I haven't posted much lately. Ever since I returned from my trip overseas I have been trying to get back on schedule. I've been busy getting certain affairs back in order and trying to catch up after more than a month away. The main reason I haven't been posting, however, is that I have been having more trouble with sleep than ever before. Over the past 3 weeks I have not fallen asleep before 2AM and I've had two nights that I had no sleep at all. So, here I sit after another night of only getting 2 hours of sleep. On the bright side, I did get to see the sunrise this morning.
I have the world's worst sleeping habits, at least it seems that way. I've had problems with sleeping for as long as I can remember. In elementary school I would often stay awake until 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning watching television or playing video games and then I would sleep until the early afternoon. In my teen years the problem got even worse and in college, between working full time and taking a full course load, sleeping was truly a luxury. As an adult my bad habits continued but I have been lucky that most of my jobs never required an early start time and I could make my own hours. There isn't a time in my life when I don't remember feeling like a zombie in the morning. I have always thought that people who say they wake up feeling rested were full of shit. I have almost accepted that I would always feel like garbage in the morning and there wasn't much I could do about it.
I've had occasional success with my sleep. From time to time I'll get into a very nice routine, in bed at a reasonable time, up for an early start and feeling energized. But, those occasions have been very few. I'd quickly fall back into old habits. It has become quite obvious to me over the past few weeks that I have a serious problem that needs to be addressed. I've been reading a lot lately on how to obtain proper sleeping habits and over the next few weeks I'll be applying some of the things I've learned and talking about them here. This may not be interesting to a lot of you but hopefully it will be helpful to a few. I know for a fact that I'm not the only one with bad sleeping habits. Also, this will be a good chance to get back to why I started this blog in the first place, a place to explore self improvement. So, keep checking back in to see my progress or to see my crash and burn. Who knows what will happen.
Do you have bad sleeping habits too? Share your story.
Take care of yourself and each other......AND GET SOME SLEEP!
Yea.... I have walked that walk. Most of my life my mind was racing.. just when I should have been going to sleep. So I can relate. But you already have the answer... Habit... Routine, but wow.. it's a really hard thing to learn.. let alone to teach your "mind".
ReplyDeleteI know exactly how u feel brad... i work 15 hours somedays and still go home sleepless... I'd love to tell u what helps but I have yet to figure it out myself...
ReplyDelete-Sarah
My body needs 8 hours of sleep or I can't function correctly; lucky for me I don't generally have trouble falling asleep, bur I'm a night owl so it's hard to find the will to drag myself to bed, and once I do sleep the quality of sleep is poor. I know what you mean by not waking up feeling well rested.
ReplyDeleteA former neurologist I saw did a bunch of studies and sleep and migraines. She put me on Ambien which did absolutely nothing for me, but she did have some good tips. One I found really helpful was each night before you go to bed, make a list of things on your mind; that way you get it out of your head so your mind doesn't race (as much) while you're trying to sleep. I don't do this strictly but I do keep an ongoing to-do list on a virtual post-it note on my computer.
I'm going to try melatonin soon, and I'll blog about how it goes.
Hope you have success improving your sleeping habits!