By Bayo Ogunmupe
Sleeping is the ultimate evening routine for cutting stress, creating momentum and cultivating happiness. As important as it is to start your day right, so it's as important to end each day with intention and plans for the morrow. An evening routine not only honours the day you had, it prepares you for the tomorrow by generating momentum, productivity, focus, creativity and energy. But you wouldn't know this in a society that celebrates anxiety over good health. The fact is that you cannot, and will not, be healthy if you are not actively optimizing your nights. For me, I have been tweaking my own nights for some years now, and herewith is the best version of my sleeping routine. Use it to explore what works for you.
One, do a daily reflection on bed, if you reflect on the things you did right, on your triumphs, which enables you to celebrate every little success. Reflection allows you to realize how much you have done right and the good deeds you've accomplished in your life. As family creeps into the dusk, I seize some minutes answering the questions of three amazing things I accomplished during the day and three new things I learned today. The rationale behind these exercises is that they get you out of your stupor. The limbic system is responsible for our emotions which is an older part of our brain wired for survival and the repository of our fears.
In his book: Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Dr Daniel Amen calls these fears, Automatic Negative Thoughts. We cannot control these thoughts. No amounts of chants and incantations will get rid of these thoughts of fear. We can only counter them. Brain exercises that selectively bias you toward positivity shift your neural activity to your left cortex, which controls happiness and joy. Two, thus, you reframe the negative experiences of today. Our key to transforming our lives lies in our ability to reframe our thoughts and experiences. Always follow such exercises with the question: What is one thing you could have handled better today.
Three, make your to-do list for tomorrow, today. Brain sharpeners are anything that get information out of your heads into the physical world such as calendars, memorable books, notepads and to-do lists. Identifying what you want to achieve tomorrow is an empowering way to end your day. When you wake up with a plan, you conserve that precious morning, which otherwise would have been wasted on prioritizing your tasks. We have only a limited amount of brain juice for decision-making per day, so any way to lighten the load for our future selves is a precious gift. Making a plan the night before allows your brain to mull over tasks and problems overnight. No better way of asking your subconscious to work on a problem you are dealing with. This provides me a conscious way of telling my subconscious to present me with a new way of looking at the problem come morning.
Four, always keep the same schedule of sleep daily no matter what. Starting and ending your day at the same time is incredibly important for long term vitality, productivity and focus. As creatures of habit, maintaining such habits via sleep rhythms augurs well for wellness. Communication between various clocks in our body and our master clock in the brain helps regulate our natural sleep and wake cycles. Five, protect your bedroom; your bedroom is your sanctuary, it's a refuge where you should do a fair amount of designing. So protect it the way you protect your valuables. Sleep with breathable clothing. Charge your phones in your kitchen, not bedroom. Boatloads of sex is as important as eating. And you must allow your appetite to be satisfied without restraint or false modesty.
No comments:
Post a Comment