Before implementing any tools, you should first address your relationship with sleep.
If you constantly tell yourself, “I can’t sleep,” your brain starts believing it. So, the first step is to shift your relationship with sleep. Your relationship with sleep should be positive, not a nightly occurrence that you dread.
Matthew Walker highlights how stress and negative sleep associations keep people awake.
Therefore, instead of dreading bedtime, see it as a time to recharge, an opportunity to feel better tomorrow.
If you treat sleep like a chore, it’ll always feel like one.
But speak about your sleep positively and kindly, and your sleep will reciprocate the kindness.
Just trust that your body wants to sleep. That’s the first step.
Now we can look into the habits that allow for quality sleep and positive sleep experiences:
– Get sunlight in the mornings.
Just go outside ASAP in the mornings for 10-15 minutes, even if it cloudy. Simply put, this resets your body’s circadian rhythm and tells your body that its day time so you prepare to be alert and ready for the day.
– Exercise in the day.
It boosts the quality of your sleep.
– Don’t drink caffeine first thing in the morning. And avoid caffeine after noon.
Caffeine makes you alert and awake. And if you are alert and awake you are not sleeping, and if you are sleeping, you are not sleeping well enough.
– Eat earlier in the evening.
It allows your body to digest before having to worry about sleep. If you eat to close to bed time your body has to split its energy into digesting and recovering (and other sleep job), so you don’t get the full benefits of either. So just aim to give your body 3-4 hours to digest before going to bed.
– Get rid of screens before bed.
Your brain needs to start shutting down before bed and screens mess with that. Just leave your phone downstairs or far away from your room.
– Have a routine.
Something that allows you to wind down.
Let me talk about my routine.
My routine (when I usually follow it) consists of me leaving my phone downstairs at 8:30pm-ish.
Then I go upstairs, brush my teeth.
I might go just chat with my dad for a couple minutes before saying goodnight.
Then I will go into my room, make sure the clothes I will wear the following day are ready and, if it’s a school day, will make sure everything I need in my bag is prepared.
Then I will go onto write a To-Do list for the following day.
And finally I will read my book for however long I can be bothered to (usually I see stars after about 2 pages).
Then by the end of that routine its probably been 30-60 minutes and that’s effective because after point from where I have put my phone away, the routine keeps me busy enough to not miss my phone whilst also allowing me to wind down.
Then there’s the golden rule.
– The golden rule:
The golden rule for falling asleep nice and easily every night is by going to bed every night at the same time.
This is important because your body clock (circadian rhythm) quickly picks up the message on when bed time is and when it needs to prepare to sleep.
If you also couple this by waking up at the same time every morning, you are golden. This is because your body loves rhythm so when you stay in sync sleep begins to happen with ease.
To review, to fall asleep faster, start by fixing your associations with sleep. Stop seeing it as something you’re worried about.
Then, in the mornings get outside ASAP for sunlight.
Move your body during the day
Also, avoid caffeine after noon.
Eat dinner earlier so your body can digest before bed.
And, ditch screens before sleep and instead have a simple wind down routine that keeps you off your phone.
Then, most importantly, go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.
Some extra things you can do:
– Brain dumping.
If you’re someone that usually has a lot on their mind before you actually fall asleep, something I sued to do is brain dumping.
To do it you just need to get a piece of paper.
Write brain in the middle, circle it, and just start drawing arrows from the circle, writing absolutely anything that may be on your mind.
It can be a piece of homework, a girl, breakfast, something you are stressed about, literally anything.
Just get it all down on the piece of paper and keep doing this until your brain feels like its emptied.
This will hopefully at least just help clear your head and allow your brain to peacefully shut off.
– NSDR
Non sleep deep rest is like a type of meditation.
The protocol essentially consists of some breathing techniques and a sort of body scan where you are instructed to put you attention on different parts of your body.
It sounds odd, but if you try it, you will see why it is effective.
Andrew Huberman popularised this. There are NSDR practices on the internet where Andrew Huberman guides the protocol.
If you implement just some of the habit I’ve talked about here, you should have much more of a pleasant experience falling asleep.
If you don’t know what to start with, personally, I would recommend starting with the golden rule of going to bed at the same time every night.
Couple this with ditching your phone and brain dumping or reading instead.
I wish you success.
Parsa.