So here it is...the big announcement!! The first secret we will concentrate on is:
Limit yourself to thinking about only one subject as you lie down to sleep.
The other night I commented on a status that someone had posted and it became very clear that I was not the only one having a hard time falling asleep that night. The book gives an example of what happens as we try to fall asleep and our thoughts wander but I have one of my own to share.
Picture this: I get ready for bed and I go to set my alarm. I work at 1:00 tomorrow, or is it 11:00?? I decide to set the alarm for 9 just in case. Do I have bus fare?? Where is it?? Do I have correct change?? Are my work clothes ready?? What bus should I take in case there is traffic to still be at work by eleven even though I think I really do work at one?? What if I oversleep?? What if I miss the bus?
How can anyone expect to fall asleep when the thoughts continue on and on and on and..... I allow one though to lead into another and another and another and before I know it, I have been awake in bed for hours and I have gone through the day ahead about 16 times in my mind. Not the actual day ahead, but the imagined one in which I have to manuever through every catastrophe known to man before I arrive safely home the following night. The problem is that I have had days like the imagined one. We all have. Days when anything and everything can and does go wrong.
**This is the part where I remind you all how I feel about worry**
*********************************************************************************
Stray with me for a moment, will you? Worry has never paid a single one of my bills. Worry has never written a final for me or taken a test in my place. Worry has never gotten up for me when the alarm went off or made the traffic go away when I was running late to somewhere. In fact, what I have found, is that worry most often does nothing but complicate matters. More often than not, I have found that I have worried needlessly over something that never wound up happening. Worry will waste time, can make you physically ill, and worst of all, it will eat away at your happiness!! Remember this!!!
*********************************************************************************
Back to that imagined horrible day that was preventing me from falling to sleep. Since worrying about it will not change the course of the day but to make it less pleasant, I suggest we make a conscious decision to avoid worry at all costs. The best method for avoiding worry and roaming thoughts at bed time is to pick one topic to focus on. It would be in our best interest to pick something that invokes happy thoughts and feelings. Each and every one of you need to come up with your own personal thoughts. They can change from day to day (as long as tonight's thought doesn't lead to yesterday's or tomorrow's thought.). Make sure you pick something easy at first since this is going to be something new and I want you all to succeed and get better at it.
After hours of consideration, I have chosen bubbles as my thought for tonight. Don't laugh!! Blowing bubbles and chasing them around to pop them is something that I see as nothing but fun and happy and positive. I feel that if my thoughts begin to stray to a bubble floating toward my eyeball and popping as it hits my eyelashes, it will be easy to steer my thoughts back to the joyous activity of blowing bubbles! :) Please remember that the bubbles are just my example to share with you. Please feel free to use my suggestion or come up with one of your own. I would love to see some comments sharing what you have decided to focus on before bed tonight and also comments tomorrow about whether limiting your focus helped you to fall asleep any faster.
In studies of college students, shifting between pre~sleep thoughts was found to be related to difficulty in sleeping and lower sleep quality. Better sleepers are 6% more satisfied with their lives than average sleepers, and 25% more satisfied than poor sleepers.
(Abdel Khalek, Al-Meshaan, and Al Shatti, 1995. "Themes of Pre Sleep Thoughts". Journal of the Social Sciences)
4/27/2012
No comments:
Post a Comment