Stop the worries at night and sleep better E1

July 19, 2021

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We will investigate why we lie awake at night worrying and thinking about the same scenarios – again and again. I am going to introduce you to a way that you can distance yourself from your thoughts and be able to go back to sleep. So, let´s dive in!

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Do you know the feeling of lying awake at night with a busy mind? Do you wonder how you could sleep better?

Maybe you lie awake at night thinking about the meeting earlier that did not go well? How could it have gone better? Worrying about the future, work that needs to get done or a meeting that could get a bit hairy.

In my case, sometimes it was just a To-Do list that would keep me up and the worry that I would forget the next day. I tried everything from breathing exercises, meditation, and counting sheep – the only thing that would shut off my thoughts was reading a book. That would get me back to sleep but that would not stop it from happening again a few nights later.

Being awake at night kept me tired all day long

I never had it every night, more like 2 -3 times per week. But talking to colleagues at work or friends, I think a lot of people are struggling with this.

And then you feel shattered in the morning when you wake up. You are angry just thinking about the hours you wasted thinking about something that now in daylight does not look that dramatic. It happens because your analytical and objective mind is really asleep at night and switched off. And therefore it’s your monkey brain, the dramatic brain that is working on its own and making everything much bigger than it is. Did you experience this before?

We all know now that we need about 7.5 to 8 hours of good sleep per night to be at our optimum during the day. If we get less we might not consciously feel it but we won’t be able to perform at our highest level.

And I think if you are like me, this might impact your psychology because you are worried: “Oh no I did not sleep well so I will probably have a bad day at work and won´t get it all done.”

So all in all a bit of a devious cycle. Well, put your hand up if you´ve been there before or experienced it.

So what is my secret weapon to sleep better?

So what has changed for me to not have these hours of being awake anymore? And don´t get me wrong, sometimes I am still awake at night, like once every 3-4 weeks but then it’s not due to worrying about work or thought spirals. I was able to say goodbye to that! And I want you to say goodbye to them as well.

I actually did not try to solve this exact issue but the resolution was a byproduct of my other work. So by sharing this with you today, I hope you can apply my learnings directly when you are lying awake at night.

“The big realization that helped me overcome this is that my mind is a tool that I can regulate.”

I keep saying: I am not my mind, I am not my body. Honestly most of my life I was convinced that I am my mind and my mind is the most important part of me and my life.

And then I started to meditate and during your meditation, you are asked to take away your attention from your body and from your mind aka your thoughts. And while practising this I had this lightbulb moment that when I don´t feel my body and I don’t have any thoughts, I am still “here”. So I must be something else. There must be another self of myself.

And I am not going too deep into this topic in this article but the important eye-opening realization was that I am not my mind and that our mind is just a tool for us to use. Sure our mind is pretty strong and it needs practice to apply this learning to your life.

THIS helped me to separate myself from my busy mind

And meditation helps with what I call becoming the observer in your life. While you are in meditation and taking your awareness of your body and your mind, you become kind of an observer of your mind and your body. You put some distance between yourself and your body and mind. Because you realize that you are not your body and not your mind, you start to be able to observe your mind – even outside of the meditative state.

And this is really what helped me to take my mind not so seriously anymore and let it keep me from sleeping at night.

I learned to observe my thoughts. I started directing my thoughts in the direction that they are more beneficial to me and I learned to stop my thinking spirals much quicker or to just ignore them. And that ability gives me the power to not let them keep me from sleeping.

As I mentioned before, I did not get to this benefit of sleeping better directly but through taking some back roads. But all of what I described until now has gotten me to experience good nights of sleep. And it is because of the development of my observership and distancing myself from my mind and my thoughts.

How can you develop your observership in the middle of the night?

Try to look at yourself as another person while you are lying in bed wide awake. Observe what is happening to you without any judgment. Just observe.

Don´t become an observer of yourself out of judgment or to move away from something that you don´t want. But move into the role of the observer out of love for yourself, because you know this can bring you closer to your true self.

‘Stepping outside’ of yourself gives you the distance from the whirlwind of thoughts and will provide you with a different perspective on the thoughts that you are having. It will stop your spiral of thoughts as you are putting your attention on yourself.

Now that you know more about the observer, try to use it during your day. Especially when you feel in an uncomfortable place emotionally, physically or mentally. Try to create some distance from the situation and observe what is actually happening. This is going to be so powerful, you will see!

I hope this little exercise will help you in your sleepless nights to quieten your thinking spirals but I hope it will be even more transformative in your life, similar to how it was for me. We will come back to the observership (E60 – Struggling with the concept of awareness and observership?) in future episodes so make sure you subscribe to catch these.

I am linking a video I created earlier this year where I explain the observer in more detail and how I learned about it during my meditation journey. So check it out if you want to learn more about it HERE.

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My Meditation Journey so far Episode 14
Be the observer of your life for true change to happen Episode 45
The 4 Steps to Getting Enough Sleep (Fall Asleep Quicker) Episode 100

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