Imagine that tomorrow, you have a very important meeting. A meeting which could make or break your career. Which situation below would you be most likely to follow?
Mindset 1:
When you go to bed, your body relaxes, your mind lets go of the day and you slowly but surely drift off to the land of nod. You awake the next day revitalised and full of energy.
Or:
Mindset 2:
When you get into bed, your body tenses, your mind fills with thoughts, so many issues that need sorting, anxiety kicks in, you start to doubt if you will ever get to sleep. You close your eyes, but your mind chatters away. “Will you shut up!” you think to yourself, “I need to be up at 7am tomorrow for an important meeting!” But your mind continues to chatter away. Then you get a horrible sinking feeling, “am I really prepared for that meeting?” Three hours later, full of stress and worry about the meeting, you fall asleep due to shear exhaustion. You awake the next day sleepy, grumpy and anxious.
The examples above reflect the same person, with the same circumstances but with one small but major difference, mindset. A change in mindset decides the difference between a chronic insomniac and natural deep sleeper.
No matter how long you’ve been suffering with insomnia or problems with your sleep, you can go from a mindset 2 to a mindset 1. I’m living proof of that!
How can you do it. You need to do nothing. The difference between the two mindsets is that mindset 1 is focused on absolutely nothing. It sounds simple and it is simple, but when you’ve gotten into that habit using your brain while lying in bed things can easily spiral out of control. But getting to mindset 1 is just a matter of training your mind to blank out and allow sleep to happen naturally.
In this article I’ll explain exactly how this can be achieved. But don’t expect your mind to give up its privileges without a struggle! It will take a bit of will power, you are breaking a habit after all, but once it’s broken having a calm mind in bed will just be part of your everyday sleep routine.
Having the right mindset for sleep will not only improve the quality of your sleep, it will also make you calmer and less stressed throughout the day. Taking control of your mindset is not only useful for sleep, but it’s a powerful skill for life in general.
Keep a calm mind – emotional down time
Getting to sleep needs be a relaxing experience, not a stressful one. To sleep, your mind needs to slow your body and dampen its thought processes.
Can’t sleep? Don’t worry.
Worrying about not sleeping causes your mind to fill with thoughts and your heartbeat to race, stopping you from sleeping, stressing you even more and so on. It’s a vicious cycle.
There’s just one thing you need to do to break this cycle, stop worrying. It’s easier said than done but the worrying could be exactly what’s causing your sleep problems in the first place.
Some find reverse psychology helps them get to sleep. By actually trying to stay awake, they remove the stress associated with not being able to get to sleep and end up falling sound asleep. This probably sounds like the exact polar opposite of what you’re trying to achieve and completely unnatural but give it a go, it may just work. 
Shun the clock!
One of the main causes of stress and anxiety, watching the clock.
Sleep time should be used for one activity, sleep. But when you’ve got the time lit up in big red numbers, it’s hard not to notice how long you’ve been awake for and how many hours you’ve got left until you need to wake up.
By looking at the time every 5 minutes or so, you’re associating your bed with that very activity, stressing you out, keeping your mind active and preventing you from sleeping.
What’s more, it’s easy to misinterpret the amount of sleep you’ve actually had. Some people swear by the fact they’ve had no sleep all night, when they actually have. If you’re woken when you’re in light sleep, you’ll likely to deny the fact you were ever asleep at all.
Besides, there’s no need to have a lit up clock in the bedroom. Why would you want to look at the time anyway? It’s not going to change anything.
If you need a clock for an alarm, consider using a mobile phone or a clock which doesn’t constantly emit light. Or just turn it away from you.
Just by having the time lit up in another colour other than red can make sleep a much more soothing and relaxing. I noticed a huge change I switched from a red backlit clock to a blue backlit clock. Time no longer seemed a threat, it felt much more positive. Kind of futuristic. Now I use one with a green backlight which is only lit up with the press of a button which works even better.
Keep a relaxed mind – calm your thoughts
Even if you’re completely calm and relaxed, it’s so easy for you mind to keep chattering on. It goes through what’s happened in the day, relationships, career, anything it can get its hands on. Heres how to just let go and forget the day.
Put the day and your life on standby
It’s a habit that’s very easy to slip into, but don’t let your bedtime turn into a strategical life planning session.
When you’re in bed, you need to be in another world. A completely separate environment. The day is left behind in the distance and all you have to look forward to is deep refreshing sleep.
Your brain needs to calm down before sleeping and solving problems keeps it awake. What’s more, you start disassociating bedtime with sleep and more with high mental thinking. Problem solving and planning your days are very important activities, so make time for them in the day.
There’s merit to the saying "I’ll sleep on it" used when someone waits overnight to make an important decision. A study has shown people are able to solve problems 40% quicker if the time they have to solve the problem includes an overnight rest. But this is down to the processes of sleep, not conscious thinking. So if you’ve got a problem you want to sleep on, write it down on a piece of paper, go to bed, forget about it, and pick up the thought process in the morning.
Transfer your thoughts from your mind to paper
If you find it hard to let go of an unsolved problem or find it hard to store away all your thoughts for the morning, consider keeping a journal.
The idea is that you document all your current feelings, thoughts, problems and solutions just before you go to bed. By doing this you can completely let go of them, safe in the knowledge that they’re safely stored and ready to access for when you wake up.
It’s like putting a computer in hibernate mode. It saves all the processes to main memory and powers down with the all processes ready to be picked up for when it’s next turned on.
You can also create a task list in your journal, or multiple ones for different activities. Break everything down. What do you need to do to complete the tasks? Squeeze every last drop of thought from your mind. Once you’re done, you can be confident you’ve taken all the time you need to plan the day and resolve any problems.
Your journal can be anything, from a scruffy notepad to a highly organised project folder. As long as it can hold your thoughts and feels till the morning, anything will do the job. It can even be computer based. I use a mixture of Microsoft Outlook and The Journal for mine, but any word processor will do the job.
The more you write down the more you unload your brain allowing it to relax deeply and drift off to sleep.
For a complete foolproof solution, consider keeping a dictaphone or a notepad and pen by your bed to just in case you want to add anything when you’re in bed. Once you’ve received a thought just write it down, let it go and pick it up the next morning.
Right attitude for sleep – negative to positive
Your own conscious thoughts and attitudes have a direct impact on your sleep. These thoughts can either have hugely positive or a hugely negative impact on your sleep.
Negative thoughts include:
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I’ll never be able to sleep again
-
My sleep is broken
-
I have to sleep throughout the day just to
get the sleep I need -
I have to sleep [incorrect] hours
-
Sleep is something I dread
If these sound familiar, imagine how much better your sleep would be if your mind transformed them into these thoughts:
-
My sleep is deep and refreshing
-
Sleep is relaxing and nourishing experience
-
I get all the sleep I need each and every night
-
I wake up fresh and alert, ready to start the day
The first set of thoughts is the mindset of an insomniac, while the second set is the mindset of a deep sleeper. If you can shift your mindset away from that of an insomniac, you’re taking an important step.
So how the heck can you do that? It’s not enough just standing in front of the mirror each and every morning repeating them to yourself. You need to actually believe it, both consciously and subconsciously. Achieve this, and you’ll have your brand new mindset.
This website can help with the conscious part of your mind, the subconscious may still be kicking up a fuss. Thankfully there’s a range of products available to help. Including hypnosis, brainwaves therapy and subliminal messaging. I’m currently reviewing a handful of these for a future series, so stay tuned!
Keep an empty mind
The goal of a sleep mindset is to take steps to ensure a quiet mind. If you can have empty mind, you’ve achieved the ultimate.
With an empty mind, there are no thoughts. The is no worry. Your mind is in the perfect state to drift off to the land of nod.
Meditation is the art of clearing your mind of any thoughts. The idea is to concentrate on nothing but your breathing to keep your mind as empty as possible. It’s a very relaxing experience but one that can be quite challenging to begin with. If you persevere with it though, you’ll have a skill for life.
* * *
Your mindset can be the difference between lying in bed awake and lying in bed in a deep sleep. Your mind likes to stick to a routine so don’t expect any major changes straight way. The time you spend adjusting your mindset for sleep will be very much worth the effort in the long run.
