Why You’re Always Tired (It’s Not Sleep)

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you want to brainwash yourself to be successful, to get into your subconscious, to create the life that you want, to believe in yourself, I just created a video. It's a lesson that teaches you how to do a morning priming technique that you set up for yourself. And if you want to get that absolutely free, you can go to morningpriming.com. Once again, morningpriming.com. You can download it for free.

0:38Today, we're going to be talking about why you're always tired. And let's be real. Sure, there's sleep and there's caffeine and there's nutrition. There's all of those things. But this episode is not going to be about any of those. Being tired all of the time is not just about getting enough sleep. You can sleep for eight hours. You can eat healthy. You can drink all the water. And you can still feel completely drained by noon every single day. Why? Because when you look at exhaustion, it runs deeper than just your bedtime routine, what time you wake up, what you're eating. All of those are important, don't get me wrong, for energy.

1:21But it goes much deeper than that. And that's what we're going to dive into today. We're going to dive deeper than just sleep and nutrition and caffeine. And I'm going to go over four reasons why you are always tired. Okay? The first one, mental fatigue. Mental fatigue is the silent energy killer throughout your entire day. Have you ever noticed that sometimes you can have great sleep? You can feel good. You can be, you know, feel like I just got a whole bunch of sleep. Everything's good. Nothing's wrong. I didn't wake up. The children didn't wake me up. I had all of the great nutrition. I had my coffee and then just no matter what, still you just don't feel it physically.

1:58Like you ever feel completely wiped out even though everything else seems completely perfect. Have you ever felt that maybe it might be mental fatigue? So exhaustion comes from many different forms, but it can also come from decision overload, having to constantly be thinking and prepping for what's next, constant problem solving, all of this information being bombarded by it every single day, all day long. And if you're not 100 % sure that mental fatigue is possible, Professional chess players can burn around 6 ,000 calories a day. And all they do is sit in their chair. And the reason why is because they're sitting there and they're mentally moving all of the chess pieces and thinking 10 steps ahead.

2:44They can burn 6 ,000 calories a day just by thinking. That's three times more than the average person usually eats in a day. The reason why you want to think of it is kind of like to make it easy is think about your cell phone, right? You wake up in the morning, you had it plugged in all night, and you're at 100%. Your brain is the exact same way as that battery in your phone. Every thought that you have, every decision that you have to make, every distraction that pulls you away from what you were just doing, all of the multitasking that you're doing, all of that pulls away from your energy reserves.

3:17It drains your battery in some sort of way. And so decision fatigue is really important to look at. Did you know that the average person, let me just, I'll just ask you, how many decisions do you think the average person makes in a day? Just say the number out loud to yourself. How many decisions do you think the average person makes in a day? The average person makes about 35 ,000 decisions per day. And these can be small choices. They can be big choices. It could be stuff like what to eat, what to wear, how to word an email, when to turn in your car on the way to work. And all of these little tiny decisions add up.

3:56If your day is packed with choices and decisions, you're leaking energy constantly. So that's one thing is you're making a lot of decisions possibly. The next thing you want to think about that happens to deal with this is overstimulation. We consume more information in a day than people did in a month, a hundred years ago. If you think about all of the information, all of the things trying to pull your energy from Facebook, from Instagram, from TikTok, from YouTube, from Reddit. Some of you listening to this podcast episode checked your Facebook, your Instagram, your TikTok, your YouTube, and your Reddit before you even brush your teeth.

4:37That's crazy. And then you checked your text messages and your emails. Your brain was not designed for all of this. And your brain, just so you know, you're not passively just looking. You're not just passively like your brain just turns off and you're just scrolling with your phone. No, your brain is actively processing every single moment. So even when you think you're just sitting down and relaxing on the couch by just scrolling, your mind is constantly working. So it's constantly being bombarded by all of the videos and all the things that you read and all the people who are fighting with each other in the comment section.

5:12And so how do you fix this? Well, what I would recommend is that you simplify your daily choices, Plan out your outfits, prep your meals, create routines that are important for you just to reduce as much decision-making as possible. I remember reading an article about three years ago that says that Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, only makes about three decisions a day at work. That's it. He says, I want to make three decisions, but I want them to be the three most important decisions I can make today. And so what I would recommend is how can you have less decisions you have to make? Another thing that would really help you out is start getting used to taking micro breaks throughout the day.

5:51Every 90 minutes or so, step away from all of the screens that you have and give your brain a rest, just a real quick reset. It's kind of like if you were just to plug your phone back in for five minutes and you get an extra 10%. That's the way you want to think about it. Even if it's just a few minutes of stillness, I recommend at minimum doing two minutes of breathing. Here's a really simple two minutes of breathing. You do four seconds in the nose, eight seconds out of the mouth. So four seconds in, eight seconds out of the mouth. You do that 10 times and you've got about two minutes of breathing.

6:27That alone will reset you and make you feel a lot more relaxed and kind of give your brain just a quick rest that it needs. You don't always have to be connected all the time. I promise you, if you take a five minute break, the world is not going to crumble. So limit your screen time. Also limit your screen time before bed. The blue light, all of the information overload makes it harder for your brain to slow down and properly recharge as well. So that's the first thing that's really, really big for people I want you to realize it's taking a lot of your energy throughout the day is you have a lot of mental fatigue.

7:00The second thing that's taking a lot from you, emotional exhaustion. Sometimes it's not your body that's tired. It's like, without this sounding weird and woo-woo, It's like your soul is tired. Like your soul is just like, dude, can you take a break, please? Right? So it's like emotional exhaustion happens when you're caring too much and you have too much worry. You have too many fears. You have too many limiting beliefs. You have too much responsibility. You have too much pretending that you're fine when you're around other people when you're not. And so when you look at emotional burnout, it can show up in many different ways.

7:39Like it can show up in the feeling of just feeling numb. Like I remember years ago before when I was, last time I was working for someone else, I was like going through the motions and I just felt like numb. Nothing really excited me anymore. I became really pessimistic. I was just like going through the motions. And it felt like the easiest way to describe it is it felt like the saturation had been taken out of the world and I was just kind of operating. I was just kind of doing it. And I remember my girlfriend at the time, wife now was like, hey, you seem different. Are you starting to get depressed?

8:13And once I knew that somebody else had seen it, I was like, oof, okay, something's happened and I need to make a change. So maybe you feel numb. Maybe you're constantly irritable. You know, small things just really set you off because maybe you just have no more emotional bandwidth left. Maybe you're dread like even the simplest, smallest of tasks, like everyday simple responsibilities is like just having to take the trash out feel overwhelming because you're so emotionally spent that even just taking the trash out feels like a lot. So you're so drained internally that it's hard for you to find any energy to do outside in the external world.

8:56So it's like your internal world is so drained that like, oh my God, I got to take out the trash. I got to do the dishes. like those types of things just feel like so much for us to do. And so, you know, common causes of where this comes from, if you're a really big people pleaser, if you're constantly putting other people first, you deplete all of your own emotional reserves. Well, yeah, that's going to drain you a lot. If you have a lot of emotions, grief, anger, sadness that you haven't been releasing, maybe you're suppressing a lot of emotions for years, bottling up your emotions doesn't make them go away.

9:30They just pile up. And every time they pile up, it's like another thing that's just running in the background. So maybe you're suppressing your emotions. Maybe, and we will be right back. And now back to the show. Maybe you're in toxic environments. Being around negativity can do this to you. The news, please turn that shit off. It's gotten so bad recently. Social media, please get off of it for a long time if you can. Spend less time on it. And if you're going to spend time on social media, unfollow like 90 % of the people that you follow now, right? Who can you get off of your social media? Follow people that make you feel good.

10:09They make you excited about the world, that aren't putting a bunch of negative stuff and fighting in the comments with other people. Also, there's toxic relationships. Who should you unfollow in real life? All of these things drain you when you don't really realize it. There's a lot of mental processing that's going on in the background. when you think about how to deal with the news and how to deal with all of the people online and how to deal with all of your toxic relationships. You know, when you look at like a lot of the comments on social media now, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, a lot of them are bots just designed to stress you out.

10:42So just disconnect from them already, spend less time in it. And so how do you fix all of this? First thing is learn to set boundaries. If saying yes to others means saying no to yourself, then it's time for you to start protecting your energy. So set some boundaries with other people. Set some boundaries with your people pleasing. Start practicing more emotional releasing. You can journal. You can talk to a friend. You can cry. You can scream into a pillow. Just get it out instead of holding it in so much. You can go on a walk. Like get out into the world. Stop being inside all the time. It's crazy.

11:18Like when you're on your phone and you're inside all day long and you're on social media and everything's like doom and gloom. And then you walk outside and it's sunny and everything's peaceful. And you're like, wait, this isn't really reflecting what it looks like when I'm on my phone all day long. So get away from your phone, go on a walk, be outside, get some sun on your skin and do like an energy audit. Who and what in your life drains you? Make a massive list of all of the people and all of the things that drain you in your life. And then who and what in your life fuels you? Make a massive list of all of the people and all the things that fuel you.

11:53And then just adjust your life accordingly. Okay, so that's number two. The third thing that will really drain you a lot, which this is a really, really big one for a lot of people that I found, is that there's a lack of purpose in your life. There's a kind of tired that sleep can't fix. And it's this exhaustion of not feeling fully alive. If you wake up every morning and you feel like you're just going through the motions, your soul is running on empty. This is another thing that I was feeling when my girlfriend at the time came up to me and was like, are you starting to get depressed? I was like, I'm fast forwarding.

12:29I'm looking at what I do in my life. I'm looking at my job. I'm looking at if I fast forward five years and I have my manager's job, I'll hate my life. So what am I working towards? What am I doing? I felt like there was this lack of purpose before I started this podcast. And so, you know, maybe you're just stuck in these repetitive routines without any real growth. My very first mentor used to always say, you're either green and growing or brown and dying. Humans want to progress. Progress equals happiness, as Tony Robbins always says. So if we don't feel like we're progressing, we want to grow.

13:01We don't feel really good if we don't feel like we're growing. So if every day feels like it's the same, your brain just kind of disengages. And so you might not be busy, like constantly go, go, go. But you're just tired of all the same old shit. And so maybe you need to do something that's passionate. it, something that you love. Maybe you don't know what you love. Maybe you don't know your passion. Well, you need to figure out what it is. Because when you're excited about something, you could stay up all night doing it and still feel energized. So if you don't have any passion, you could be really well rested and your body still feels like it's sluggish.

13:36Don't underestimate how much energy it takes to go to a job that you don't enjoy. Like I coach business owners and I coach business owners on their mindset because if I can help somebody's mindset as a business owner, it always translates to their business. You know, like 95 % of businesses go out of business in the first five to 10 years. It's usually not the business. That's usually not the industry. It's the mindset of the business owner. And so with so many people that want to start a business, they're like, but it's just going to take so much energy. It's going to take so much work. And I'm like, do you know how much energy it takes to get yourself up, you know, at body, put on clothes, drive to a job that you hate, be there for eight hours, drive home, be in traffic again, and think to yourself, oh my God, I've got to do it tomorrow and for the next 30 years.

14:28That takes up so much mental energy. And so you know that you have this potential inside of you. Like you know that you want to do more. You want to bring more potential out. And there's a part of you that knows that you're meant for more. If you keep ignoring that voice, it creates this subtle exhaustion that builds up. It's that voice that whispers like, hey, this isn't it. Like do something different. And so what I recommend is just shake things up. Change something. Stop doing the same thing every single day. Take a different route to work. Try different morning habits. You know, do something different on your weekends.

15:01Go to a place you've never been before. Find a new hobby. Do something you've never done and you've always wanted to do. Reconnect with things that excite you. When was the last time that you did something just for fun, like just for the hell of it. Not I have to be productive, not I have to make money, not I have to get some specific outcome, but you just do it just because. When was the last time you've done that? It's time for you to find your passion and your passion doesn't always have to be your paycheck. It can just be something that you enjoy spending your time doing. That's one thing that you have to understand.

15:31You don't have to become rich with your passion. It could just be something that you enjoy doing on your time off. And so stop limiting yourself so much. Ask yourself bigger questions like, what really makes me feel alive? If you don't know, then you need to make it your mission to figure out what it is. And so that's the third thing. And then the fourth thing, which is really underestimated, is that your nervous system might be in fight or flight all the time. Your body was built for short bursts of stress. A tiger comes running at you, stress, cortisol, adrenaline, run, and then release. That's what a short burst of stress looks like.

16:08not to be in constant survival mode. Stress is not a bad thing. Stress is a really good thing. Chronic stress is a bad thing. And modern life can keep you chronically on edge. Emails and deadlines and money worries and relationship stress and all of the stuff that's happening in the world and doom and gloom and all of that stuff. Like your nervous system never really gets a break if you're constantly on high alert all the time, which can lead to really deep exhaustion. Like your nervous system, your body's just like, please dude, give me a freaking break. Like just go sit by a pool for a couple hours and just close your eyes and listen to some music, do some breathing and get some sun in your skin.

16:53And so chronic stress can lead to a lot of things. It can lead to high cortisol levels. Cortisol is your stress hormone. Your body stays in like danger mode, like you're getting attacked or you're about to get attacked, which can lead to fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep. You can get adrenal burnout. You know, your stress hormones get so overworked that they don't function as properly as they should. And you can have this like hypervigilance in the background where your body never fully relaxes, even during the downtime. Like sometimes I see people and they're sitting there and they're trying to relax, but like their shoulders are so like, their shoulders and their eyebrows and their face and just like everything's so tense and they're trying to relax, but their body's just on guard all the time.

17:35And so how do you fix these things? Well, I'm going to go back to one thing I give you tips on all the time. Breathe deeper. Long exhales tell your nervous system it's okay to relax. That's why I always say breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth. Your exhale is longer than your inhale. Your inhale is long, but your exhale is longer. And the reason why is because it allows you to release some stress. And so when you inhale for a long time, you exhale for a long time, it tells your nervous system like, hey, relax. Because when you're running from a bear, you're not going, right?

18:10Like if you're on a run, it's, and so that right there is how a lot of people live their day. And so if you breathe deeply, you're telling your nervous system, hey, there's no reason to be on fight or flight. We can chill out. Another thing I really recommend, and I said a few minutes ago, go on a walk, get in nature. Studies have shown over and over again that nature reduces cortisol and restores your energy. And there's, I think it's in Japan, they recommend, one of the things that they recommend is just going on a walk in nature. And I think they call it forest bathing. So just, you know, bathe in the forest, be there.

18:43It calms you down. Another thing I think is really important for a lot of people is just, I've had to kind of brainwash myself into doing this and it's to slow down. Like you're not a machine. You're not supposed to be going all the time. Productivity is not your only value in the world. And so just learn to slow down. And so if you're always tired, your body isn't just begging you for more sleep or better nutrition. It's asking you for just a different way of living. You don't need to take another nap. You need more mental space, more emotional release, more things that make you feel alive. You need to calm your nervous system down.

19:19You need to connect with yourself a little bit more. So before you reach for like another coffee, any of that, figure out another book that you need to read on sleep, just ask yourself, what am I actually tired of? Because fixing that can give you more energy sometimes than sleep. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a big, big favor. Share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. So if you would share it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to leave it the same way.

19:51I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.