Why am I still tired after sleeping?

There are lots of articles out there with long lists of why you are still tired after sleeping enough. But if you are confident that you’re having enough sleep, maybe the answer to your tiredness isn’t sleep?

Maybe you should be asking:

Why am I tired?

Again, there are long lists of all the causes of tiredness. I just want to talk about one today. I am tired all the time. I have been for years. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel tired.

I remember falling asleep in my afternoon classes in uni and in important meetings as a junior doctor. I felt like I was swimming in a fog a lot of the time. I tried changing my diet. I tried having more coffee and I tried going off coffee. I even skipped lunch to see if it would help.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still tired. But after 20 years, I finally figured out the main reason I was tired.

Chronic stress

It seems stress is part and parcel of our modern day life. I wonder why. We have everything we might need to have a cushy life. Our medical system is better than it ever was before. Technology has made life easy. No toiling in the kitchen or washing clothes by the river. Heck, you don’t even need to know how to cook to prepare a yummy meal. Sauces come pre-mixed and meat comes pre-marinaded.

So what’s the problem? Having life too good is the problem.

Are you stressed due to fears of your partner cheating on you? Use these techniques to overcome your fears.

It’s all about perspectives

My friend’s mom used to worry all day and night. She would worry about her husband, about what the neighbours think, about how to save a dollar on vegetables. She’s Asian (just joking, I’m Asian).

Then her husband was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. Their world fell apart in a split second. He then got sick with chemotherapy and was admitted to hospital. Fortunately, he survived the admission and went home.

But what happened to his wife, the worrier? Do you think she had a nervous break down from all the worry and ended up in hospital herself? Nope. When we met up recently, she was the calmest I have ever seen her. In fact, she was serene. You see, when she was faced with such a life-changing situation, she realized that nothing else mattered. So she stopped worrying about them.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

There are really only a handful of things in life that matters. Everything else in life can come and go and you will still be there, surviving. Thriving.

We put too much importance on the useless and the unimportant. The other day I got upset with my husband that we had to pay $100 to a mattress removalist to remove our mattress when we could have saved the money and not waste the bed by donating it to one of the charities.

That got my husband upset because he felt that he had made the wrong decision about the mattress.

On hindsight, it wasn’t worth upsetting my husband and making him feel bad. We won’t even miss the $100. My husband’s pride was worth more than that. So I said sorry and let it go.

 To wrap up

If you’re feeling like you’re tired all the time no matter how much you sleep, you don’t need more sleep. What you need is more insight into what is causing you to feel tired. Maybe chronic stress and sweating the small stuff is taking up more energy than they should.

Check out some ways to recover your energy for life.