Imagine it’s a Friday night and your best friend texts you to hang out, chances are you respond with: “I’m too tired.” “I’ll be tired tomorrow.” “I need to sleep.” “I need a nap.” Chances are these sound familiar to you, and you’ve probably said these responses yourself. What happens in the morning when you wake up and see all the fun pictures of you and your friends from the night? You regret it………. right? Was that extra sleep worth it? Chances are you are still tired, and that extra time didn’t help…… that … much.

We live in a world that revolves around sleeping, eating and working. We wake up thinking about eating before work. While at work we think about how nice it will be when we can get back in our beds. Think about it…. How many times a day do you think about how nice it would be to go back to sleep? …… when’s the next meal?..... Do I have to work? Chances are a lot.

Here’s a few things to think about before you choose sleep over something else:

so sky high in work you just can’t stand it… chances are you might have decided to take a nap and maybe the stress will go away. Sleeping doesn’t take away all the work you have to do. It just puts more stress on you to get down to business and work. It’ll be a much better sleep if you get your work done first and then sleep. If you’re tired later that’s ok, you’ll get your time to catch up on sleep.

chose sleeping over your friends?..... Think about it, did you feel left out next time you saw them and they had an inside joke.. I bet you did. Do you remember that extra sleep you got that day… I bet not. Next time you’re tired and your friends ask to hang out… think about it. I wouldn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to hang out with all my friends because one day we won’t all be together anymore. I don’t want to miss out on the pictures ill look back on when I’m old and laugh at. I want to experience these things. These will be the things that I will remember, I won’t remember the nights I got the extra hours of sleep.

Spend that extra time with family. I know long days at work can make you tired and make you want to come home and go right to bed. But, spend that extra hour on the couch with your family. These are the moments that help grow you into a better person and make you happy. You will still be a little tired in the morning, but you’ll be happier because you took that precious time and spent it the right way.

Pain. Heartbreak. These are just a few of the things that you might have tried to sleep away the pain but did that really work? Chances are the pain was still there when you woke back up. All you really did was push off the amount of time until you have to deal with these feelings. Deal with them when they come up. Take ownership of the pain and learn from it. This will allow you a much better sleep and you will be happy when you do wake up.

I would but…. Take this out of your vocabulary. Don’t use that anymore. Instead say I would love to for a little bit. This means you’ll take advantage of these moments and you’ll still get your sleep but these moments will make you way happier than extra sleeping time could ever make you!

I am by no means saying don’t ever sleep. I am simply expressing that sleep doesn’t run our lives. Sometimes we can give up those “8 hour” sleeping patterns for a little bit more fun in our lives. Think about building memories not sleeping patterns.

Live life on the edge, like you're about to fall!