“A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.”
Irish Proverb
“The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more.”
Wilson Mizener
I have to say that, overall, I sleep well.
Things weren’t always like that though. I often had trouble falling asleep and would twist and turn on the bed for a long time several times a week. I sometimes slept pretty badly and if I woke up in the middle of the night then it usually took me quite some time to go back to sleep.
Over the many nights and many years I have found a handful of habits that have helped me to minimize these problems and to get a good night’s rest pretty much every time.
These are 7 habits that help me to sleep better. I hope you will share yours too in the comments.
- Regular exercise. It will release inner tensions and worries. And I sleep better when not only my mind is tired but my body too.
- Keep it cool. It may at first feel comfortable to go to bed in a warm bedroom. But I have over the years found that I tend to have fewer negative or scary dreams and sleep more calmly in a cool bedroom.
- Keep the earplugs nearby. These are a life-saver if you, like me, tend to be woken up easily by noise. I use them at home if our cats are too noisy very early in the morning. I use them while traveling if I have to share a room with a snorer or if there is loud construction work being done outside my hotel at sunrise.
- No personal development reading two hours before bed. Or any other non-fiction reading that I know will give me many new ideas or get my thoughts spinning. Reading fiction or watching a TV-show tends to work a lot better for me to wind down.
I sometimes also do a bit of surfing on my smart phone. I keep the brightness of the phone low – sort of like a lightly lit page of a book – to not start feeling more awake again. - No brightly lit TV or computer in the bedroom. By separating my life like this I make a mental separation between the places where I work or watch the TV. And the place where I sleep.
This limit and association it creates in my mind makes it easier to relax and to get to into the “now-it’s time-to-sleep” mode.
Instead of feeling distracted or being tempted to work just a little bit more. - Don’t try to force going to sleep. If I’m not sleepy then I stay on the couch and keep reading to relax a bit more. I have tried forcing myself to go to sleep more times than I can remember. And it has never worked. Instead it just leads to tossing around in bed for an hour or more.
So winding down for 20 extra minutes on the couch is actually a smarter choice to help me to go to sleep faster and get more sleep. - Focus on breathing to fall asleep or to get back to sleep. If you have wound down but still have worries in your mind or thoughts spinning around as you go to bed then my most recent habit may help you out.
If I have this issue or I wake up in the middle of the night and thoughts start bouncing around in my head then I focus on just my breathing for a couple of minutes. Just on the air going in and out of my nose. Nothing more.
This clear 100% focus on my breathing makes any thoughts or worries disappear and both my body and mind calms down again. And I go to sleep very quickly.
What is your best tip for sleeping better?
Henrik Edberg is the creator of the Positivity Blog and has written weekly articles here since 2006. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Gothenburg and has been featured on Lifehacker, HuffPost and Paulo Coelho’s blog.
Comments on this entry are closed.
Great tips Henrick, Love your page! As far as sleeping – I used to have the problem of thinking thinking thinking… which kept me up at night. I began practicing meditation and mindfulness to be able to “turn off” my mind at night. This wasn’t a quick trick, but definitely helped me.
As far as tips, I like your list, here a few other strategies I use:
– I downloaded a program for my computer called f.lux. After the sun sets, my computer screen starts changing to a warmer, more yellow tone, which causes less eye strain and sends less signals to my brain to stay awake. I am able to control the warmness, I can make the screen the normal white color, to a very warm, nice yellow color, which when I put the computer at minimal brightness causes very little eye strain, and allows me to sleep shortly after using the computer. I recommend checking it out (http://download.cnet.com/f-lux/3000-2094_4-75447318.html).
– If I feel like I only have say 5 hours to sleep and need to sleep NOW but can’t, I just say ok, well if I can’t sleep right away, let me RELAX. I focus on relaxing my full body and just enjoying laying down. The idea is that even if it takes me a while to fall asleep, I will at least use the time to rest my body and enjoy relaxing. Of course, this normally leads to zzZZzZZzzzZZZZzzZZzz
– Zachary
I once attended an exercise class that taught some simple meditation techniques in a relaxation period at the end of the class. This involved a fairly complex series of muscle tensing and relaxing exercises for the whole body combined with controlled breathing, all while imaging yourself in a particularly relaxing place associated with happy memories or ideas. Over the years all I have retained of this for regular use is to hold an image in my mind that I am falling asleep lying on a sunbed in a particular holiday resort I remember. It works very quickly now and can be combined with a small focus on breathing if needed, as you suggest. And it is important not to imagine that anyhting is happening – you are just falling asleep in this real or imaginary place.
You’re right. I don’t have a tv in my bedroom and I try to exercise everyday, so that when it’s time to sleep I’m already tired. I also use hypnotic mp3 for a better sleep maybe this can help :) some relaxing ocean waves always calm down :)
Thank you for sharing Henrik!!! :)
I highly recommend a product called “Mid-Nite.” It is herbal, and you chew one pill to fall back to sleep, or to fall asleep when nothing else is working. This works almost every time. The product is not addictive.
Thanks so much! This was helpful. I have trouble staying asleep and will sometimes wake up 2 hrs after I had just fallen asleep easily. I’m a light sleeper and I think a lot and can feel anxious from waking up in the middle of the night. Good tips
Mild aroma or fragrance also helps..
Light slow classical music helps a lot..
Warm milk also helps..
My favorite is number 1, yes, exercise is the best way to guarantee a good night sleep :) Also, I’m a tea-lover and I find that drinking Green Tea past 5 or 6pm also makes it more difficult for me to sleep. The same goes for coffee.
I was going to mention cutting out coffee. detox from coffee and getting into a routine of trying to sleep at x-pm forces the body to create it’s own routine. Coffee is such a terrible thing to take too close to bedtime! I have got into a routine now of having one week coffee in the morning and that’s it. after that just water the rest of the day. Been around 5 weeks and I’m not missing caffeine.
Sometimes, a single beer right before bed can help me when it’s been a long, stressful day. Kind of an “I may not have much me time tonight, but I’m having a beer!” mentality.
One last note on exercise, I practice kung fu and when I do the course we finish at 9pm. I get home for around ten-ish. I find the 2 hour class makes me hyper and full of adrenaline. Yup, this keeps me awake at night. So exercise definitely helps but try to get it done as early in the evening as you can so that the adrenaline wears off by ten/eleven pm!
Keep smiling everyone!
Hi
I am studying in Educational Psychology phd and i like your useful information . i like researching in positive psychology and ur information help me for knowing more about that.
Thanks for your useful information .
: )
Another point that is similar to the one you made about not forcing yourself to sleep would be to realize that the body needs to be naturally tired before you hit the bed. And one of the factors influencing that is the gap between when you wake up and when you sleep. If you’re woken up late, it’s very improbable that you’ll feel sleepy just because it’s night time.
Hence, working towards finding the ideal time that you like to wake up at is important. Then focus on waking up at that time almost every day so the body would naturally feel tired at a consistent time in the night. The day you are not able to wake up at that ideal time, don’t expect to feel sleepy at the usual bed time but a little later. But make sure you get up at the same time in the morning to again start the cycle.
The tips awesome,it helps in my sleeping
Thanx Henrik,
“Don’t try to force going to sleep” this warks for me…
Forcusing on my breath, leads me to thinking about how i breath, a thought that that keeps on bouncing around in my head…
Unfortunately, I have “Restless Leg Syndrome” that comes when I want to sleep, so it doesn’t matter if I start doing these 7 habits .. it will not change anything for me :) .. thanks anyway.
Decent advice – but one thing in particular has worked well for me when I really need to make my mind switch off at night. Read the Phone Book. Or the Yellow Pages. Or maybe a bank statement. It’s helped me drift off pretty quickly, and for this I can only help Dr Alistair Teager, my Neuropsychologist.
This was really helpful. Many of these things I already do, but it gave me some good ideas as well. Focusing on breathing is one of the things I hadn’t thought of but will try tonight. I do yoga so I know how to focus on my breathing, but I never thought of it in relation to sleeping.
What an excellent article. You have narrowed it down & I have been down the same road you have. Very to the point, making it easy for someone to follow through…. Thank you