Elixir or miracle is what everyone searching for deep in their heart. Thou people usually don't have any practical move and hunt for elixir in this world but people still wishing it. If god grant you any wish you desire, you might ask for elixir. Of course it's depending on which type: wealth, peace, health, fame, love, happiness, young, immortal.... Well, list down as much as you could. People spent life searching for their elixir but never to notice that they are having it and using it everyday. Yes, that's the first word you see in the title: Sleep. It's the elixir that I'm talking about where you need it and need to learn how to use it properly to obtain the type of elixir as mentioned above. Except immortal, of course.
What's so great about sleep? We gone through it too many times in our life and we also being nagged by our parent about getting good sleep make you more energetic and healthy yadah yadah yadah.... Of course those nags, books that emphasize sleeping lead to good health, articles guiding people how to get good sleep and much more are definitely true, there is no need to doubt that because many people had gone through all those as well as many people did the opposite thing and as a result, everyone get to experience the reality and truth of sleep and recovery, and we know how powerful or murdering sleep is.
I had dilemma in adjusting my sleep long time ago, and it persist for a really long period and there is no absolute cure for that after a long time. I wanted to sleep at 12pm. I lie down on the bed try to think nothing, just close my eyes, not moving even abit but that's definitely result in failing to sleep. I tried several times forcing myself to lie on the bed for entire night until the next morning, and I still haven't sleep for a little while. I just getting more tired, really tired, feel like turning into a zombie on the next day, but I still couldn't sleep (later I learn that lying on the bed for whole definitely lead to such result). Even if I feel slightly sleepy before that, I still failed to sleep when I finally go to the bed. Such dilemma and torturing going on and on and, fortunately, natural remedy eventually came to me as I change my lifestyle because I could not take the zombifying life anymore. That's one main key I need to empahsize here: lifestyle is one major key for proper and good sleep.
Sleep could be a challenge, due to both willingness and unwillingness reason from both physical and mental. For those who had problem sleeping at night would understand this. Especially if you gone through the suffering of trying to adjust your sleep time so that you will be able to sleep peacefully every night, you somehow feel that sleeping early and sleeping well just doesn’t make sense. Probably no one able to do that. But you might or might not heard this, there are people who able to set their sleep time before 12am, and fall into good sleep when the time struck. Is that possible, yes it is.
Mentality is one great control for you to get a good sleep. When you failed that, or you let your mentality go wild and uncontrollable, there goes your good night sleep. But our lifestyle in Malaysia easily provide us too many reasons not to rest early, instead you should do something else. If you are outside, there are 24 hours mamak or Mcd for you to chat with friends until no time, you can also enjoy in the pub or club until late night, or early morning. If you are at home, there are tons of friends who have not sleep or doesn't want to sleep, so they waiting for you at Facebook chat, Whatsapp, Wechat, and etc. Even if no one else looking for you, there are Facebook, Youtube, forum, and unlimited source of other site that make you want to explore and stay up for it more. That's it, if you are serious about getting a really good sleep and change your life for better, this is the thing that you totally lose it: self control.
After such a long statement and line of sentences up there, getting good sleep is all about having self control in your lifestyle. Without that, having the best method and knowledge for you to get a good sleep is equivalent to nothing.
Rather than searching for ways to improve your sleep and all sort of methods to ensure you can get a good sleep, I'm urging you to train your self control ability. Not only you need the knowledge, you also need to have the power and strong will to practice the knowledge and attain the final result with your own will and effort. So here goes, below are the things you need to know about self control and ensure you able to practice a good lifestyle, and more importantly allowing yourself to practice a good sleeping habit.
1. Set your sleeping time and obey it when time struck
We always tell ourself to sleep at a certain time like 11pm, 12am, 1pm.... then when the time comes we tell ourself to wait a little bit more and when we realize, it's way pass the targeted sleeping time and we curse ourself for failing that. And we repeat the same thing very soon. If you try to consider deep enough, it's not about how much work you had left, how people want to chat with you, how great the music is so it's hard to stop, how dramatic the video is and you must know more as soon as possible.... You are giving away your free will and being a slave to these excuses, all made up by yourself and only to yourself.
2. Setup a "Sleep-Ready Operation"
A "Sleep-Ready Operation" is a practice where you set rules on what need to do and what's not to do few hours before your sleeping time struck.
First you need to set a time period. Usually you can give yourself between one to three hours before your sleeping time. Then you need to clearly list out the things that you need to do, like listening to soft & relaxing music, drink a cup of warm milk, write diary/blog, meditate, think about happy things, and etc; and also list out the things that you need to avoid like listening to loud music, doing work, trying to perform problem solving, watch drama, playing games, drinking coffee, and so on. To make this more effective, it's best to clearly list out your period of "Sleep-Ready Operation" and the list of dos and don'ts in a piece of paper, and stick it to a place where you can always see it. So that you can remind yourself of this rule. I used to think that I can just remember everything in my mind and execute the plan accordingly, but human mind is really complicated and there are a lot of confusion with it, so it's better you used a safety measure to ensure a good result.
This is something you need to slowly learn and practice by experience because you might not know what's best for you at the moment. Some people might find it having a cup of warm milk right before sleep can make them feel easier to sleep, but some people might feel really full and hard to sleep after having a cup of warm milk. So you probably want to consider if you are suitable to have the cup of milk right before bed, two hours before bed, or not having any of it. After all, setting up this operation required lots of learning of your own body, and feeling the type of behavior that your body can accept. So take your time and consider what could make your body feel better before sleep in a long run process.
3. Change/Control your before-bedtime activity
Watching drama that still has lots of episode after that can be the major problem that delay your sleep. It can also make you resist to sleep even if you are really sleepy because the storyline make you can't stop "chasing" it. I can understand that feeling because I had experience numerous time for this. So here is the trick, first convince yourself: "There is always tomorrow", so there is no point trying to watch all episodes as soon as you can. Moreover, trying to force yourself to awake when you feel really sleepy is really unhealthy. I used drama as an example, but basically it's the same as long as it's something that make you addict to it and you force yourself not to sleep because of it.
What you can do about your preferred bedtime activity is either changing it to another time or putting a great restraint on it. Let's use drama as an example, you can either change the time of watching drama during daytime or few hours before the crucial time when your body need to prepare to sleep, or make sure you watch one episode and shut down your PC or laptop right after that. Do not, i mean DO NOT click and play the next episode.
When you are able to identify and avoid any activity that could delay or affect your sleeping time, your feel more willing to sleep and you can sleep much better when combining with the next tips.
4. Fill up your ideal bedtime activity
There are always list of things that can make you feel relaxing and calm, you need to identify what are those things and check out what you feel like you want to do before bed.
Of course it's impossible to do everything that can make you feel relaxing, and you don't need to practice all of that. Just pick one or a few things that you feel like doing before bed, best to choose something that can provide you the thinking that you had established something instead of something that make you feel like you should stay awake and complete them.
Some people found listing down their worries in a diary or notebook helps them to relief their worries and anxiety and feel less burden, so they can get to sleep better. This is one example of training yourself to put down something rather than getting all your worries to sleep with you.
So the key to pick your ideal before-bedtime activity is about allowing yourself to put down anything at the moment and then focus on a peaceful sleep.
5. Create a unique sleeping theme at your bed
If you like hello kitty to sleep with you, get one and put it on your bed. This is no kidding. Your room might or might not have it's own theme. Some people make their bedroom as their working place. You can have many different things or theme in your own room, but at least avoid turning your bed into one.
If you have anything you feel good to sleep with, like a nice looking mattress, bolster, soft toys, or etc, spend some money to improve your sleeping experience. This is a good investment for a long period (unless the price is too absurd for that particular item that you want).
When you have a nice bed that you feel really comfortable, you eventually give yourself more reasons to get more early sleep because our mind usually request our self to go for whatever that make us feel comfortable. To add more for feeling comfortable, you should be more hardworking to tidy up your bed often and clean your blanket & mattress once a week.
Again, setting a specific theme at first might not give you the best feeling as this required multiple experience to get you to the best sleeping feeling. You can experience with a theme and then try to feel if there is anything missing. You probably need to Google for different type of bedroom decoration or theme and see what's make you feel good. Or changing the position of all items on the bed once in awhile. So bear in mind that feeling is the main key that helps you to determine what's best for yourself.
Lastly, keep everything in control
Self control is the major thing to make everything as mentioned above works, remember what's stated before the first tips? When you had everything well scheduled, what you need to do next is to make sure you practice your schedule and train your own self to make them work as expected. As a summary of what you need to do to practice a good night sleep, there are a few thing you need to bear in mind.
First, when you done considering a list of schedule and action that helps your to sleep better, you need to list everything down in a piece of paper. If you don't do this, you risk forgetting a few parts or most of your schedule. When the time comes, you get higher chance of forgetting what you need to do at the certain time. Write it out as clear as possible so you just need to follow the schedule according to the paper. That's one thing you need to train yourself at this step. And then you need to consider carefully and review on the list to know if those are the best for you. As time goes by, you might find certain activity is not right and you want something else that can make you get into better sleep.
Second, train yourself to follow exactly what stated in the paper, and DO NOT change it at will. When you think there is a need to change what you stated in the paper, find the right peaceful time and think really carefully on the reason why you should change it. Because simply changing it at will is equivalent to simply changing your career just because you don't feel like you like it, rather doing so after deep consideration. We are not going to talk about how serious about changing our path just because we don't feel like it, but it is indeed causing a huge problem in your life if you change your path by depending on pure feeling.
Lastly, on the contradiction of self control, you need to learn and train yourself to fight addiction and unhealthy desire that delay your time, basically on everything. This is referring to all those activity that keep you awake at the time when you are suppose to get to bed. In case you have not realize, the practice of self control to train yourself to be conscious on what you really want to do and control event that you know it should not be there or should have more restrain in it is a difficult practice that not only helps you to get a better sleep, it's also something that help in many different aspect in your life. It's all about decision making and learn to achieve your target with practical & effective measurements. So this practice is not only to provide yourself a good sleeping experience, but also beneficial in your daily life when you are learn to set better target for your life improvement.
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