What do you do at bedtime? If you’re like many who struggle to fall asleep fast or stay asleep, you try to finish up some last-minute tasks that you didn’t have time to complete during the day, and climb into bed in hopes of sleep – but why does it take so long? No, it’s not just the way you are, and there’s nothing wrong with you.
It’s because your actions are actually telling your brain NOT to go to sleep.
Let me explain.
When you lie in bed awake, your mind is probably active. That’s because most of us are go-go-go all day long, which doesn’t give the mind a chance to process. That means lying in bed is the first opportunity the mind has to recount the events of the day and prepare for the next. When that happens, the brain starts to associate the bed with the place to go for thinking. Pretty soon the ideas start flowing!
That makes it nearly impossible to fall asleep fast, unless you are so sleep deprived that you physically can’t stay awake any longer.
Why couldn’t all this thinking happen during the day when it was a challenge not to nod off? The simple answer is because you weren’t in your thinking spot: bed.
So, how can you reverse the pattern and fall asleep fast? It’s actually quite simple, but does take some patience and dedication. Are you up for it?
I knew you were the kind of person who wouldn’t shy away from a challenge.
First, you have to tell your brain that the bed is NOT the thinking spot. The best way to do this is to provide a different thinking spot. Set up a chair next to the bed, or use your chair at your desk. Sit there for a few minutes every night before getting into bed. It may delay bedtime by a few minutes, but it’s way better than lying in bed awake, perpetuating the problem.
Once you’re really tired, get into bed. If your mind wakes up again, go back to the chair. This reinforces that the bed is not for thinking, and the chair is for thinking. Go back and forth as many times as it takes to fall asleep fast, but don’t lie in bed awake for more than 10 minutes while you’re retraining your brain (or ever).
Once you fall asleep within 10 minutes (which WILL eventually happen if you don’t lie in bed awake for more than 10 minutes) you are training your brain to fall asleep within 10 minutes every single time you get into bed.
Woah, miracle!! That, and you learned how to communicate with your brain.
Now, make sure to continue this process every single night, because if you go back to lying in bed awake, it’s like telling your brain you were just kidding and the bed really is the place to think.
So, to recap the process to retrain your brain to fall asleep fast:
- Set up a “thinking spot” or chair next to your bed.
- Sit in that chair every night before bed, until you get really tired.
- Lie in bed.
- If your mind wakes up when you get in bed, go right back to the chair until you get really tired.
- If sleep doesn’t come within 10 minutes, go right back to the chair until you get really tired.
- Repeat this process until you fall asleep within 10 minutes.
- Keep it up every single night!
For some people, this is all they need to get their sleep back on track. For others, it’s a little more in depth, but I promise I have yet to see anything so bad that it can’t be helped. In other words, there’s still hope, even if this process is not enough.
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