We’ve all experience it. We toss and turn all night, and then walk around in a haze all day. Having a good day is hard enough even after a good night sleep.

When we wake up worried, anxious, frustrated or even angry it’s a good indicator that something is wrong in our lives. The first thing we think about, and then dwell on, can either ruin or refresh our day.

King Solomon, known as the wisest man in the world, said: He that blesses his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him – Proverbs 27:14. Solomon’s exhortation indicates how important sleep is, and the manner in which we wake up. Like the title says bad sleep equals bad day.

Quality of sleep can improve how we feel when we awake.

A recent study by researchers at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago, demonstrated that the more REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep we get the more likely we are to wake up feeling positive and upbeat.

Their study measured overnight mood and depression change in 30 men and 30 women and revealed that increased REM sleep contributes significantly toward reducing negative mood overnight.

However if we continue to wake up anxious and worried every morning than getting enough sleep may not be your problem.

Three main problems and their solutions:

Lack of purpose: When we lack purpose, or direction for our lives, than waking up may be the last thing we want to do. It’s easy to wake up listless and depressed when we have no goals for our lives.

The solution is to begin to set goals and spend time discovering our lives purpose. There are many ways to do this – develop a deeper spiritual life, work with others in a common cause, setting regular goals, join a club, volunteer etc.

Check out our free personal vision setting and goal setting guides.

Improper sleeping conditions: It’s amazing how we sleep some 33% of our life away, but still buy the cheapest bed, bedding and blinds we can find. Lets be honest, its hard to get a good night sleep in a crappy uncomfortable bed in a noisy light filled room.

Our health and the things we consume can also interfere – consuming too much alcohol and caffeine, breaks in our normal sleep patterns, medical conditions, noisy buildings etc.

To help try journaling your sleeping habits and how you feel after you wake up. You can also visit a doctor familiar with sleep disorders, pertinent websites, or quitting the things you know are interfering with your sleep, like going to bed late!

Check out our free Sleep Journaling Sheets

Unresolved issues: Problems that continue to drag on, and things we know we should be doing but aren’t, can cause even the strongest of us to wake up in a bad mood. I can find no studies on this, but I believe this is to be the main culprit to our problems.

Unresolved issues rarely go away, no matter how hard you ignore them. So get off your bed, or butt, and start to make plans to deal with these issues and remove them from the unresolved “things to do” tray, and add them to the “Things I finally resolved” tray.

So beware of procrastination and stop putting off the things that you know you need to do.