How Lack Of Sleep Affects Your Mind, Body, and Leadership

All right, story time.

Caffeine, protein, and anger.

That was what defined Kelly Segal for forty-nine years.

Four to five broken hours, up before the fire drill started at work, grabbing the phone before my feet hit the floor and reacting with whatever was burning.

That was my life.

Anxiety, shame, guilt, and I thought I could just outwork it.

Probably is why I couldn't sleep in the first place.

[laughs] I was literally on life's merry-go-round.

Too much caffeine, too much stress, too much work, too much pushing to shut my mind off to be able to sleep.

But plain and simple, I believed sleep was for people who aren't hungry enough.

Oof, saying that out loud is wild.

Where that came from was a kid who learned safety meant staying awake and staying busy and staying out of the house and staying out of harm's way of the beatings from my parents, and it worked exactly as long as it worked.

It got me off of Eight Mile.

It got me to Western Michigan University, graduated, built a company, and then it started charging interest and compounding.

It's not a way to go, my friends.

It's not a way to go.

Let me talk about my temperament.

I used to slam doors at the office.

I used to snap at people who didn't deserve it.

I can't unsee these things.

Uh, I had a short fuse, decisions at threat speed, apologies, if at all, would come later, and the second someone said, "It can't be done," my voice went up, and I was like, "Are you kidding me? Impossible only describes the degree of difficulty." The same voice that built the body and the business bulldozed everybody, including my daughter, many of my girlfriends, a few COOs.

It doesn't work.

A tired man isn't a tough man.

He's a beaten man, a threatened man, and everything looks and feels like an attack when that tank is empty.

And guess who pays the price the most? The people who are closest to you and the ones that love you the most, because they're the ones in the room, and they're in firing distance.