2584: Sleep Like a Baby by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits on Resilience, Personal Growth and Creativity

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[00:00:29] Hey, it's Justin from Optimal Living Daily. Before we start, I want to share a super powerful practice I use called NSDR or Non-Sleep Deep Rest. In just about 10 minutes or so, this Yoga Nidra practice leaves you feeling as refreshed as after a nap without actually sleeping. Experience it for yourself on our guided podcast. Search NSDR and look for the one from Optimal Living Daily.

[00:00:56] Hello everybody and welcome to our weekly bonus episode of ORD, brought to you each Sunday. I'm Greg Audino and this time around you'll have the pleasure of hearing some previously aired audio from our health show, Optimal Health Daily. So with that, let's check in with Dr. Neil as we optimize your life. Sleep Like a Baby by Leo Babauta of zenhabits.net

[00:01:22] Problem sleeping can be a major drag on happiness. If you can't sleep well, you can't function as well during the day. Today a reader asked, I want to spend less time rolling in the bed and more time sleeping. I want to be a baby again. Help. I love the image of being a baby again. In my head, it conjures up not only sleeping peacefully, though in reality many babies don't, but growing magically young again, carefree, without the worries that normally plague us and keep us up at night.

[00:01:50] I don't have the magical pill that will make you young again, but I can offer some help with sleep. I've changed my sleeping patterns a number of times and know that it can be difficult. Sleep is a deep part of the body's rhythms and it's one of the harder habits to change. That said, it is changeable. Sleep Problems Let's take a quick look at some of the problems that keep people up at night. One, not tired yet. Your sleeping pattern is set so that you usually sleep later.

[00:02:20] So if you go to bed earlier, you're not tired enough to fall asleep. Problem two, you're too tired. It's possible to be so exhausted that sleep is difficult. This tends to be a problem less often than the not tired enough one. Three, worries. You've got something spinning around in your head so the sleep doesn't come. Sometimes it's replaying something that's happened or things that someone said. And other times it's worrying about something coming up or planning.

[00:02:49] And problem number four, computers. If you're on your computer, often in bed, you might be tired but have a hard time sleeping because your mind isn't unwinding. There are other issues, but I found these to be the most common. Let's look at how to help with each of these. Formula for becoming a baby. So how do we solve these problems and become baby-like in our sleep? I don't have all the answers, but here are some of the things that have worked for me. One, exercise.

[00:03:18] A good hard workout or run, bike or swim will get you nice and tired. A good yoga workout is a wonderful way to do that as you learn mindfulness at the same time. Even if the workout is early in the day, I often go to bed with a tired body and look forward to the rest. Don't work out right before bed though, it might keep you up. Two, get up early. You can get your body to shift its sleeping schedule by slowly getting up earlier.

[00:03:45] Try 15 minutes earlier than normal for a week, then another 15 minutes. If you get up earlier, you'll be a bit tired during the day and when it comes time to go to sleep, you'll enjoy the rest. Three, establish a bedtime ritual. It takes time to unwind the body and mind. At least an hour before bedtime, start slowing down. Turn off the computer. Floss and brush your teeth. Put away things you were using in the evening. Lay down and read a book, not on your laptop.

[00:04:14] This kind of ritual helps establish in your mind that it's time to sleep and your body takes this cue and begins to prepare itself. Four, keep your room only for sleeping. Don't eat, watch TV, use your computer, or do other kinds of activities in your room. Okay, just one other activity is okay. Keep those activities in the living and dining rooms so that when you go to bed, there's just one thing to do. Be sure to make the room dark when you go to sleep. Your body reacts to light.

[00:04:43] Five, focus your attention. Once you've done your bedtime ritual and unwound, and your body is nice and tired, you need to quiet the mind. My trick for doing that? Close your eyes and visualize what you did first thing today. That might be opening your eyes and getting out of bed. Then visualize the second thing you did. Let's say you got up and washed your face and brushed your teeth or drank a glass of water. Then you started the coffee, but first had to grind the beans.

[00:05:11] Visualize these tiny steps in detail. I never get past the first hour before I'm asleep. And six, change slowly. Be patient with sleeping changes. They are difficult because when we are tired, our mind doesn't have the discipline to stick to changes. Our body and mind want to do what they're used to doing. But if you change a little at a time and forgive yourself for quote-unquote messing up, because there's really no messing up actually, then you can make changes. I hope this helps.

[00:05:40] I will admit that I don't always sleep soundly. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping. But when I use these methods, I can usually cure the sleeping problems. Sleep is a blessing that I wish on all of my friends, all of you included. It's a much-needed rest that helps us to be truly awake once the glorious new day has come. You just listened to the post titled, Sleep Like a Baby by Leo Babauta of zenhabits.net.

[00:06:09] Dr. Neil again here for my commentary. I really appreciated that Leo was honest about his sleeping patterns. He mentioned he doesn't have nights where he stays soundly asleep or he finds every night it's easy to fall asleep. I'm the same way. In fact, just the other night, I was trying to fall asleep. I thought I was exhausted, but I just couldn't. I found that I was replaying this meeting that I had at work earlier in the day.

[00:06:34] And I was thinking about how angry I was at this comment that someone said to the group, me included. And I just kept replaying that over and over in my head. And I couldn't get to sleep. And so sometimes what I do is when that happens, I have this little notepad and pen by my bed. And so what I wrote down was, make sure to address this with the person who seemed offensive to me the next day. That way, I could get that thought out of my mind, just let it go for now, and have a good night's sleep, hopefully.

[00:07:05] And I found that for me, when my head hits the pillow, I often start remembering things that I forgot to do. Or maybe I'll remember something that I need to do sooner rather than later. All of these thoughts start popping into my head. And so I found that a notepad and a pen can at least get those thoughts down on paper, so I don't forget, so I'm not up stressing all night that I might forget to do these things the next day. And in fact, just yesterday, I was thinking whether I wanted to work out or not. I had those moments where I was trying to listen to my body.

[00:07:34] And I was saying, well, should I work out today? Or is that just going to make me feel worse? But then I remembered, if I don't work out, I'm probably not going to be able to fall asleep tonight again. And so Leo's tip, number one, exercise. For me, that works so well. When I don't exercise, I find it much, much harder to fall asleep. And when we look at studies, we find the very same thing to be true. For most people, if they regularly exercise, they actually fall asleep sooner and sleep deeper

[00:08:03] and longer than those that don't exercise regularly. All right, that's it for today. I hope you have a great Monday and a fantastic start to your week. Thank you, as always, for listening. I'll be back here tomorrow as usual. So I'll see you there where your optimal life awaits.