How can I rewire my brain to sleep well?
When our sleep is suffering and it seems every night is a challenge, it’s incredibly easy to fall into negative thought patterns and ways of thinking.
So, it may come as no surprise that when it comes to programming our brains to sleep well, the first thing we need to look at is what has happened with our thought processes in the first place that means we’re now struggling to sleep.
The majority of poor sleepers I work with describe themselves as ‘bad sleepers’, often saying they ‘never get any sleep’ and that they ‘can’t cope the next day’; they spend a lot of time thinking and engaging in very catastrophic language around sleep.
This is the first thing we need to change. While I would never wish to minimise how my clients feel, it’s these constant negative thoughts around sleep and how it affects us that presents the first issue.
Think of it this way, if your brain is a garden, the thoughts that you have are the seeds that you’re planting. So, if the seeds that you’re planting are ‘I am a bad sleeper’, ‘I’ll never sleep before that meeting next week’, or ‘I know I won’t cope tomorrow’, then these are the kinds of seeds that will grow into full-blown beliefs.
What we know today is that we are all really susceptible to what we think. If we think positive thoughts, we feel positive, if we think we’re beautiful, we feel beautiful. How we think is how we feel, and the same rule applies to sleep.
With this in mind, it’s really important not to let thoughts that don’t help you become part of what you say to yourself about sleep. So, this leads us onto step one.
1. Notice your thoughts
Even if you feel like you are a bad sleeper, I want you to start noticing how often you say these things to yourself. Why? Because every day that you say these things, you train your brain to not only sleep poorly, but to continue that cycle as well. Don’t beat yourself up about it or be unkind to yourself about having the negative thoughts, but stop and notice them, and dissect each thought a little bit. Ask yourself, how is this thought making you feel?
2. Reframe your thoughts
Once you’ve started to notice a negative thought, the next step is to slightly reframe how you’re saying it. Shift and reframe. So, rather than saying ‘I’ve always been a terrible sleeper’, try to reframe it to ‘I don’t always sleep brilliantly’. Rather than saying ‘I can’t cope on less sleep’, which is really catastrophic language, think about this. What does I can’t cope really mean? If you’re still getting to work, getting your kids to school and feeding yourself, you’re coping. You may not enjoy how you’re feeling, but you’re definitely coping!
3. Think like a good sleeper
Once you begin re-framing these statements and seeing if you can change how they make you feel, the next step is to start thinking how a good sleeper thinks. If you want to feel like a good sleeper, you need to think like one! Start making a list of the things you would need to think if you wanted to feel like a good sleeper. For example, ‘even if I don’t sleep well, I will cope tomorrow’ or ‘I always get some sleep and I’m doing the right things to improve my sleep’.
To put it simply, you need to un-programme your bad thinking and re-programme yourself to think like a good sleeper!
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