This is a sponsored feature. All opinions are 100% from Her Campus.
Do you find yourself spending many of your college nights counting the maximum hours of sleep you can still get while cramming in every last bit of studying before the sun rises? Or, do you stay up late and just let Netflix push you into the next episode hour after hour? You may not even realize it, but we are all in the middle of a sleep crisis. If you’re one of many in this world who prioritizes everything else before sleep without even meaning to, Arianna Huffington’s latest book, The Sleep Revolution, is all the bedtime reading material that you need to get that much needed shuteye.
While it feels like it’s our second nature, we all prioritize our work and school lives over our time to unwind. It may feel like we’re helping ourselves, yet Arianna Huffington, cofounder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post, uses her personal experiences from the day she collapsed from exhaustion to prove how powerful sleep really is. Our generation, especially college students, is in the midst of a sleep revolution. Huffington’s discoveries on the world’s lack of sleep and its life-threatening effects are alarming yet eye opening, as she takes a deep, scientific, and personal look at sleep.
We all strive for success in our jobs, family lives, income and education. Whenever I talk with my friends, it always feels like our comparisons of how few hours we each slept last night is a competition to see who is the most devoted to school. In reality, a lack of sleep shouldn’t define our success. Burning ourselves out isn’t worth the price of getting paid or getting that A+ on a paper, when really the toll it takes on our health can be permanent. On the other end of the spectrum, constantly spending our time in bed hooked up to technology until the minute we shut our eyes has taken a toll on our sleep like none other.
So how can you use sleep to improve your well-being and make yourself even more successful in your daily life? Huffington’s Sleep Manifesto (below) provides 12 fundamental tips to live by in order to put our health first and power off on our electronics—and our brains. Light a candle, grab your eye mask, and read that book you keep telling yourself that you’ll get to eventually. When you enter your bed, make it a place away from work and electronics.
Before I read the book, I never even considered how sleeping next to my iPhone was really hindering me from the best sleep possible. Now, for the past few weeks, I’ve had the time to actually do the things I once loved—reading and writing—before I go to sleep instead of scrolling through Instagram and consciously waking up throughout the night to my phone lighting up. Our sleep crisis is real, but the Sleep Revolution is all we need to put it to rest.
So do yourself a favor and disconnect. You have the power to be a boss in every aspect of your life, but you’ll need some sleep to get you there. And whoever said sleep is for the weak never met Arianna Huffington.
To join the #SleepRevolution, purchase your own copy of Huffington’s book here!