How I Learned to Fall Asleep

Have you ever had difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep? I didn't used to, but as I've gotten older, I've started waking up in the middle of the night and then having a hard time going back to sleep.

Recently, I took a bunch of things I've learned about sleep and put them all together into a single 4-step process for falling asleep and staying asleep. I'd like to share this process with you, in the hopes that it might help you with your own sleep challenges. The 4 steps are:

1. Do an inventory of everything that might bother you.
2. Dump everything from your brain onto paper or a device.
3. Make a conscious decision that sleep is more important than worrying.
4. Convince yourself that you are an incompetent thinker.

In order for you to fully understand my process, there are some basic principles you need to understand first. (Note that I'm not an expert on sleep in any way; if you have serious sleep issues, you should talk to a doctor or a specialist)

A few foundational principles

Principle #1: Your brain never stops working.

Even when you're sleeping, your brain is doing something. I think that one of the reasons why some people have such a hard time falling asleep is because they want to turn off their brain. They think that, if they can somehow stop thinking, then they'll magically fall asleep. The truth is, your brain is always on. So, how can we redirect the brain's activity to help you fall asleep?

Principle #2: Although your brain is always working, only certain states are compatible with sleeping.

Your brain actually goes through several different states throughout the day. Neuroscientists measure brain wave activity, and they tell us that brain activity has the highest frequencies when we're actively engaged in work that requires a lot of thinking – for example, when balancing our checkbook, creating a PowerPoint presentation, or learning how to cook a new dish. However, when we're "zoning out" like being a passenger on a car ride or watching TV, our brains go into a lower frequency. When we are fast asleep (for example, after a long and tiring hike), our brains go into their lowest frequency.

The problem is that, when it's time for us to sleep, it might be difficult to stop thinking about some issue – which can be related to work, money, health, our kids, politics, or anything else that bothers us. When we think about something we care a lot about, it puts our bodies into a state of high alert. This state prevents us from falling asleep. In order to fall asleep, our bodies need to relax. In order for our bodies to relax, our brains need to shift into a lower frequency, like a car shifts into a lower gear.

Principle #3: It is not thinking per se that prevents us from falling asleep, but thinking that causes strong emotions.

Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to fall asleep after watching a tense thriller or an exciting action movie? Your mind is racing, digesting the story, analyzing characters and motives, replaying particularly dramatic scenes in your head over and over. When you're thinking about a big presentation or about an annoying colleague, something similar happens in your brain. It's not the thoughts that are causing our bodies to feel tense, but the emotions that those thoughts are triggering. The emotions that grip us the tightest often have to do with anger or fear.

Putting it all together

Okay, now that you know about these principles, I'll describe each step of the process in detail.

Step 1. Do an inventory of everything that might bother you.

Sit down quietly somewhere (not in bed!) and allow yourself to go over everything that is taking up significant space in your mind. Basically, ask yourself, "What's bothering me? What am I likely to think about as I try to fall asleep?" Make a list of things that are most likely to bother you.

Step 2. Dump everything from your brain onto paper or a device.

For each issue that's bothering you, take whatever thoughts are rattling around inside your brain and get them down onto a sheet of paper, your phone, your computer, or anything else that you can access the next day. For example, if you're working on a big presentation, write down all the big points you need to cover. (Don't worry, if you forget anything, you can come back and write it down later on; keep the paper nearby. I highly recommend having a pen or pencil and a sheet of paper near your bed, as well as a dim light source like a night light, just for this reason. Research says that you don't want to be exposed to light, especially blue light, because it tends to wake you up; staring at your phone or other electronic device might expose you to light, unless you dim it as much as possible.)

Now, I'm not recommending that you cover every possible aspect of your big presentation just before you go to sleep. My point is not that you should be engaging in a lot of serious thinking. Instead, I'm saying that you want to remove any reason for your brain to cling onto the need to think about your big presentation. You need to trust that you're going to be the same person tomorrow as you are today; you'll be able to work on the presentation just as well tomorrow as today. All you're doing when you write down the main points to cover is convincing your unconscious mind that you don't need to keep any important information in your own memory; you've already written it down somewhere. This removes your fear of forgetting some important point.

You need to trust that you're going to be the same person tomorrow; you'll be able to work on the presentation just as well tomorrow as today.

Step 3. Make a conscious decision that sleep is more important than worrying.

Next, once you've already written down anything you want to remind your future self, you need to prepare your emotional state for sleep. This means that you need to let go of any residual emotions related to your issue.

For this step, I recommend asking yourself this question: "Right now, at this time, what is more important to me? Is getting a relaxing, comfortable, re-energizing sleep more important, or is it more important to feel the emotion related to this issue?" Now, this might sound like a silly question; it is almost always better to sleep. But in rare cases, it can be more important to hold onto the emotion. For example, if something is bothering you but you can't figure out what it is, and you need to figure it out because it may have big consequences for the future, or because you know you won't be able to sleep if you don't figure it out, then it might be good to sacrifice some sleep in such a case. In that case, go for a run or write in your journal or whatever. But in most cases, it makes more sense to get a good night's sleep, recharge your batteries, and tackle the problem with a fresh start the next day.

The point of asking yourself the question above is to convince your unconscious mind that you are making an intentional decision to care more about sleep than about whatever issue or problem is on your mind. Making such a commitment will protect you throughout the night.

Step 4. Convince yourself that you are an incompetent thinker.

Once you've made the decision that sleeping is your highest priority, you can then take specific action to get yourself ready to sleep. Recall the first Principle, "Your brain never stops working." Well, if you can't fight your brain, then you might as well hijack it to help you get into a lower frequency.

How? By telling yourself this: "I am incompetent at thinking right now. I am incapable of forming complete thoughts and following them to any logical conclusions. I am incapable of forming any coherent thoughts." Basically, this is like hypnotizing yourself by telling yourself how tired you are in that moment. (Or you can also try "lazy" or "sleepy" or "dumb" or "drunk", whatever works for you) The point is not to use a lot of energy to prevent any thoughts, but to let them come and then gently prevent them from finishing so they don't cause your body to go on high alert.

After embracing your incompetence, whenever you have any thoughts, either related to your "big issues" or to anything else, you can just remind yourself of how incompetent you are. And because you've committed to sleeping, you'll commit to this step too.

So, when I said that we're going to hijack your brain, this is what I meant: we assign the task of gatekeeper to your brain. We're hiring it to be a bouncer at a night club that turns away the "bad thoughts," the ones that cause arousal. When those thoughts lose their power to arouse your emotions, then your body will naturally relax, and soon, you'll be able to fall asleep.

One final note: surrender!

If you try this process and find it too difficult to block out distressing thoughts, don't beat yourself up. Be patient with yourself. Cultivate an attitude of surrender. The harder you try to fall asleep, the harder it will be for you to fall asleep, so stop trying. In fact, stop trying to do anything at all. Surrender to helplessness. Surrender to the feeling of being comfortable. Picture your thoughts moving at the speed of molasses. (This is another way of slowing down your brain)

Remember that this process can be used to fall asleep at night, or when you wake up in the middle of the night, to fall asleep again.

Let me know whether this 4-step process works for you! (P. S. there are many other good guides on getting a good sleep, which you can easily find if you do a search on "guide to sleeping". I personally take melatonin and meditate before going to sleep, in addition to following the above process)