You can learn how to sleep better by changing two common attitudes in your brain.
Of course this sounds simple, but most of us find it challenging to change our thoughts, feelings and behavior. I can only say, give it a try. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Most people suffering from chronic primary insomnia have developed these attitudes over months… possibly years or decades. If you want to learn how to sleep better by using your own brain, pay attention!
- One attitude is that their day is never finished.
- The other attitude is that they must beat the future at its own game.
Now this might sound a bit strange, so here’s how it works:
- Good sleepers tend to let go of the day before they fall asleep.
- Insomniacs tend to go over everything that happened during the day, usually in an effort to make things right or figure things out, or solve problems.
Is there something wrong with doing this?
Nope, not at all. What’s wrong is performing this mental exercise while you’re trying to sleep. If you move this exercise to an earlier time slot, you could see a big difference in your insomnia. I’ll show you hot to do this shortly, but for now let’s continue with the other mental attitude.
- Good sleepers tend to wait for the next day to actually arrive before they start living it.
- Insomniacs tend to think about everything they must do and all the things that might happen the next day so they can be better prepared when it comes.
Again, there is nothing wrong with this at all. It can be a productive thing to do, but you must move it to an earlier time.
If you want to learn how to sleep better and cure your insomnia permanently, you will pay attention to these two common thought patterns and put some deliberate effort into changing them.
Here are some ideas:
- Keep a special journal for changing these two mental habits. It can be a spiral-bound notebook or a file on your computer. It can be combined with your sleep diary so everything is in one place. Or you can keep them separate, it doesn’t really matter. The main thing is that you USE it to show yourself how to sleep better.
- Also, you need an appointment book or some way of scheduling in time during the day to mull over things. See the article on the cure for worry for more details.
- At least one to two hours before you go to bed, write one page on everything that happened during the day. It doesn’t have to be detailed. Quick notes will be fine.
- If there were some events that cause you concern or worry, put a checkmark next to them and make an appointment with yourself to think about these things or the issues they bring up during the next 1-3 days. Make sure you write this appointment into your schedule and follow up on it.
- Next, write another page of notes on what’s coming up the next day. This is a very distinct and special sort of to-do list. It’s not so much what you need to do, or what is coming up, as how you feel about it. Self-awareness is an important key in discovering how to sleep better.
- Again, make checkmarks on items that concern or worry you.
- On another page, write down some notes on what worries you about your day coming up. Pick out the most pressing concern and then make an appointment within the next few days to think about this.
- Make it a real appointment, just as you did previously, and follow up with it, as I explained in the cure-for-worry article.
You might think that making an appointment to think about something after it has taken place is useless. It is far from useless – it is very valuable. Why?
Because the cure for insomnia – and the worrying thoughts that keep you awake at night – is not in the details of every event that happens in your life.
It’s the big picture that keeps you awake.
It’s also the big picture that shows you how to sleep better.
And the big picture includes all the mental tendencies and underlying attitudes that cause you to toss and turn when you’d rather be sleeping peacefully.
So if you want to know how to sleep better, sure, you need to do all the sleep hygiene activities we’ve discussed in all the insomnia articles on this site.
But you also need to work on the big picture – changing mental attitudes and thought patterns that keep you awake.
How does it feel to finish your day?
As a person who either… 1) couldn’t let go of the day, or 2) never waited for the next day to arrive before worrying about it… I have now turned my attitude completely around. When I get into bed, I literally “call it a day.” My thoughts go like this:
Does it work every single night? Do I sleep like a baby with no tossing and turning, no waking up, no repeating thoughts or worries, ever and forever?
Nope. Now and then I have a restless night, just like everyone else. But it’s no big deal. And best of all…
I DON’T have chronic insomnia anymore–period! I HAVE learned how to sleep better using these two simple mental concepts.
I also highly recommend using relaxation therapy techniques to complete the mental attitude shift. Pay special attention to the letting-go techniques in this article.