A Simple Task to Train Yourself to Experience Better Sleep
Our thoughts become things. What we constantly tell ourselves—the things we choose to believe in—eventually allow us to create new realities, better realities. We can view this as a placebo effect, or we can spiritually embrace knowing that our thoughts become our lives, our manifest destinies.
Regardless of how you want to view it, we can all agree that we have experienced tough times, periods in our lives where we didn’t believe in ourselves or our abilities to succeed, and, sadly, these disbeliefs have affected our abilities to accomplish important, beneficial things, things which would make us happier in life.
Intuitively, increased sleep leads to better days; better days lead to better weeks; better weeks lead to better months; in short, better sleep engenders a better life. So, if this is so easy to understand, why do we deprive ourselves of sleep; why aren’t we sleeping more?
Many factors contribute to a lack of sleep; these include stress, stimulants, work, our health, and, most importantly, how we view ourselves. If we continuously and pejoratively label ourselves as “bad sleepers,” that is what we will be, and this will exacerbate and contribute to anxiety and stress, behaviors that affect our abilities to have better days.
Realizing this effective method—cognitive reconditioning—has really helped with my overall sleep, but before I discovered it, I used to go weeks, even months, without a good night’s sleep. I was really suffering and feeling pretty hopeless; it seemed like an insurmountable pattern, a habit which I couldn’t overcome, which is why I stopped complaining to my friends and just decided to accept it.
Even though I accepted it, the consequences of sleep deprivation subconsciously motivated me to seek change. I realized that when I verbalize change, when I commit to it consciously, it does become my external reality. Inversely, not speaking about it causes the opposite reaction; by repudiating thoughts of tiredness, caused by lack of sleep, I started feeling less tired and more energized.
Besides this mental realignment, I stopped trying to fight the circumstances as well; that is, during the nights I couldn’t sleep, rather than fight myself to sleep—an anxiety-provoking behavior—I simply accepted my situation and made observations, and then I would use this data to try and ascertain why I couldn’t fall asleep. I also worked on breathing techniques, and if I had a bad night’s sleep, I would verbalize that I slept well; I would make myself believe I slept well.
Modifying one’s behavior does not cause immediate change, but if you put in the time, you can condition your body, allowing you to control how it performs.
After months of mental conditioning and believing, I can sleep well now; my energy is through the roof, and I am enjoying a new reality, a better reality. You can as well!
Try these techniques out, and tell us what you think on our Facebook and Instagram accounts (@eatcleanbro).
