How often do you say “I’m so tired!”?

Or how often do you hear other people say it?

True legitimate fatigue can be dangerous and destructive to businesses, teams, relationships, and certainly our physical health.

So I’m a fan of and a big believer in sleep.

And I consider it an important matter of self-discipline to consistently pursue a full night’s rest.

With a newborn- that has been an especially fun challenge in recent times. 🙂

But there is a big difference between not getting enough sleep and being tired.

Discouragement and distraction can even masquerade in our lives as “being tired,” serving as a justifiable excuse for the self sabotaging behavior of us not taking action.

This past weekend, I was in Napa with my wife’s personal Southwestern Consulting coaching organization called Dream Team.

I was sitting next to one of our amazing coaches, Angie Moss ,who recently adopted her twin grandkids and moved into a new house.

Yet in spite of reliving the early parenting years that she’s already been through before, she continues to be one of our top coaches in terms of production, client satisfaction, and especially attitude.

I asked her how she does it and she said:

“I never allow myself to say ‘I’m tired.’ I’ve figured out that the amount of energy I have is more about what I decide to be true than it is the byproduct of anything else. I can say ‘I’m sleepy’ because that may be true. But I do not allow myself to ever say ‘I’m tired’ because usually that is just my brain trying to talk me out of doing work that needs to be done. I find that if I tell myself ‘I’m tired’ then I act tired. But if I tell myself ‘I’m energized’ then somehow the energy is always there.”

Powerful!

And such an important insight.

What Angie was commenting on is actually a natural part of the neuroscience of our brain.

The human brain isn’t programmed for success; it’s programmed for survival.

And survival is all about conserving energy.

So your brain is designed to govern you in a way that conserves your short term energy.

And delivering the signal throughout your body of ‘I’m tired’ is one of its primary mechanisms for doing that.

In that way, ‘I’m tired’ is much more often a defense mechanism for a lazy mind than it is a biological truth about the human body.

Which reminds me of something that Navy Seal Joe once said to me and AJ, “the human body can take damn near anything; it’s the mind that needs conditioning.”

He was explaining that in the context of how in BUDS training, the Navy Seals complete superhuman physical challenges despite operating on extraordinary sleep deprivation.

I remember Navy Seal Joe also mentioning something along the lines of “when your body says ‘I’m tired’ or ‘I quit’ or ‘I physically can’t take anymore’, it’s at that moment that you’ve reached about 10% of what your body is truly capable of.”

Why does your mind tell you to quit so long before you really are at your max?

Simple.

Because your mind is trained to do one thing: conserve energy.

But success requires expending energy, making difficult decisions and taking action.

Success requires the intention of new choices, new behaviors, and new habits.

Success requires re-establishing new mental boundaries for what we’re capable of that are far beyond our initial expectations.

Success requires us rising above challenges, overcoming obstacles and destroying our own self-limiting governors that are designed to simply keep us comfortable.

Perhaps one of the greatest self-limiters of all, is the quiet indulgence of “I’m tired.”