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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
Today's episode of the Dad Tired Podcast is brought to you by Samaritan Ministries. How are you feeling, man, about your family's healthcare needs? I know that is a thing that most of us as dads are constantly thinking about, or we have it in the back of our mind. It's one of the most important decisions we'll make as dads and as somebody who tries to lead our family.
It's why we highly encourage you to consider Samaritan Ministries. It's a biblical, affordable way to pay your. Family's medical bills and it has everything you should be looking for in a healthcare sharing ministry. Samaritan members glorify God above all else when they care for one another through prayer and encouragement.
It's a way to align your healthcare with your faith and through direct member to member sharing. You'll always know who you're helping and who's helping you. Let me tell you how it works. There are no networks, so when a medical need arises, you choose the healthcare provider that's right for you. You have a say in the type of treatment that you receive.
I. You can then send your medical bills to Samaritan Ministries. They'll notify fellow members to pray for you and then to send money directly to you to help pay for those bills. And when another member has a medical need, you will do the same for them. If you are interested in learning more about this Biblical solution to healthcare and this amazing community, you can go to samaritan ministries.org/dad tired.
Again, that's Samaritan Ministries. Dot org slash dad tired.
Have you ever been on vacation and, uh, maybe you're sitting at a hotel or, uh, you're at a resort or at the beach or somewhere just, you know, relaxing. Maybe you're watching your I was, I think about my vacation. Sometimes I'll like be sitting there and I'll watch my kids swimming and, uh, I'm sitting with my wife next to me.
Maybe we're eating some food and you're having a drink or. You know, you're just in a good spot mentally. I don't know if vacation is ever fully relaxing, even as a, uh, as a dad, you're always kind of stressed, but you know, you're just in a good mental spot. You feel like you're in a good mental spot and, uh, you're sitting there and you're kind of just, you're numbed out for lack of better words, and you're just enjoying all the moments and you're fully relaxed and then out of nowhere.
You get some thought that just completely disrupts your mental, you know, stability, your mental, like, I'm trying to think of the word, zen ness, you know, where you're just like, it just completely removes you out of that moment of feeling complete peace and relaxation and maybe the. Thought is something about, I don't know, bills or maybe it's, uh, the realities of work or getting back home or friction in your relationship with your spouse or sin in your life, or there's just something that just kind of comes out of nowhere.
I. And completely disrupts your peace in that moment. I've had that happen. I'm imagining there are many of you who can relate to that. I wanna spend the next few weeks talking about what does it look like for a man to have healthy traits, to be a healthy man holistically. Like what are some traits. A holistically healthy Christian man who's trying to lead his family well, and so I wanna spend the next few weeks kind of tackling some ones that come to mind.
This is not an exhaustive list by any means. Clearly there are all kinds of things that would make a man healthy, and there are all kinds of nuances. But when I'm just generally thinking about what does it look like to be a healthy man. These are some things that have come to mind from experience, from working with guys from my own personal life and just trying to figure out what does it mean for us practically to be healthy men.
Last week we talked about discipleship and our churches talk about discipleship. We talk about that in the church world a lot. Like what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? And we use these terms kind of. Vaguely. And so, uh, I try to put some specifics language, some specific language to what does it mean to actually be disciple?
How do you know where you're at on your discipleship journey? And um, how do you grow, like how do you define it and all that stuff. And so oftentimes on the Dad Tired podcast, we will talk about being healthy men. I also want to give some like. Concrete examples and terminology to what it looks like to be a healthy man.
Like, how do you know you're a healthy man? What does that actually mean? I want to tackle some of those qualities that a healthy man has. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts, either in the comments here on YouTube or I. In our private community, we have a totally free online community. You can go to connect.tire.com and uh, just share some things that in from your experience and what you've seen, what does it look like to be a healthy man Today, I want to tackle the qualities of silence and sleep.
Um, these are kind of foundational qualities that I think I'm convinced you need in order to be a healthy man. There's this. Verse in Psalm 62, verse one and two says, truly my soul finds rest in God. My salvation comes from him. Truly, he is my rock in my salvation. He is my fortress. I will never be shaken.
The psalmist writes there that there's this deep sense of peace that even if things, you get the idea that even if things around him kind of go array or sideways. That he will not be shaken because he finds his peace in Christ. I think there's a lot of dudes, man, I relate to this so deeply. There's a lot of guys who maybe your job is fine or not fine.
Maybe your, you think about your marriage, your bills, finances, your future, your family, your kids. And when you think about all of that, like you kind of zoom out and you kind of look at the whole context of your life. It doesn't actually bring peace. And so for many of us, we are. Scrambling to find peace in our souls, and maybe you don't even know that's what you're doing.
Yesterday I was sitting at the kitchen counter with my son and, um, I was telling him he was, he's really into playing these games with his friends online. Which dude as a, I have a 12-year-old son, it's really hard. I'm trying to navigate this world and technology and games and all this stuff, but all his friends like to play these games.
We're letting him have some time to play these games with his friends. Anyway, that's not the point of this podcast, but. He wants like a cool gaming setup so all his friends like have, you know, these monitors and keyboards and mouse pads and all this dumb stuff. I have so many thoughts about it. I'm not a gamer.
I don't like video games. I have so many thoughts on it. Most of them are not good. Anyway, my son has kind of an entrepreneurial spirit. He'll go out and he'll, he'll just go. Hit the neighborhood and knock cold call or cold knock on everybody's door and just start washing cars to make money or whatever.
And I was telling him like, there, son, there's a lot of qualities in your own life that that you got from me. Some of them are really great I think. I think God PA gave me qualities that I've passed down to you that I think are gonna be helpful for you in life. And I said there are other qualities. In you that I gave you that I think are actually gonna really be hurtful to you.
And I'll process those with you and help you try to figure those out. But, um, I think there are some very real things that I see in you that I also have that, you know, I'm convinced might. Cause you to be tripped up or will hurt you in some ways in life. So anyway, he's sitting there on the kitchen counter and he's like going through all these things that he wants for his gaming setup.
And so he's telling me, he's like, show me on Amazon. Look at this keyboard. Look at this keyboard, look at this keyboard. And I told him, I said, dude, there's nothing wrong with your current setup. Like, tell me how if you got that particular keyboard, it's gonna make your life any better. And he is like, you know, it won't, um, I don't think it's gonna make my life better.
I just really want it. And I said, son, I, I know that feeling. I know that feeling of what it's like to see, like, I want this and I'm convinced if I got this thing, my life will feel better or I'll be a little bit more satisfied. Or complete. And I said, the reality is you'll get that and your soul won't feel any more satisfied.
It won't feel any more rested, and I know that feeling, 'cause I've done it a million times in my life. I've convinced myself that there was someone or something, or some number in a bank account or whatever it is that if I had it finally I would feel rest in my soul. Now, most of the time, 99% of the time.
I am never articulating that so clearly. It's these subconscious pools in my spirit that really lead me to the idea that if I had something, my soul would be satisfied. Again, I'm not saying those words, but my actions are living that out. I. That principle out that something in my soul is not at peace and it's longing to find peace.
Now my son is looking at video gaming keyboards As a 12-year-old, he's not gonna say, my soul doesn't feel rested and, and so let me try to find some gaming keyboard that would make my soul feel rested. He's certainly not putting that, that kind of language to it. But I was trying to help him tie those dots that I'd say, I wonder if there's something subconsciously in you, something deep within you that is convinced that if you have something, your soul will feel a little bit more satisfied.
And uh, I think there are a lot of guys, the reason I'm telling you that I think there are a lot of guys like that. Like you may be look at your life kind of from, like I said, zoom out and look from afar, and you may not know. The reason you're doing the things you're doing, but I wonder if for many of us, we can't relate to that.
Psalmist in Psalm 62, my soul, or he says, listen to what he said. Truly my soul finds rest in God. And I guess for you, what would it look like if you confessed that and really believed it? That truly your soul. Would find rest in God. How would your life be different? How would it change? How would your behavior change?
And I guess if you look at some of the patterns of your life right now, I wonder if you could ask yourself the question, how many of these patterns or these behaviors are the things that I'm doing? Is a direct result of my soul, not feeling rest, kind of like sitting on that resort or that beach or whatever.
And there's just something, regardless of how nice things are or appear to be, there's something in you that's not truly at rest. I think there are a lot of men, a lot of men. Whose souls are not really at rest and you are striving at work or in a hobby or in some kind of addiction or, I mean it, it can be healthy, quote unquote healthy ways or unhealthy ways.
Maybe it just like you, you're a workaholic and everyone admires you 'cause you're a really hard worker, but something in you, you're actually driven by your soul isn't satisfied. It's not finding rest in the Lord. And so I think. A healthy man is one who actually has a deep sense of peace. His soul is well rested, and like the psalmist says, he will never be shaken.
Like regardless of a political year or a job situation, or even a marriage situation or relational situation, what your kids do or don't do, how they behave or don't behave, regardless of all the things happening around you, your soul is anchored and it truly. Finds rest. That's the marker. Or a key marker of a healthy man, and we have met these men sometimes, but in the midst of chaos, whatever the chaos may be, again, whether that's relational or in the world or whatever, their soul just seems like they have a deep sense of rest.
There's this guy named Blaze Pascal. He was a 17th century French philosopher, mathematician. He has this quote that says, all of humanity's. Problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Let me say that to you again. All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Think about that for a second. Can I put you in a room by yourself? And if I did, how would you respond? Blaze Pascal, the 17th century French philosopher and mathematician would say, all of our problems, all of your problems in life are stemming from now. I don't know if I completely agree with that from a theological perspective, but I think there is a bunch of truth buried in that statement.
That if I sat you in a room alone, how would you do? What would come to mind? Would you be able to handle what would come to mind? I guess the question that it begs itself is why? Why can't a man sit quietly in a room alone with his own thoughts? And I think the reason is maybe potentially has to do with what Saint Augustine said, which is, you have made us for yourself, oh Lord.
And our heart is restless until it finds rest in you. And I wonder if we can't sit in a room alone because our hearts would be restless. It would bring up for us, it would cause us to be face to face with our own desires, our own anxieties. Our own longing for something else that is not satisfying our soul, our own sin and shortcomings.
And I wonder what it would look like to be a man who could actually sit quietly. In a room alone with your own thoughts, let whatever wants to come up, come up. I guess I just am wondering how much more healthy of a man would we be? How many of the problems that we're currently facing would go away if we could be a man who regularly did that?
And wasn't afraid to sit in silence because we weren't afraid of the things that were gonna pop up. You're already taking the time to listen to this podcast, which I greatly appreciate, man. I know that there's a million things you could be listening to and doing right now, so the fact that you're here, I just really don't take that lightly.
I'm really grateful. But because you're here, you've already allocated some time to think about this kind of stuff. I figured we would just use our time to practice, so I'm not gonna make things weird. At least that's not my goal. I just thought, dude, for one minute. For one minute, what would it be like for you just to sit quietly?
You might be driving your car right now, or listening at work or mowing a lawn. Maybe you're walking around the house or around your neighborhood, but what would it look like for you right now? Just to sit quietly for one minute and ask yourself before you do that, and I'll, I'll jump in here with you, but let's just ask God.
Lord, would you reveal in us the things that we've been trying to push down? Are there things in us? Show me my heart, Lord. And if there's any wicked ways in me, show it to me. Reveal it to me. If there's something that I've been pushing down, some kind of fear or anxiety or sin that needs to be confessed, the things that I'm longing for that are not of you, whatever it is, God that's outside of you, that's displeasing to you, would you just bring it to my mind right now and then we'll just.
What the spirit do, what the spirit of God wants to do in the midst of that. So let's just be quiet for one minute. I know that's so awkward like on a podcast, but let's just be quiet for one minute, AF after we ask God to reveal in us what's going on deep in our souls.
Hopefully something came to mind. If you're like me, even just, I was trying to practice that with you. The first thing that came to mind was distractions. All the things that were fighting for the attention of my head space in that moment, and then some stuff popped up. Toward the end of that minute that kind of, I think my soul.
Had would probably live to be pushed down. I think it's good for us as men if we want to be healthy men. I think it's good for us to practice these deep and long moments of silence to face our own junk and wickedness our own, the things that we're prone to chase after in our brains. The fears that we have, the anxieties that we have about our future, about our relationships, about work, finances, all this stuff for the sake of being a healthy man who's at peace so that we can say, as the psalmist said, truly my soul finds rest in God.
My salvation comes from him. He is the rock and my salvation, my fortress, my the protection, my, my safe space in the midst of the chaotic, which dude, we all have chaos. If you're married, you have chaos. If you have kids, you have chaos. If you have a job, you have chaos. If you're living in the world, you have chaos all around you.
All of those things individually are chaotic and then you add 'em all up and things are like super chaotic. And so we need safe spaces, and I don't mean that like in a hippie dippy, I just need my safe space, you know what I mean? Like a. I need my soul to be anchored somewhere where it's not gonna get tossed around.
And so God is saying, I think in his scriptures, I will be your resting place. I will be the one that will give your soul rest. Jesus said that truly come to me, all you who are weary and I will give you rest. And so we need this as men who want to be healthy, we need a space in our souls that will find rest and peace fortress that cannot be shaken.
And so if we want to be healthy men, I think healthy men are men who are well rested in their souls. Does your soul have rest? If there was something that popped up in your mind that is giving your soul unrest, confess it. Confess it to God. If you've got a group of buddies, confess it to them. Maybe even this is hopefully helpful for you if you have a small group or maybe just like tell your buddies like, man, I, I'm trying to practice quiet and solitude.
I want to be a man who can sit alone in a quiet room with my own thoughts. And, uh, when I do though, this is the thing that keeps popping up. And so I just wanna confess that to you. I wanna get it outta the darkness of my brain and I wanna confess it to you. Start by confessing to God. Confess to some brothers, but let's get the things out of the darkness because dude, what would it be like to be a man who faces all that stuff in your head constantly to get it out there, to confess to God, to not suppress it with social media, with porn, with a, a drink, more alcohol, TV, news, Twitter, whatever the thing is, more work.
The football, fantasy, football, all the things that you're just trying to suppress. I just really don't want to deal with that. I don't wanna deal with the silence. I don't wanna deal with the sense, what if you took all of that numbing stuff away and you just sat in the silence and constantly, like daily for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes a day, and you just sat there and you dealt with it.
Then when the stuff of the world hits the fan in your relationships, in your marriage, in your parenting and at work, that's territory you've already been to. You've already been there in your head. You've already worked that out with the Holy Spirit and with the Lord. You've confessed that to God. You've worked that out with some buddies.
You're like constantly. Practicing just being silent and not being afraid of whatever the spirit of God wants to bring up. You let 'em bring up daily and then now you get into the the real world with all the situations and you can have these hard conversations. You can face the boss, you can have a hard conversation with your wife.
And you're more patient with your kids. This is a guy who has found Fortress, who has found salvation, whose soul found rest in God because he is able to sit in his own thoughts. He's not always trying to numb out because a guy who always numbs out when stuff hits the fan freaks out. And he's a guy that like can't handle it 'cause he's never, he hasn't been there in his own mind.
And now I'm certainly not able to deal this. Publicly with you, my wife, with you, my kids, with you, my friends. Like I'm not able to deal with any of this stuff. 'cause I haven't even worked it out in my own soul versus a healthy man who has dealt with all this stuff in his own soul. And dude, now when you talk about it, it's like, yeah, I've been, I've been here before.
Hey guys, before we continue our conversation about what it looks like to be a healthy man who is well rested, wanna tell you about a really exciting opportunity. I've been working on this program called Pod to Finish Podcast to finish, where I'm teaching students what it looks like to launch their own podcast from scratch.
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I've had these conversations with myself. I've dealt with the stuff. I haven't numbed it out. I'm a healthy man who's dealt with the silent, who sat quietly in my own thoughts. I've wrestled with the Lord in the quiet places and here I am. I'm ready to deal with whatever the world wants to throw at me. As kind of a Ps as we wrap up this part of our conversation today.
This is one of the things. My son is 12, he's about to turn 13 in four months. As he turns 14 or 13, I will be starting a years long process of a rite of passage. He knows this, we've been talking about this for years. As he enters 13, he's now taken his, his first steps onto the bridge of manhood, meaning the rite of passage is the bridge that he will go over.
And by the time he gets to the other end of that bridge, he will be confident. I am a man. I know what it takes to be a man. I can clearly define what a man is, and I am a man. I'm going out into the world. I'm being sent off from my family to represent my personal family and the family of God into the world.
And I know what that means. I know who I am. So this is, he's about to start this rite of passage process and one of the things, I've already talked to him about this, one of the things that we will practice as men, as he's starting his journey, is sitting in silence. And I told him, dude, you never sit inside.
You don't know what it's like to, you got screens and TV and YouTube and games and friends, and you have so much going on, but we're gonna practice just being able to sit as a man with your own thoughts, wrestle through some stuff, have some thoughts on what you think about your life, about your sin, about the world, about your friends.
You know, be able to be a man who sits in the quiet places, because that's so much of where the work, the soul work is done. In the quiet places. And if you are not sitting in quiet places, dude, you are not doing soul work. And so this is something that I'm gonna start in short, like 10 minute increments and we will work up until the point where he crosses over into manhood, where he will go into long, I haven't decided what it is, what the time period is, but it will be a long stint of silence where he knows how to sit in his own thoughts.
And so that's my encouragement to you as a man. Is to think through. How can you sit in silence as a man to wrestle with your own stuff, to wage war against your soul and all the demons, and all the principalities and all the things that are going on, all the flesh, everything that's gonna pull you away from Jesus.
How can you just sit in it, man, not run through it? If the path to peace is silence. You have to walk through it. I know I'm going on a little bit a DD, my, one of my, my two year old's like favorite song right now is going on a bear hunt, going on a bear hunt. It's a terribly annoying song, but one of the lines that you can't, they come up to some body of water.
We can't go over it, we can't go around it, we can't go under it. We gotta go through it. And uh, the path to peace is silence. I truly believe that it's silence, it's solitude. It's being able to sit in your own thoughts. I think this is one of the very biggest lost things in our culture, is to be able to sit in silence, in solitude, to deal with what's going on in our soul and not numb it.
And you can't go around it. You can't go over it. You want peace. There's no shortcuts. If you want peace, you gotta sit in silence. You gotta learn to deal with what's going on deep within your soul so that when you get into the real world, you come out as a man of peace who's not shaken, who stands on the rock and salvation, he has a fortress for his soul.
So that's where I wanna start with us as men, is to be men who are able to sit in silence. I wanna talk about sleep as we just wrap up. I just wanna spend like, you know, five minutes talking about sleep real quick. But before we do, I wanna share a really cool opportunity with you.
All right, let's just wrap up our time together by talking about sleep, like physical rest for your soul. And you might be thinking like, dude, this, how is this helping me as a spiritual leader of my home at all? God cares about rest. He talks about rest. In the very first pages of the scripture on the seventh day, God rested.
God wasn't like tired. And yet there was this sitting in. The work that he had done. And then he tells us, he tells his people to be people who rest. To take that commandment seriously, to not, again, it's not just always that we're tired, it's just sitting in the work that God's already done. One time we were Sabbath as a family and my son asked me, how will we get any money to take care of if we don't work, if daddy, if we don't work today?
How will we get any money to make sure we have food and a place to our house? Keep our house. And I said, we rest to let us remember that God is our provider. We're physically resting to just remember, daddy doesn't sustain this family. God does, and it's a physical. It's a discipline. It's a spiritual discipline where we remember there is a God who takes care of us and so we don't always have to hustle and work like we can just rest.
And part of that rest is soul rest, which is why I talked about sitting in peace at the beginning of this episode. And part of that rest is actual physical rest. God cares about rest. Now, there's this verse in Psalm 1 27 that says this in vain. You rise early and stay up late toiling for food to eat, for he grants sleep.
To those he loves. Now if you're listening to this, you are listening to the Dad Tired podcast and you're like, dude, so okay, God must not love me 'cause I am tired. Listen, I've gone through four babies, I've got four kids. I know what it's like to go through the newborn stages and the toddler stages and it is exhausting.
Absolutely. Physically exhausting. And uh, this does not mean that God doesn't love you. It just means you're in a season right now where sleep is hard to come by. But clearly sleep is important because God is actually equating sleep to those he loves. Like, I love you and I'm gonna let you sleep. Well, I even in Mark chapter six, verse 31, Jesus says, talking to his disciples and he says, then because so many.
People were coming and going that they did not have a chance to eat. So the scripture Mark is talking about how Jesus is with his disciples. So many people are essentially coming up to them, bothering them, for lack of better words, that they couldn't even eat the disciples and Jesus couldn't even eat.
So Jesus said to them. Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest. Jesus, God of the universe walking around in flesh and blood says, let's get some rest. And so Jesus cares about rest. Listen, I remember when I was in the thick of. Infant season and we were not sleeping at all. And you just are, dude.
You're like, you're trying to maintain, you're just trying to survive. And I remember the first night, I can't remember what baby it was, but there was, you know, we're trying to sleep and it's exhausting. You don't get a single few hours of sleep at, at a, any given time. And I remember the first night the baby slept like, I don't remember what it was like five hours in a row and I woke up feeling quite literally like a different man.
I got stuff done that day. And that's me, dude. I'm the dad. You know, like my wife's up breastfeeding, she's doing her thing, which is way more intense than whatever I'm doing at night. And, but I just remember we slept for like a good chunk of time and I woke up and just felt like I am a whole new man. I can take on the world.
Sleep is, they've done so many studies on sleep. Did you know the longest anybody's ever stayed up? It was a 17-year-old, the longest he ever stayed up. He was doing it for like a science fair project or something. I think this was in the sixties. He stayed up for 11 days straight and they studied him and they've studied other people who tried to stay up.
That's crazy by the way. Like that's insane. But they've studied, they've done all kinds of scientific research on this and uh, you're not meant to stay up that late. Like God quite literally wired our bodies that if we go too long without sleep first we go crazy and then we die. But they've done these research and bro, like you don't sleep, your brain starts going to weird places.
Hallucinating. You can't make good decisions. There was one study that talked about you start making up false memories, like you can't remember what's true, what's not true. Some things your brain starts feeding you and you just believe are true. I'm telling you all this because some of you guys are experiencing like very real relational work life hard stuff and don't dismiss the fact that you could quite literally just be physically tired.
I'm like chuckling through that 'cause it sounds so simple, but it's also. Bro, like God wired our bodies in such a way that you need sleep. I've been taking, since the start of the new year, I've been taking my sleep hygiene super serious. I've been trying to like, this is a part of me that I want, I wanna be a healthy man.
I want my soul to feel rested and I want my body to feel rested. I personally think this is the number one physical thing that I can do to make myself feel healthier. I'm gonna talk about. Like physical health and stuff in later episodes, but like where I start when I feel just out of whack is physical sleep.
What am I sleeping like? So lemme just give you a couple things. This is not new information. You can Google this, but since we're here and we're talking about it, let me just throw some things at you that should help you start to get some better sleep. Number one, they say the number one thing to do. In order to start sleeping better, it's not have kids.
I'm kidding. That's not the, the number one thing to do is create a regular sleep wake cycle. Meaning just like you do with your kids, like maybe you have a bedtime routine with your kids. They take a bath, you read them stories, you start to turn off the lights, you go through this whole routine. For my 2-year-old daughter, I hold her, I sing this song to her.
I lay her down. This was when she was back in her crib a couple months ago. She's now sleeping in a big girl bed. But we had this whole routine of like Bath Story song while I rocker layered down. They say that like for some reason we just get rid of these sleep routines as adults 'cause we think we don't need 'em.
Your body loves routines and habits and so as much as you can do the same kind of routine for yourself, again, you don't need to like rock yourself to sleep and sing yourself a song, although if that helps, that helps. Go ahead, go for it, but have some kind of routine. So for us, I actually got these smart light bulbs.
They're cheap. They were cheap on Amazon. I got them for our room and I set them on a timer so that as the sun is going down, the lights are actually dimming themselves and that's releasing melatonin in our brain is starting to let me know that night. Is coming. It's time for sleep. I'm purposely turning down all the lights in my house.
That's one of the routines. I stop looking at technology and screens, especially phones. Phones actually give you a different light. There's a different kind of light, a blue light coming from computers and phones versus like your tv. Not good to watch TV before you sleep, but it's worse to watch your phone or be on a computer, especially your phone.
So just start eliminating technology about an hour to two hours before you go to sleep. Start dimming the lights. A hot shower is actually really good before bed. There's all kinds of like. I'm trying to speed this up, but there's all kinds of research about that. I open up the windows, especially when it's cold.
Like last night I was freezing. It was so cold that I opened up the windows. I got the room super cold, took a hot shower. The lights were going dim. You stop looking at technology. Maybe you read a book. I. You spend some time in conversation with your spouse, but you're winding down your brain and you, the key here is that you do that same thing every single night.
Rhythm your body. The way that God is wired is, is that we actually love cycles. We love rhythm, so try to go to the bed, go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning. Get yourself on some kind of rhythm. If you feel like you're not sleeping well, it's probably because.
The first step is because you, you probably are out of rhythm. Make sure that you go to bed at the same time again, I know kids throw in all kinds of loops into this, but try to get yourself in bed at the same time and awake at the same time. Uh, create a sleep time routine. I, I gave you a lot of these things.
Room temperature, get the lights down and remove electronics. These are just some ways that will help you start to get. Better sleep, alcohol. You might, you know, you can have all kinds of, I know you guys denominationally are probably all over the, the spectrum on alcohol and sin and all that stuff. It's not like you might think a glass of wine or a beer helps you sleep.
It actually, research shows that it does not. It might help you go to sleep faster, but it does not help you get actually good deep sleep. And so. If you don't wanna do that, if you have a watch, a smartwatch, a lot of them will have trackers on it. I've been tracking my sleep every night to help me know my sleep patterns.
Again, I'm just taking sleep hygiene very seriously because I want to be a healthy man. I want to be a man who wakes up. Well rested because I know when I'm well rested, I love my wife better. I'm more patient. I am better as a father with my kids. I have more energy and mental stamina to study the word of God and to engage in deep conversations.
I'm not so short and irritable and groggy all the time. I wanna sleep well so that I can be the man that God has called me to be. And full circle here, I think the greatest way. To get the deepest sleep is to know that your soul is at peace. If your soul is not at peace, what we were talking about at the beginning of this episode, you will have a hard time sleeping well.
You will wake up with anxiety. You will not get consistent body rest if your soul is not at rest. And so first, to be healthy, man, you've gotta have soul. Peace, soul, rest, deal with the hard stuff in the quiet places. And then once you start to do that, develop good sleep hygiene routines so that your body gets rest at the end of all of this, we wanna be healthy men and healthy men are well.
Rested. I love you guys. Can't wait to see you next week.