You know the feeling: it’s time to go to bed, you’re tired, but your mind won’t stop chattering. And in the process, it prevents you from going to sleep. He’s running like it’s the middle of the day. Here are some tips to help you overcome the problem of his mind chatter keeping you from falling asleep.
Start winding down about an hour before bed
Part of the problem with mind chatter is that our minds don’t have an on/off switch.
He really has trouble going from being fully committed to doing something more sedate.
I’ve found that by starting to relax and slow down about an hour before bed, my mind has a chance to finish most of the chatter it had started and allows me to fall asleep without too much interference from background chatter.
Reduce caffeine
Caffeine is obviously in things like coffee and cola. But it’s also in tea, so simply switching from coffee to tea won’t necessarily work.
Students know how to drink coffee and take caffeine tablets to help them stay awake to study.
Which means you should do the opposite to help calm your mind and get a good night’s rest.
A good rule of thumb is to cut back on caffeine starting in the middle of the day and cut it out completely in the mid to late afternoon.
But a word of warning: Caffeine is a powerful drug, so cut back gradually rather than quit cold turkey. Otherwise, it’s not mental chatter that’s keeping you awake, but a nasty throbbing headache.
Take a nice warm bath
This goes well with the first tip.
A nice, long, warm bath is a great way to relax. It also helps calm your body and helps you relax.
If you’re feeling especially enthusiastic, light a few aromatherapy candles to add to the atmosphere, but even without them, a lukewarm bath in dim lighting can go a long way toward relaxing you and reducing mental chatter.
turn off all the lights
The darker your room, the better.
That means turning off or covering all the lights, even the alarm clock or the standby light on the TV (which you shouldn’t have been looking at right before you went to sleep anyway!).
A darkened room is best – you may need to get blackout liner for your curtains or blinds, but it’s worth the investment.
learn to relax
Relaxation is something we instinctively knew when we were younger, but seem to forget as we get older.
You can learn to relax using methods such as yoga, meditation (a breathing meditation is simple and works very well), or hypnosis.
Some people seem to have a hard time tuning out, so listening to a pre-recorded relaxation track can be a good way to push your body in the right direction.
If you combine that with some binaural beats – a high-tech name for playing two slightly different tones, one in each ear – then you have a recipe for a really great night’s sleep.