Stop tossing and start sleeping

Sleeping is challenging.

I'm not talking about achieving deep sleep the whole night, but falling asleep is challenging.

And if you feel the same, I bet you suffer from:

• Anxiety before going to bed
• Stress while tossing and turning in bed while seeing the time passing and your get-up time coming closer.

I have experienced these problems in the past. However, I was able to fix them by understanding what was happening and making small changes.

Basics of sleeping

I'm not a big fan of fancy strategies. But the basics are good enough for most people in many areas. Sleeping is one of them.

We can classify the basics this way:

• Comfort: Bed, pillow, etc.
• Environment: Noise and Light.
• Mind: Physical and mental relaxation.

Comfort

We won't spend time talking about comfort today. Not because it's not important but because most people have it covered. If you can lie on your bed for 8 hours, then you are good enough.

Environment

Not much to say either. Set your environment properly to sleep. Turn off the lights and TV, and silence your phone.

And of course… If you must get up at a specific time, "set the environment" at least 8 hours before. This means: "Stop whatever you are doing and go to sleep."

Mind

We will stop here.

The mind is the key. You prepare yourself for sleeping. And this is what changed everything for me:

It is an active action. You have to put your intention there.

You can't wait to fall asleep while stimulating your mind, internally or externally.

You need to make an effort to relax your body and calm your mind. Doesn't it sound weird?

Once you can purposefully relax, you are done.

Reasons for not falling asleep

We know now that our minds are the most influential cause in most cases.

If you don't believe me, do the following exercise for the next week:

Pay attention to your thoughts while rolling around on the bed when you can't sleep.

For sure, you have:

• Problems at work
• Imaginary conversations (my favorite)
• Preoccupations
• Upcoming event
• Regrets (what if)

So, you can be in bed with everything turned off, but it will not work if your mind is racing and your body is tense.

Fortunately, there are some techniques that you can use.

Techniques to fall asleep

These techniques will calm you down and put you to sleep.

Once you've turned everything off and are in bed, try the following:

1. Relax your body: Consciously… Begin with your feet, move to your legs, and continue moving up. Feel your muscles relaxing and the weight of your body sinking into the mattress. Move up to your stomach, chest, back, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, neck, muscles of your face, everything. Dedicate some time to each part. Your full scan may take about 2 or 3 minutes. If you want some help the first few times, check out this Body Scan video. Then you will be able to do it on your own.
   
2. Relax your mind: There is a fact: you can't stop thinking. So, you must gently force your mind to think of something different than your worries and anxieties. You can do this by:

• Focusing on your breath
• Counting
• Repeating a mantra.
• Designing a relaxing picture and immersing yourself there.

Tips from personal experience:

• What helps me here is to focus on my breath and count.
• And a weird one: narrate my day in English (not my native language). You won't believe it, but I always fall asleep before getting to lunchtime.

Start trying it, and you will see differences. Be consistent for some nights to see what happens. General advice encourages you to do it for 6 weeks. But I saw differences from day 1.

You may not need anything else if you practice the above techniques for a while. But in case you want, some other habits help.

Other helpers

These fall in the "general advice" category. I tried some of them but didn't feel a big difference:

1. Watch what you eat at night. Some people can't sleep after having a heavy meal. The same goes for coffee and alcohol.
2. Watch the activities you do at night. I HAVE DIFFICULTIES when I go to the gym or play any sports. Maybe it's the cortisol or adrenaline, but I can't sleep immediately, even tired.
3. Prepare your environment in advance. Stop staring at screens and reduce the lights about 30 minutes before bed. You are priming your mind to what is coming. I don't feel differences doing this, but if I watch something shocking on TV, an important match, or work until late, I feel it is more difficult to calm my mind.
4. Going to sleep and get up every day at the same time. This is also a general recommendation that I don't relate to. I can vary my bedtime by 1 hour, and I'm fine.
5. Having a sleep routine. This one is useful for me when I wake up at night. If I can't sleep quickly, I go to the bathroom, wash my face, and return to bed.

Summary

There are many techniques and information about sleeping. But in my opinion, I feel they are always the same. I tried them without success.

If you are like me, you will love to invest in different ways of relaxing your body and mind, and you will find a before and after in your sleep.

Adapt these techniques to fit your habits best, and you will undoubtedly see improvements.

That's all for today. I hope you enjoyed it.

Try this, and let me know.