There is very little as important to your overall health as getting enough good sleep. It affects your mental state, your emotional state, your physical health, and pretty much every other aspect of your life.
Note, however, that I didn’t just say enough sleep… I said enough good sleep. Plenty of people get eight hours of sleep each night… some even get ten or more. A lot of those same people, however, still wake up tired (and stressed!).
The difference between bad, indifferent, and good sleep is huge. Normal, indifferent sleep is enough to get by, as long as you get plenty. Bad sleep, on the other hand, can leave you more tired than when you started.
Good sleep can leave you feeling well rested, and just give you a positive feeling all around. Better quality sleep also means that you need less overall sleep, meaning you can do great with less sleep… sometimes a lot less sleep!
So, on to the list:
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Have A Bed Time
When you set a standard bed time, a time that you go to bed each night, your body starts to adjust, getting ready for bed when it knows that time is coming up. You’ll start to get tired at the same time, you’ll fall asleep faster and easier, and your body can adjust all its rhythms to match, meaning it doesn’t have to waste time and energy, using them instead for deeper rest and better rejuvenation.
Having a set time that you get up every day is also a good idea, though your body can generally handle different wake up times for set days (ie waking up later on the weekend).
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Have A Bed Routine
It also helps to establish a routine for other things, setting up a routine that tells your subconscious and your body that it’s time to start shutting down and getting ready for sleep. Your body and subconscious then work together to tell your conscious mind that it’s time to slow down by making you feel sleepy.
That means that you are going to sleep in a natural sort of way, rather than trying to force yourself. The result is that your body and mind shut down together, rather than fighting each other, making the whole process smoother and easier.
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Avoid Having Large Meals Near Bed Time
When you have a large meal near bed time, it means that your body is going to be working on digesting that food while you sleep, keeping it from spending its resources on other things, like healing and rejuvenation. It also may mean that other processes from the digestion disturb your sleep, like indigestion or even having to get up to go to the bathroom.
A small snack, on the other hand, especially if it’s the right kind of snack, can actually aid your sleep and the healing that goes on during it. One good example is a protein shake containing casein (a protein that comes from milk… not sure if it triggers lactose intolerance or not). Casein is a protein that breaks down slowly, providing fuel for repairing muscles for much of your sleep.
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Avoid Going To Bed Long Before You Go To Sleep
Another relatively common practice that causes inferior sleep is going to bed and doing something other than sleeping, such as reading or watching television. When you do these things, you’re training your subconscious mind to recognize that place (bed) as a place where more input occurs, so that it needs to pay attention. When you use it only for sleep you are telling your subconscious that bed is a place for rest and relaxation… so when you head there, that’s what it immediately starts implementing.
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Listen To Your Body
Your body communicates with you all the time, every day… and you’ll sleep much better if you listen to it. If you are itchy before bed, take care of it… the same goes for hunger, feeling dirty, or anything else. When you take care of such things beforebed time, then they aren’t constantly taking part of your subconscious mind’s attention away from the important business that it generally takes care of during slumber.
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Get At Least Moderate Exercise Each Day
You are set up so that it is intended that you get mentally tired and physically tired in proportion… when you work your mind all day without working your body, it throws you out of sync, meaning that one part of you is telling your subconscious that it’s time to rest while another part is communicating that it has plenty of energy, and is ready to do more work. This imbalance causes your subconscious to try to find something in the middle, resulting in too much rest for part of you and not enough for another.
Physical exercise, even when it is just moderate, balances out the equation for the growing proportion of the population that has a job that doesn’t require physical exertion. More exertion brings more physical tiredness (and thus less imbalance), so generally the harder you work, the better you’ll feel and sleep.
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Get The Right Lighting
Lighting plays a much larger role in your sleep than you might think… if you have the right amount of light (not too little or too much) it can tell your body, and your subconscious, that it is time to go to sleep. This is especially true if you can find a light that can slowly dim, simulating sunset (here’s an example).
The same holds true for waking up, as well… the right amount of light (which, as you may have guessed, is more than for going to sleep) can help you to wake up in a much better way. Lights that simulate sunrise work even better… and most lights that do one (sunset or sunrise) do the other as well.
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Get Up When You Wake Up
One final suggestion, from my own personal experience… I almost always feel better, more rested, and have a better outlook on the day when I roll out of bed as soon as I wake up. When I lay there, even for a few moments, it makes it causes my body and subconscious to relax back into sleepy mode. That conflicts with my mind’s need to get up and do whatever needs doing that day.
The exception of course, is when you actively do something like, oh, I don’t know, snuggling your wife.
You can find all sorts of people who tell you that you need to get your eight hours of sleep, but most of them ignore the quality. If you get good sleep, you may only need six hours… if you sleep poorly, you may still not feel rested after twelve hours.
The quality of your sleep is much more under your control than most people think… reclaim your rest starting today!
PS – It occurred to me this morning that I should make clear that I’ve never used the techniques from yesterday’s articles… they come from a summarization of many studies I’ve read, my own observations, and what I’ve noticed brings my wife and I closer together (or where the lack keeps us from being as close as we could be). That doesn’t mean it’s a guess… just that I’ve never had occasion to do it.
