fine, this idea, it's come up again. I'm going to do it. I'm going to deliver. Okay. Thank you for joining me. I hope this was useful.
Drop me a DM if you've ever experienced business insomnia. I want to hear it and tell me from this what you're going to do differently next time.
All right. Thanks so much for joining me. And this will also go on the podcast. So if you're listening on the podcast, be sure to head to the show notes so that you can apply to Thrive Group, find all the details there and send in your application because we're getting going.
People are joining, applications are starting to roll in and I cannot wait to connect with you to discuss supporting you over the next six months to help you grow and build your business.
Those of you who are on Instagram, live or watching this through facebook thanks so much for joining me drop me that dm let me know what landed for you and i'll see you next time
