By lchumpitaz @Adobe Stock
One Secret to Happiness
Along with too much, too early Christmas music, is a surfeit of articles on the importance of not getting enough sleep. In the WSJ, Geoffry Rogow advised what to do if you are not getting your full eight hours of shut-eye.
We all know sleep promotes health and happiness,
We’re better parents, partners, and friends when we sleep well. Small issues during the day get brushed off quicker and we are able to focus more easily.
What If You Aren’t Sleeping Like a Newborn?
Mr. Rogow advises, Relax. There is only one thing worse than not getting enough sleep: worrying about it.
Too bad it’s nearly impossible. More than a third of Americans don’t get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What Would We Do Without the Experts:
According to Dr. Reena Mehra, director of sleep disorders at Cleveland Clinic:
“The more you focus on going to sleep, you’re not able to sleep. It works against the individual.”
Dr. Shelby Harris, a clinical associate professor of neurology and psychology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, advises, that patterns and routines are important.
Do them as often as you can, but then don’t be so rigid where you can’t sleep at all if you have to break the routine for a work project or sleepless kid.
The pressure we put on ourselves is making it worse, observes Dr. Harris.
Income Inequality: Something to Not Lose Sleep Over:
Chris Giles at the Financial Times:
How would you feel if you found out that US income inequality had not risen over the past 60 years; the rich had not taken the lion’s share of economic growth since the 1980s; and the poorest half of US society had about the same share of total income in 2020 as they had in 1960?
I suspect many, like me, would feel pleasure tinged with scepticism. Happiness because it suggests the world’s most powerful economy was producing fairer outcomes and disbelief because the conjectures run counter to almost everything we have been told about US society.
