Sleep Is a Skillset: The Surprising Habits That Heal Insomnia | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

In this insightful episode, Matt Zaun sits down with Morgan Adams, an insomnia and holistic sleep coach, to break down why so many high achievers are running on fumes and what to do about it.

Morgan shares practical tools, mindset shifts, and behavioral strategies for those struggling with sleep maintenance, middle-of-the-night wakeups, and chronic insomnia. Whether you’re a business leader burning the candle at both ends or someone simply trying to reclaim restful sleep, this episode unpacks the science and psychology behind sleep and how to improve it.

In addition, they talk about:

✅ The trifecta Morgan uses to help clients: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTI), behavior shifts, and mindfulness

✅ How racing thoughts at 3 a.m. are biologically wired to feel catastrophic (and what to do about them)

✅ How “constructive worry” sessions help offload anxiety before bed

✅ The danger of social jet lag and how inconsistent wake-up times sabotage your circadian rhythm

…and much more.

BIOS

Morgan Adams is a holistic sleep coach and former insomniac who helps ambitious professionals overcome sleeplessness without the use of sleep aids. She is a Certified Sleep Science Coach, has completed Brief Behavior Therapy for Insomnia (BBTI) certification, and holds a Health Coach Certification. Morgan helps clients rewire their habits and mindset to get the restorative sleep they need.

Matt Zaun is an award-winning speaker and strategic storytelling expert who shows leaders how to inspire action and drive results through the power of story. He’s the author of The StoryBank, a book that teaches people how to leverage strategic storytelling to build a vibrant company culture, boost sales, strengthen marketing, and become dynamic public speakers.

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

 

Matt Zaun 

Morgan, welcome to the Stories of Attraction podcast.

 

Morgan Adams 

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Matt. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here.

 

Matt Zaun 

This conversation is a little ironic because I am currently sleep deprived right now and I'm having a sleep and insomnia coach on.

 

Morgan Adams 

So thank you for being here.

 

Matt Zaun 

We can dissect my problems later on in this episode, but I want to start with some of the things that you currently do for your clients.

So when you meet with someone that is having trouble, whether it be with insomnia or their willingness to understand the importance of sleep.

do with and are are people know? Thank you. What are some of the things that you do to help them navigate that terrain?

 

Morgan Adams 

Yeah. So it all starts with a consultation because I meet with everybody who works with me before we get started to see if there's a fit, you know, to see if there's a mutual fit and also to make sure that I'm screening them appropriately because they're like 80 different sleep disorders and I'm only trained to work with insomnia.

So I need to make sure that they don't have a sleep disorder that I don't address. And if they do, then I refer them to the appropriate practitioner.

But assuming we meet, we have a consultation and they're the right fit, they're either having insomnia or they just want to optimize their sleep.

Sometimes people come to me and they're like, so, so sleepers, but they want to like really up their game.

So what we basically have, I basically work with sort of three different buckets or I call it the trifecta.

So, um, the methodologies I use are number one rooted in CBTI, which is cognitive behavior. And then finally, the last piece of that is mindfulness.

So that's kind of how I work. Those are the main components that I work with. We also touch on things, depending on the client's level of doing this, but like nutrition, movement, because a lot of clients who come to me, they're already really health conscious, and they already have like a super dialed in diet, and they're really in shape, they're very fit.

Then some people don't. So we need to kind of work on things from all ends. So in some ways, you know, I'm really.

I myself a holistic sleep coach because I'm looking at so many various different aspects of my client's life.

 

Matt Zaun

Wow, there's a lot to unpack with what you said.

 

Morgan Adams 

is.

 

Matt Zaun 

So when someone says the word insomnia, I feel like that word paints pictures in people's minds. And I firmly believe there's going to be a ton of people listening to this episode, and they're going to have different pictures.

 

Morgan Adams 

So can you paint the picture first and give us your definition or maybe the clinical definition of what insomnia actually is?

Yeah, let's go with the clinical definition. So insomnia is having trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up too early and also feeling unsatisfied with your sleep at least three nights a week for three months or more to be considered chronic insomnia.

Now, there's something called acute insomnia, which is basically the same criteria, but for less than three months. And the given person going through life is.

They're going to have one episode of acute insomnia during their life. Those tend to be kind of predicated by like a death or divorce or job loss or, you know, a health diagnosis.

But chronic is really where, you know, people are typically seeking out help over three months. I've worked with women who unfortunately have had insomnia for 20 years.

I don't recommend that people let the insomnia go on for that long. So nipping it in the bud before it becomes chronic is actually a really good idea because people get into really, they get into habits that perpetuate their insomnia, ironically.

So, yeah, that's basically the definition of insomnia from the clinical side. All right, so when you first started sharing the definition, I'm chuckling because you're saying three nights a week for three months, and I'm immediately thinking, that's me.

So it's interesting.

 

Matt Zaun 

And I'm just speaking for me personally. I think this might help people listening. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that could relate to this.

I don't have trouble falling asleep. I could fall asleep within 10 minutes. I have difficulty staying asleep. I'll wake up at 3 a.m.

almost every morning. Sometimes I can get back to sleep. Sometimes I cannot. So what version of insomnia would that be?

Is there a certain definition for someone that just wakes up in the middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep?

 

Morgan Adams 

Yeah, technically that's called sleep maintenance insomnia. And honestly, that is like the most common sleep problem that I come across.

Most of my clients don't have a ton of trouble falling asleep. But the staying asleep is really a beast.

1. And it's through all ages, genders, socioeconomic, it's very, very prevalent. So it's the most common that I see.

 

Matt Zaun 

you. Thank Wow. All right. So we'll talk a little bit more about my troubles a little bit later in this conversation.

But I do want to talk and I want to touch on the behaviors. You mentioned behaviors towards sleep. Is this like the mindset on how people view sleep?

 

Morgan Adams 

Or what do you mean by behaviors? Okay. So some of the behaviors that actually perpetuate insomnia seem a little counterintuitive.

So I'll give you an example. Someone who has insomnia may go to bed super early because they want to increase their chances of actually sleeping.

So an example might be someone goes to bed at nine because they feel like, quote, they should. I might catch some sleep.

Well, one of the issues is that is that they're not actually sleepy at nine o'clock. So they go to bed at nine o'clock and they're still kind of awake and alert and not ready for sleep.

So what happened? They lie there tossing and turning for a couple hours, which just perpetuates that insomnia. On the other end is when people have insomnia, they will often hit the snooze button quite often in the morning and repeatedly hit it.

And then what's happening is in that time period that the snooze button is going off, they're not having restorative sleep.

It's just this really light, fragmented sleep. And then, you know, another bit, I mean, there's so many behaviors, but like another behavior is using caffeine throughout the whole day.

Not just like your regular one to two cups of coffee in the morning, but like literally relying on that to hold themselves together all day.

So really by the time they go to sleep, they're still kind of wired from the caffeine and hence the cycle continues.

Or one more example, and I'll stop, but alcohol. A lot of people are using alcohol as a sleep aid.

So they are like, okay. I'm wired, I'm like wired and tired, I'm gonna have some alcohol, you know, in the evening to wind me down, and they fall asleep, and they end up having worse sleep quality.

And so then they rely on the caffeine, and then that's a whole cycle. So there are lots of sneaky little behaviors that creep up on us when we have insomnia.

And that's why, like working with somebody like a coach is good, because I typically have people track their behaviors on a spreadsheet.

And so what we can do is we can look at the behaviors and look at their sleep and really, really dissect, okay, this behavior didn't do so well for your sleep.

 

Matt Zaun

But on the other hand, this one actually seemed to be pretty sleep promoting. Yeah, so you mentioned so many things that are just gold.

So all right, so let's touch on the alcohol piece. So for me personally, at the time of this recording, I'm 170 days with no alcohol.

 

Morgan Adams 

Wow. It's been a game changer.

 

Matt Zaun 

Congrats.

 

Morgan Adams 

Yeah, it has been an absolute game changer.

 

Matt Zaun 

Now, what's interesting for me on how it changed for me. So I injured my lower back a couple years ago, and to overcompensate for the pain, I started walking funny because I was like shifting, because it hurt when I walked, it hurt when I sat, hurt when I sat, like everything I did, it hurt.

So I started shifting my body, and the pain sort of transferred to my left hip while I sleep on my side.

And what I noticed was, especially when I would drink in the evening, in the middle of the night, my inflammation in my left hip, like shot up in the middle of the night, and it kept me up because of the pain.

So I'd roll over, I'd take ibuprofen or whatever, which is not good to take every single night, and I know that.

So nixing the alcohol really, my inflammation plummeted. So that was helpful. I'm still trying to tackle the caffeine piece.

So today, I've had two energy drinks, and I had a... A tonic and espresso, which is one of my favorite like coffee-ish drinks.

Highly recommended if you're a coffee drinker.

 

Morgan Adams 

That's new to me. Yeah, there's a local coffee shop right down the street from me.

 

Matt Zaun 

do a tonic and espresso. So I stopped caffeine around 11 a.m. and I'm going to try to go to bed around 10 p.m.

tonight. So did I cut off caffeine in enough time for it not to still be in my body? That's a good question.

 

Morgan Adams 

And it's kind of a hard one to answer because it depends on your body's ability to clear caffeine. So there's a specific gene in our body, which is escaping me, but it determines how fast you clear caffeine.

Some people are slow metabolizers, some are fast. So you can, you know, maybe if you've had 23andMe done, you can look in to see if you have that gene.

The way that I approach caffeine is I sort of go on the assumption that somebody is a slower, clearer of caffeine.

And so I'm a little bit more conservative in my recommendations. on when to cut it off. So in general, I'm sort of saying to people, cut your caffeine off around midday, 12 o'clock, you know, ish would be a probably a good time.

But, you know, I also want to know, like, how many grams of caffeine your energy drinks and your espresso tonic, which sounds amazing to have in them.

But there's a there's a an app that I recently learned about, you may want to try just to just, you know, for grins.

It's called high coffee, high, like high coffee. I'm pretty sure that that's what it's called. And inside of it, you can log the different drinks you have, the time that you want to go to bed.

And it'll get to give you more of like an estimation of like, are you cleared? Again, it doesn't know your genetics, but it's, you know, something better than nothing.

So yeah, that's sort of my thought. would be sort of my guidance to you on caffeine consumption. I'm already looking at the app right now.

 

Matt Zaun 

Was I right? High coffee. Okay.

 

Morgan Adams 

For a second, I was going to say high caffeine, but that doesn't make sense. So, okay. I'm glad you found it.

 

Matt Zaun 

Interesting. All right. Thanks for sharing that. appreciate the behavior piece. How about the circadian rhythm? All right. So circadian rhythm for someone that wakes up, because you had mentioned that a lot of people struggle with this.

For people that do wake up in the wee hours of the morning and they want to get up, right?

So I want to be doing, I want to be achieving, I want to be knocking goals off my to-do list, right?

So when I wake up and I have difficulty getting back to sleep, I want to get up. I want to start working.

Obviously, that's going to throw up my circadian rhythm, correct?

 

Morgan Adams 

Correct. Yeah. This is something that I see with a lot of high-achieving people like you. I mean, it's so predominant.

They, like, for example, they wake up at four. They And their normal wake up time would be six, but they're like up two hours early and they, they stew in bed.

And they go, I might as well just get up and start working. So they get up fire on their computer, turn on the coffee.

And their brain gets stimulated by all of this, the lights, the coffee, the working. And essentially, what is happening is you're sort of training your body and brain to continue to wake up early because your body is so smart, it starts to pick up on these cues.

And so you're more likely to have those wake ups more consistently if you're telling your body, hey, it's time to work.

So as hard as it is for the high, high achiever out there, what I really recommend is not starting your work day before it's supposed to begin, despite how much you may want to.

That's a really good point.

 

Matt Zaun 

So I want to, I want to talk about, so you mentioned an app already. I want to talk about maybe some other quick things, not that there's a silver bullet, but quick things people could do to...

want about, so you To have a positive effect on their sleep. So one in particular that I'm thinking of, I don't know what your thoughts are on this.

That's why I'm bringing it up. I just started this three weeks ago. It has helped, like a noticeable difference.

The intake strips, so the magnets on my nose, so it's making my nostrils a little bit bigger. And I legitimately feel more oxygen to my brain.

So even if I get not ideal sleep, I'm not waking up as groggy. I'm not waking up as – there's sometimes like I feel almost like a tired headache, which I haven't felt that in the last three weeks, regardless of the amount of sleep that I'm getting.

So anything that you would recommend like that, any tricks, if you will, or any – not gizmos, or maybe gizmos, but anything that you'd recommend, like if you do this, you will see an immediate improvement.

So I typically – I've got three recommendations, and none of them are gizmos.

 

Morgan Adams 

Not to knock gizmos, but I really, really like to start with things that are accessible to everyone that you don't necessarily have to go out and buy.

So number one, and I'm really fascinated by that thing you just described, because I've heard of people doing it.

I've never had a client tell me about doing it, but it totally makes sense because we want to breathe through our nose.

And a lot of people are using mouth tape, you know, and in the beginning of my career, I was like telling everyone about mouth tape.

And I shouldn't have been, honestly, because what they've discovered recently is that for people who have untreated sleep apnea, the mouth tape can actually hurt you.

Because if you can't breathe through your nose and you've, you know, shut off your mouth, what are you going to do?

So, you know, I'm a big proponent of people getting their sleep breathing tested, especially once they hit, you know, 40, 50 would be a good benchmark.

And it's super easy to do now. Because Because since COVID happened, they have figured out a way to home test people, because during COVID, all the sleep labs were closed.

So they started shipping out the sleep studies to people. So, you know, just as a side note, I don't work with people with sleep apnea.

I have coaches in my, you know, periphery who I can help you get connected to, but sleep apnea is a huge, huge issue.

And I won't tangent anymore, but maybe that's a separate podcast for you. Okay, so my three things. Okay, so number one is to get morning sunlight as soon as you can when you wake up.

And this goes back to circadian rhythm, this really strengthens your circadian rhythm and tells your body and brain, hey, the morning has started, we're going to begin these processes that are supposed to be done during the day.

Now we all we often talk about the sunrise, and that's a really important time to get out and be exposed to the natural light, you want to remember.

Not to wear your sunglasses during this time, because the sunglasses block that light from hitting your retina. So how it works is the light hits your retina, that sends a signal to your suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is your circadian pacemaker.

And from there, there's this beautiful cascade of neurotransmitters and hormones that happen. So your cortisol gets boosted in a good way.

Any type of melatonin that's residual from the night before gets shut down. And then this is something that a lot of people haven't talked about yet, but I like to bring this up, because not everybody can get out at sunrise.

So right after sunrise, there's a period called UVA rise. And that is when the sun is at 10 to 30 degree angle above the horizon.

And it's typically about, it depends on the season, but it usually lasts for an hour or so in the morning.

So where I live here in Virginia, I have an app that tells me it's happening from like a seven...

And during that period of time is really important because when the light hits your eyes, you have these amino acids that get converted into neurotransmitters.

So tryptophan, tyrosine get converted to serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine, which are your motivation and happiness neurotransmitters. It also helps regulate thyroid hormone and appetite regulation.

So this is a really prime time for people to get out as well if they can't make it for sunrise because not everyone is an early bird.

So you do have the chance to get that beautiful morning sunlight if you sleep in past the sunrise. My second tip is to anchor your wake-up time and have a wake-up time that you can reasonably stick to every day that ends in day, which is seven days a week.

So So you're looking at probably about a half hour of variation. So keeping that regularity is important to keep your circadian rhythm really, really robust.

And there has been a lot more research in the past couple of years pointing to the fact that we need sleep consistency, sleep-wake consistency for health.

So for so many years, we've been told that, okay, everyone needs eight hours of sleep. And that's actually a myth.

Not everyone needs eight hours. What's really more important than the number of hours logged is the consistency of our sleep-wake cycle.

So what typically happens in a lot of my client scenarios is that somebody's waking up at 6 a.m., Monday through Friday.

And then on the weekend, they sleep until 9. So that's a three-hour gap. That's a three-hour differential. And what can typically happen there is you're giving yourself...

Social jet lag, if you're doing that on the weekend for like two days straight. So Sunday nights are really difficult.

And then Monday mornings are a real drag. That's personally my theory on why people hate Mondays is because they're suffering from social jet lag from their inconsistent sleep-wake cycles.

And then the third tip, this is often free, not always simple, but it's exercise. And so exercise helps with sleep because it helps, again, our circadian rhythm.

It helps boost our sleep drive, and it helps lower cortisol. So there have been multiple studies showing that sleep helps with sleep depth, especially as you get older, helps with quality, time to fall asleep.

So, and you don't have to go hard. This is like 30 minutes of moderate exercise, maybe four days a week would be sufficient for most people.

So those are all, and notice that all of those things that I mentioned all relate back to the circadian rhythm.

All So when we're first starting out on our journey to get better sleep, I'm always looking at the circadian rhythm because good sleep is actually an output of a strong circadian rhythm.

So it's not necessarily start with a supplement. Like I don't really start with the gadgets and supplements. I typically will add those later on because I want to dial in on the really basic things that people have access to.

 

Matt Zaun 

Wow. There's so many things that you said.

 

Morgan Adams 

a long window.

 

Matt Zaun 

That was awesome. So there were so many things that you said I've never heard of before.

 

Morgan Adams 

Social jet lag, UVA rise, right?

 

Matt Zaun 

All these different things. So I want to break a few of these things down. So morning sunlight, any recommendations on timing?

So everyone is pressed for time. So I'm trying to think of this from a practical perspective. I wake up in the morning, I go out, I'm on my porch or I go into my, so where the sun is, where it rises, where I am, I'd go on to my front porch and then into my front yard.

Am I there for 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes? What's an optimal time?

 

Morgan Adams 

Yeah, great question. I would say probably, I mean, as long as you have the ability to do it, like, if you've only got five minutes, stay five minutes.

I aim for 10 minutes in the morning. I actually take my dogs for a walk around the neighborhood for 10 minutes shortly after sunrise.

Um, the main thing is you don't want to wear your sunglasses. I see multiple people in my neighborhood wearing sunglasses, even when it's cloudy.

And they're doing, really, you're doing yourself a disservice by wearing the sunglasses. Now, if you are driving into work, and there's a glare, by all means, put on your sunglasses for the benefit of safety.

But just walking around your neighborhood, you don't really need those. Um, so timing, yeah, 10 minutes more is better, but don't like let perfect be the enemy of good in that scenario.

Um, one other trick that you could practice is on your way into work, you can actually crack your window because that actually lets

Because the light particles, I guess, they bend. So you're getting some of that benefit with a cracked window. Even a screened-in porch will help.

So that's sort of the guideline on light.

 

Matt Zaun 

So you mentioned anchor wake-up time, which I'm guessing would mean trying to wake up the same time every single day, regardless of if it's the weekend.

Would you anchor your sunlight time? Meaning, if you say 10 minutes, is it bad if you get 15 minutes one day and two minutes the next day?

Should you be anchoring that 10 minutes?

 

Morgan Adams 

Or it's just whatever you can get on that particular day? Whatever you can get in. I mean, my guidance is get as much as you can every day.

But it doesn't have to be the consistent amount every day. Because every day can be different for people. And we have different things that come up that are unexpected.

And we have to adjust. So really just do what you can. Just do your best. So in addition to the morning sunlight, I'm also a big proponent of people getting outside for like small light, like home light snacks during the day.

Because actually, our melatonin is produced and we have intracellular melatonin that gets boosted by daylight. So that's more of that's more of the mitochondria that's anti-cancer, you know, anti-inflammatory.

So, you know, aiming for this can be a stretch, but like, I don't come close to this every day, but like getting like 60 minutes of sun exposure a day, be it from like sunrise to sunset, because the rays that are happening around sunset tend to be the red, kind of orange hues, and those are very calming for your nervous system.

So like all the light is beneficial. So, you know, the way that I kind of do this in my own life, you know, and I'm an entrepreneur, I work.

Like a lot of your audience probably does is I just look at my calendar during the day and I just, where can I take 10 minutes and walk?

And I can probably log in about 50 minutes during the day. And I also will take my lunch outside.

I'll just like take my lunch, put on a lawn chair and sit there and that counts as my life.

So I'm just really strategic about it. Um, cause we are, we are typically, most of us are inside too much.

 

Matt Zaun 

Understood. Yeah, sure.

 

Morgan Adams

So you also mentioned exercise.

 

Matt Zaun

Is there a benefit? Uh, let's say running, walking or running versus lifting weights, or is it just exercise in general?

It all counts.

 

Morgan Adams 

My guidance would be, you know, try to make it moderate. Um, sometimes I'll have clients say, well, I got my exercise today.

I'm like, oh, great. What did you, what did you do? What And they've counted their exercise as like a casual dog walk.

And that's awesome, like, you know, to be congratulated for because they're getting their sunlight and their movement and their steps.

But that's not really considered, quote, exercise in that way of it's not really doing that much to boost your sleep drive, because it's not intense enough.

There have been some recent studies, though, showing that people who are older, like 60 plus, may have more benefits from strength training as their activity of choice.

But I don't really like to split hairs on this because movement is movement, like exercise is exercise. So whatever, you know, floats your boat, like, go ahead and do that.

I personally like to do kind of a split of cardio and strength work just for my own, you know, I find it to be a balanced kind of workout plan.

But, you know, walking, running, lifting, you know, tennis, spinning class, whatever. It's all good. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that.

 

Matt Zaun 

So you also talked or you touched on mindfulness, and I feel like that word is thrown around a lot.

How do you mean in regard to sleep? Like, what would mindfulness be pertaining to sleep? It's not the attitude towards it, right?

 

Morgan Adams 

It can be. Yeah, it can, it can mean a lot of different things. And the work that I do, quite often, we're looking at shifting someone's sleep mindset.

So for example, someone may come to me, and they have this like, kind of story that they've told themselves their whole lives, often predicated on what they were told as a child.

Susie's a terrible sleeper. Matt's just not a good sleeper, you know, and so sometimes those labels stick with us.

And when we have struggles with our sleep, we lean on, lean on, lean on that. And so I like to help people kind of like change their story about sleep.

So if you are like, I had a client the other day, or the other month. She used a bad word about her sleep a lot.

I won't say it because this may be a clean podcast, but she would like use expletives about her sleep.

And I just stopped her and I said, how did you just take a moment and like, think about how you just described your sleep?

And she's like, yeah, that was really inflammatory, wasn't it? And what I was trying to get her to do was to not become like Susie Sunshine and go like, I'm the best sleeper ever.

Because like, that's false positivity. Like, we don't want to go in that direction. But like, let's meet in the realm of neutrality about our sleep.

So something neutral might be, you know, I'm having struggles with my sleep right now, but I'm doing X, Y, and Z to help regulate it and bring it back because I'm confident I can get good sleep again.

That's a lot more positive. So that's just like one example of how we're changing mindset. Sometimes people like to do things like meditation, like meditation can be good for some people.

Some people, you know, really balk at it. And I don't force that on anybody. don't force anybody. force that on anybody.

But I offer it as a tool because some people have never really experienced it. And I think it's a good thing for most people to at least delve into and dabble around in to see if it's working for them.

So, yeah, many mindset things. Well, I appreciate you mentioned the story dynamic.

 

Matt Zaun 

know, it's interesting. So in my early 20s, I kid you not, I had a sales manager tell me, I'll sleep when I'm dead, but always belittle sleep.

The individuals on the team would literally brag about the lack of sleep they were getting because they were focused on selling or reading sales books.

And that was the culture that was created, that sleep deprivation was a badge of honor. So it's interesting how some people view sleep from a story perspective.

So speaking of story, I do want to share different things with you regarding myself personally. And maybe you can walk me through what I'm doing right, room for improvement as well.

And we can kind of just, you can talk me through. So through how I can make this better. I think this is going to be super helpful to people listening because I know that I'm not the only one in the world that deals with this.

So last night, I had a late meeting. So I had a meeting that went from 9 p.m. to it wrapped up around 10.30 p.m.

And then by the time I let my dog out and I got my normal bedtime routine, I end up getting into bed around 10 p.m.

I wake up at 3 a.m. in the morning, and I cannot get back to sleep. My mind is racing.

I'm actually really frustrated about something in my life right now. So I keep thinking about it and thinking about it, and then I lay there and lay there, and then I'm checking my phone, and it's 4 a.m.

and then 5 a.m. And I'm thinking, I might as well just get up. So I get up at 5 a.m.

I start my morning routine. So basically four hours of sleep. It's not no sleep, but I would love to get seven hours of sleep.

And just that threw my day off. I had an incredibly important meeting earlier in the morning. This is a meeting that I had been anticipating now.

I think we scheduled this meeting in July. Like this is a meeting like that was incredibly important. I'm fumbling and bumbling through it, right?

Because I'm sleep deprived. My caffeine hasn't kicked in to the fullest extent yet. So it wasn't my best work.

And I know that. And I'm frustrated. So if someone wakes up at 3 a.m. and they're thinking about something, whether it's a work project or whether it is maybe a family situation or whatever is causing their mind to race, is there anything that you would recommend to turn the mind off?

 

Morgan Adams 

Yeah, it's such an incredibly common issue. So I think kind of going through your scenario. Thank you for that transparency about what was going on.

think the number one, well, there are a few things, but really the low-hanging fruit, and this is hard for a lot of people, is do not check the time when you wake up in the middle of the night.

Don't even have your phone in your bedroom because it's so tempting. I usually have people put their phone in the next room so that if they have an alarm on their phone, they hear it, but just seeing the time, Matt, is so triggering because you end up doing this mental math countdown, and it just makes you more and more frustrated.

The more times you check your clock, you're like, oh, my God, now I've got three hours, now I've got two.

It's just like it makes your life miserable, and I've done this before, and it was like never again. So that would be like really the first thing that I would say is just nix the clock watching.

It sounds like when you had your meeting, it sounds like you went. And correct me if I'm wrong, you might have gone just right from your meeting to bed.

 

Matt Zaun 

There was a little bit of a night routine, brushing teeth, making sure the dishwasher was set. So there were different things I do before I go to sleep.

So it took me about maybe 20, 30 minutes until my body was physically under the sheets.

 

Morgan Adams 

Yeah, I think what I would recommend in that scenario, if you're working that late, giving yourself a little bit of a longer time to actually wind down.

So you're doing those things that you need to do. But I would probably do a brain dump right after your meeting.

And make sure the whole time you're doing things late at night, making sure that your light is dim. Because any kind of bright light is going to activate your body and reduce your melatonin.

So keeping your surroundings as dark as humanly possible without risking safety is really good at night. But like taking, you know, 10, 15 minutes to kind of do.

And like, let your mind kind of wind down, like do the brain dump, kind of like you mentioned something was bothering you, write about that.

Maybe doing some breath work or like a short meditation to just kind of like get things calm, I think is a great way to like, decompress, get your brain in a little bit less of an active state before bed, because it sounds like you just kind of went from one thing to another, without like that kind of like, that buffer.

And then when you wake up at 3am, you know, I have actually written a complete free guide on this.

It's called awake again at 3am your guide to why you're waking up and what to do about it. And I know that I know that you downloaded it because you showed it to me earlier.

But it's a great guide, because it gives some strategies on why we're waking up. And I think, you know, we kind of know why you were waking up is probably you had unresolved things that were going on, and your brain was still processing them.

during sleep. But really, like, it's just very wild how our brains work at midnight, there's something called mind after midnight.

And they've done these studies showing that we have more catastrophic thoughts when we wake up in the middle of the night.

So remind like when you wake up at that time, reminding yourself that like, brain, you know, like I sometimes tell people talk to yourself in third person, like Matt, you know, your brain right now isn't like firing on all cylinders.

And the things that you worry about, you need to kind of remind yourself that they're not solvable problems at three in the morning.

And that, you know, I have a practice that I recommend for people is, it's a brain dump. It's called constructive worry.

It's like a whole, you know, practice for people to do. Like usually after dinner, it's just writing their problems down and then writing down the next possible solution.

So if you make that a practice, like every evening, it's actually training your brain. to work out the problems during the daylight hours versus night.

So if you establish that practice, what you can tell yourself at 3 in the morning is, I've done my worry time for the day, I'll resume it tomorrow.

Because literally nothing can be done about these problems at this time of night. When people become very agitated in bed at 3 a.m., another strategy that I recommend is something called stimulus control.

And that's coming from the CBTI that I mentioned earlier. And it's basically removing yourself from a scenario, a.k.a. your bedroom, that's stressing you out.

So it's getting out of bed, going to another room, and doing something like calm and relaxing in dim light until you feel like you're a little bit more calm and you're ready to go back into bed.

So we don't want you to be in a scenario where you're like tossing and turning in bed. So that's a lot.

 

Matt Zaun 

What time do you recommend the world?

 

Morgan Adams 

Worrying.

 

Matt Zaun 

So if I were like, I'm envisioning like a shelf, like I'm putting a can on the shelf, almost like I'm going to pull the can off and that's the worry.

And then I'm going to put it back on the shelf when I go to sleep. What, what time would I, whether it's journaling, like whatever the case may be, what would be the best worry time that wouldn't throw off a circadian rhythm?

Yeah.

 

Morgan Adams 

So the best time is a few hours before bed. You want to leave a little bit of buffer room between bed and this activity.

Most of my clients tend to do this after dinner, because you're probably familiar with the habit stacking type of concept.

 

Matt Zaun 

So essentially, it's a new habit for you.

 

Morgan Adams 

So it's stacking, finishing dinner, getting the dishes put away. Once I do the dishes, put them away, I do my worry, my constructive brain, constructive worry exercise.

So then you've got this kind of prompt that's built in. So that, that tends to be the best. time of night for most of my clients to do this.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, appreciate you mentioning the habit stacking. So it's funny you mentioned that. So Atomic Habits by James Clear, that's the book that I've read multiple times this year that talks about the habit.

I highly recommend anyone listening that has not read Atomic Habits, highly recommend it. So I know this is going to sound super fundamental, but I'm just trying to think of this practically in my own life.

So when you say the phone in another room, are you insinuating that I should be purchasing like an old school alarm clock and using that to wake up?

And if so, how do I keep myself from glancing at the time on that alarm clock?

 

Morgan Adams 

Yeah, good questions. I like the detail of those. So I would say there are a couple of different ways you could do this.

You could put your phone in the next room and have the alarm be on your phone so that it's loud enough to wake you up if you depend on the alarm.

The other alternative is to have like an old fashioned alarm clock, but turned around, and then across the room.

So that you it's just like, I would I would shy away from having something that is a has a clock, or the ability to see time right next to your bed stand.

Some people will put a towel over it or whatever. But like, I don't like I'm too tempted if it's an arm's reach, I'm going to grab it.

I'm going to, you know, use my arms to like turn it around and look. So you can reduce that temptation by having it across the room.

 

Matt Zaun

So in the event that I need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, so I tend to use my my phone as the flashlight.

So clearly, I'd be I'd be seeing the time, right? Would you would you recommend someone having like, like a dim smaller flashlight to just kind of navigate their way to the bathroom?

 

Morgan Adams 

Yeah, I have a little red light flashlight that's on my bedside that I grab. Let's If I need to use the restroom at night.

So just have that right handy next to you. So that you can see, because sometimes people will, they'll go into the bathroom, they'll turn the bright light on.

And that's just like this big blast of light, which, you know, gets their brain a little bit too fired up.

So anything you can do to kind of reduce those lights in transit is good. Okay.

 

Matt Zaun 

Interesting. All right. So some other things I'm going to throw out to you. So I tend to keep my bedroom temperature around 65-ish degrees.

So I know that it's optimal temperature. I sleep with a weighted blanket. So that's been a little bit helpful.

Pitch black, like as black as it can possibly be. The only reason why I would even need a flashlight is because I have three little kids and sometimes they'll randomly throw stuff on the ground and I don't want to trip on it.

 

Morgan Adams 

Yeah.

 

Matt Zaun 

And people that are listening, obviously they can't see this, but here are my sleep supplements that you can see right here.

So I'm not going to list all these out because I don't want people to think, oh, I should go buy this.

But as you can see here, it's a bunch, right? So I'm taking a ton of supplements to try to stay asleep.

Do you think that there's been a tolerance built with these that could be affecting my sleep in a negative way?

 

Morgan Adams 

Possibly. I'm not like a super big proponent of sleep supplements. In terms of like their efficacy, it seems to be a little bit spotty.

There's not a lot of really solid data about them. Some have data that are a little bit stronger than others.

But it may be interesting for you if you're willing to try it is to just go without supplements or reduce them or, you know, one at a time might be a really good idea.

Because you held up a pretty big basket that had a few. So like maybe one at a time. Because sometimes.

Sometimes if you're taking multiple supplements like that, you don't know what's actually moving the needle, if any of them are.

So that's just a thought. Yeah, that's a good point.

 

Matt Zaun

When I travel, I try to stay on East Coast time. So I'm an hour outside Philadelphia, and I do a lot of West Coast speaking engagements.

So California, Washington State, Oregon. I mean, every time I'm in one of those states, I'll stay on East Coast time.

Do you think that that's a good idea to try to keep my circadian rhythm intact as much as it can be?

 

Morgan Adams 

Yeah, think if you're traveling only that distance for a short period of time, it's just better to stay on your home time.

Yeah.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, it's interesting because for whatever reason, I sleep pretty good when I travel. I don't know if it's the psychology of I'm leaving my problems behind.

I don't know what it is. And I tend to sleep in Courtyard by Marriott because I really like that hotel chain, and I'm so used to that bed.

And what do you think that might be, that when I travel, I don't... I don't have as much difficulty sleeping.

 

Morgan Adams 

You would think that the opposite would be true, no? Well, sometimes, I think you're spot on. think sometimes you have a reprieve from your problems, and that helps your brain calm down a little bit more, and you might be getting better sleep.

A lot of times when people travel, they report back that they have a difficult first night, and that's actually a real thing called the first night effect.

It's just we're wired that way because we have to make sure our environment is safe to sleep in. So the first night you're somewhere new, your brain is sort of like, I'm in a new place.

Am I safe? And that's why people often don't sleep well the first night. But it sounds like with the Courtyard Marriott, they've replicated the environment pretty well enough so that it seems like not a new place to you maybe every time.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, mean, you should see, if you thought my sleep basket was intriguing, you should see my bag, right? So I have everything.

Just because of the sheer volume of travel, from having a specific clip that I can make sure the curtains stay a certain way, so it's blacked out, to a sound machine, to like, I do everything I possibly can to make sure that the hotel room is optimal for my sleep, because I want to be energetic the next day, right?

Because I have a sleep engagement the next day, I want to offer tremendous value to my clients. So it is interesting to me, though, and I need to step back and try to process through that, that why, when I travel, I'm getting good sleep, right?

So I need to think about that more. So speaking of thinking, you've given us a lot to think about today.

I really appreciate this conversation. There are so many things that you said. I've never heard it quite in those terms before.

There's three things in particular, three bullet points that I'm going to remember as takeaways. So the first thing that you said was you listed out a three-legged stool of sleep, essentially.

said behaviors towards sleep, circadian rhythm, and mindfulness. I think... I you mentioning that just speaks to the complexities of getting good sleep.

So I really appreciate you mentioning that. The second point was the morning was really important. You said morning sunlight, as soon as you get up, you recommended around 10 minutes.

And then also don't wear sunglasses. I think that was really important. You mentioned anchor wake-up time, really important. And then also that exercise piece.

I tend to exercise in the morning. I don't know if that's good or bad. But I really appreciate those three things that you laid out.

And then the third and final piece that I've never heard before, but it makes sense. And it's interesting because this is the Stories with Traction podcast.

You mentioned the story you're told your whole life regarding sleep is paramount. And I had to think about, in my early 20s, this one sales manager really demeaning sleep and how that might still be having an effect on me today, decades later.

So I really appreciate everything that you shared. If someone wants to get more information on what you do, they want to read.

Shout out to you for your services. Where's the best place they can go to get that information?

 

Morgan Adams 

You can just hop on my website, morganadamswellness.com. I've got that free guide about 3 a.m. wake-ups and a link to schedule a consultation.

So definitely, you know, don't be a stranger.

 

Matt Zaun 

Perfect. And I highly recommend downloading that. I'm literally looking through it right now. It's got a lot of gold in there.

So highly recommend downloading that. I will include links in the show notes. People could just click and go from there.

Thank you again, Morgan. Really appreciate your time today.

 

Morgan Adams 

You're very welcome.