Put down the world,
Get into bed,
Turn the lights off,
And allow yourself to drop down into a really nice deep sleep tonight.
Welcome to the Grounded Sleep Podcast.
I will be your guide tonight as we sail across that deep river of darkness into that beautiful dream state.
We'll cross over that dreamless sleep state.
We'll go back into the dream state and through a few cycles and then out the other side.
But before we do,
There is this cartoon I used to watch when I was a kid called Pinky and the Brain,
And they were two little mice.
And the Brain obviously was the smart one.
And he used to say,
Pinky,
Do you know what we're going to do today?
And Pinky would say,
What Brain?
And the Brain would say the same thing we do every day,
Pinky.
Try and take over the world.
Well,
If you and your little mouse friends were running around all day trying to take over the world,
Great job.
You can put that all down and let your brain go to sleep.
It's great to be ambitious,
Creative,
Excited,
Enthusiastic,
And energetic.
But without getting the proper rest,
We can't fully rise to our potential.
I want to start tonight by putting you to sleep with a story.
When I was 15,
16 years old,
My parents sent me away to ice hockey camp and you had to speak Russian to be in this camp.
And my parents are from Russia,
Belarus.
When they left,
It was still Russia,
It was all the USSR.
And when I was a little kid,
My dad,
When I was seven years old,
Maybe even younger,
Took me to an ice hockey rink.
And he was like,
David,
You will play ice hockey because you're Russian.
When something like that.
And so for pretty much every day from that time until I graduated college,
I played ice hockey and roller hockey nonstop.
Sometimes twice a day,
I was on three,
Four,
Five teams at a time.
I luckily got to be the captain of my high school varsity team,
Captain of my college roller hockey team,
Played men's travel ice hockey in college because the college team was just too much commitment.
I went out for it and they basically wanted my whole four years and I wanted to party,
Let's be honest,
And study a little bit.
Anyway,
When I was 15,
16,
My parents sent me to ice hockey camp while I begged to go.
And at this camp,
There was this one player who happened to be just incredible.
And I didn't know who he was,
But we started becoming friends.
And the first interaction we had was through ping pong.
There was a table and I had a table at home,
So I was really good.
Like I was obsessed with ping pong.
I played hours every day.
Me and my friends just were nuts for ping pong.
And so this big guy comes up and we play and I barely beat him and he gets so mad.
He walks over to my side of the table,
Picks me up.
I was a little guy,
Still am,
And he stuffed me into a garbage can.
And everyone watching just was laughing.
And I was like,
Who the hell does this guy think he is?
And this guy turned out to be Ilya Kovalchuk,
Who if you have ever watched ice hockey,
You would have seen him.
He won the Olympics for Team Russia in 2018.
He was captain of NHL teams.
He was at 18 years old,
The first pick in the draft,
And he had over a hundred million dollar contract.
Anyway,
We got to spend the whole summer playing together.
Rather,
I got to spend it playing with him and we became best friends.
He even came and stayed at my house and we just really hit it off.
In terms of skill,
He was like a Picasso on the ice and I was a traffic cone that he would skate around.
But I learned so much,
So much about hockey from him.
And my Russian was not good and his English was not existent.
The only words he knew were curse words that we taught him.
Anyway,
I noticed that he wasn't trying very hard and I thought to myself,
This kid is one of the best players in the world.
Even at 16 for his age group,
He's one of the best and here he is just kind of being a little bit lazy and I didn't get it.
And then I realized he needed to rest.
He played so hard all year that he needed some rest.
No matter who we are,
How strong we are,
How productive,
We all need rest.
So don't feel bad if you feel like you didn't produce enough or you want to keep producing.
Because to truly produce well,
You need to rest your system.
You need to rest your brain.
You need to rest your emotions.
You need to rest your heart.
You need to rest your nerves.
You need to rest your creativity.
And you need to rest all that complaining,
Jeez,
Make sure your breathing is nice and deep.
Let yourself start to melt into your bed.
No,
I can't get you hockey tickets.
Although he does play for the LA Kings and I also live in LA now.
And he used to play for the New Jersey Devils,
The hockey team if you're not familiar.
And I used to live there too,
So we've ended up in the same place a few times.
Let your body start to melt into your bed and just let go of responsibility.
Most people complain about being too tired.
Everyone's always too tired to never get enough rest.
Well,
Here's your opportunity.
Sleep is an amazing gift that existence gives us.
It's beautiful just to be able to let go and relax.
I can't tell you how many times I've had ice hockey dreams where I scored a bunch of goals and then like something went really well in my day when I woke up and like went out into the world.
And there were also so many times where I had hockey dreams where I forgot my gear or was late or I didn't score.
And literally my day,
Like something would be a bit off.
So it was like I interfaced with my future day the next day through how I played on the rink or interacted with hockey.
And yes,
I am missing two teeth in the back.
You can't really see.
So maybe there's somewhere you go in your dreams to kind of process.
Maybe it's a soccer field or a basketball court or a track or the mountains or your childhood home.
Be open to visiting one of those places and reconciling some energy or preparing for tomorrow.
Let go of trying to resolve your thoughts.
Surrender to the night.
Surrender to the moment.
And just let yourself sleep.
See you on the actually,
Yeah.
