What Happens When We Believe Sleep Is For The Weak?
- Ashley Elliott
- Mar 10
- 4 min read
Back when I was in university, I was a different version of who I am today. It was a different chapter of my life back then. I used to joke with my friends that “sleep was for the weak.”
I remember back in university I would get around 6 to 7 hours of sleep. I would be working at my laptop until 12 o’clock at night, and sometimes even later. I would often drink coffee or energy drinks just to stay up that late and keep working. Not only did I do that, but I also would do work on the weekends. My course load felt heavy and constant. Quite often, I would study so late that I would be asked to leave the library at the end of the night.
It was a different time for me back then. I would quite often say, 'sleep is for the weak.' Even though I said it with a sense of humour back then, it did ultimately lead me to feeling emotionally burnt out at the end of university. I learned many lessons from university, and some of them were unexpected, such as recovery from emotional burnout.
The Story Behind “Sleep is for the Weak”
You may have heard this phrase before: “sleep is for the weak.” You may have even lived by this story as well. This idea, and in particular this story, “sleep is for the weak,” stems from our cultural narrative in Western society.
This story teaches us that sleep is a sign of:
Laziness
Lack of ambition
Poor work ethic
Despite the fact that sleep, is a biological and cyclical function that allows the body and brain to rest, repair, and recover. This story of “sleep is for the weak” creates a system in our society that supports hustle culture.
How Cultural Narratives Teach Us Binaries
This Western cultural narrative often teaches us to view the world through binaries. This statement, “sleep is for the weak,” is one example of this binary. In particular, binaries are statements of opposites. These binaries are explicit categories of either/or. This story creates two opposing categories. One category is that rest is weak and staying awake is strong.
Viewing the world through the lens of binary categories does not acknowledge or recognize the nuanced spectrum of possibilities, even though it’s easy for our minds to understand binaries. Viewing the world through binaries creates overly simplified cultural narratives that negate nuance, and the cultural narrative of “sleep is for the weak” is a prime example of this. It’s a story that is overly simplified and provides a narrow perspective of the world. This binary that sleep is weak reinforces dis-embodied cultural norms, hierarchy and domination.
Binaries always rank one side as superior and the other side as inferior.
But what happens when we believe the story that rest is weak?
I can recall when I repetitively said this story in university:
I felt emotionally burnt out
I was pulled toward staying awake late at night
I felt like I had absolutely nothing left in the tank by the end of the day
Lesson 1: Dialing Up Intuition
One of the first steps I took to recover from emotional burnout in university was to dial up my intuition. One of the ways I did that was by tracking the sensations in my body. I would journal on questions that would help me reflect on how I felt.
Some suggestions that I can offer you to journal on are:
What challenges may be getting in the way of experiencing what you deeply desire around work?
What do you feel or sense when you are experiencing burnout?
What do you deeply desire to feel after completing your work?
I invite you, before writing down your reflections to each question in your journal, to take a moment to:
Close your eyes
Bring your hands into contact with your body
Allow yourself to feel into the answer before writing your reflections
Lesson 2: Exploring the Stories Behind Emotional Burnout
The second lesson I want to share is that one of the biggest shifts that helped me recover from burnout was writing down, reflecting on, and asking questions about the stories running in my head.
Some examples of stories I had in my head around work are:
“Sleep is for the weak”
“If I don’t work hard, then I won’t get a high-paying job”
I started shifting burnout after I asked questions about the cultural narratives that I had learned. So I invite you to:
Reflect on what does it mean to be successful?
Consider what does it mean to be taken seriously by others?
What are your thoughts around work?
I offer to you to write down all thoughts that come to mind when you answer those questions. Then I invite you to get curious about the driving forces or cultural narratives behind these thoughts and stories.
Support for Your Burnout Recovery
If you want deeper support with recovering from emotional burnout and creating the spaciousness to pursue your passions and be with your loved ones, book a discovery call with me today to learn more about my four-month signature coaching journey:
Coming Home to the Body: Reclaiming Aliveness Beyond Productivity and Achievement.
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