Forgoing sleep is like borrowing from a loan shark. Sure you get that extra hours right now to cover for your overly-optimistic estimation, but at what price? The shark will be back and if you can’t pay, he’ll break your creativity, morale, and good-mannered nature as virtue twigs.
If you can’t fall asleep because you’re playing back all the drama from earlier in the day, you are not alone... The truth is, it’s not enough to get yourself physically ready for sleep—you need to settle in mentally, too... Racing thoughts at night can create a hotbed of emotions that result in very physical repercussions.
When we’re anxious, our sympathetic nervous system activates the fight or flight response... How can anyone sleep with all this going on? In fact, it’s impossible.
When you lie in bed thinking for long periods of time, you teach your brain that this behavior is OK. As a result, you may start to automatically go into “thinking” mode rather than “sleeping” mode when you lie down. To break this connection, don’t try to fall asleep in bed for longer than 10–20 minutes. If you pass this threshold, get up, go into another room, and do something relaxing like reading or meditating until you feel sleepy again. Repeat this process as many times as necessary.
You can’t simultaneously be anxious and calm your body down—and you can’t sleep when your body’s fight or flight response is activated.
We should get away from the idea that sleep is for slackers. It's something important to make you function during the day. It's been around for a billion years. It's biologically really important and we need to respect that.
Sleep is an active state, not a dormant one. Your body and mind perform some very important, basic functions only during sleep.
What works is something that engages your brain enough to distract you from your racing thoughts, but not enough to keep you from sleeping.
One important way to calm the racing thoughts in your brain is to focus on the body—specifically by slowing and lengthening your breath. You thereby temper the release of those stress-inducing hormones, so that the parasympathetic part of the nervous system can take hold. Your heart rate slows. Your blood pressure drops. As your body relaxes, your mind calms down, too, all of which help to ease your transition into sleep.
Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
In the quiet of the early morning hours there is a clarity of mind that comes. All problems suddenly seem less complex and the mind is open to “aha” bursts of inspiration.