What do you do if you cannot sleep? Do you toss and turn, or do you lie there and get angry? Or are you able to accept this gift of peaceful time?
Sometimes things keep us awake, we all know that
there are billions of reasons for not being able to sleep, to fall asleep or to sleep through the night. For example:
- snoring partners or pets
- a sick child
- noisy neighbours
- menopause or puberty or adhd or any other variant of human bean
- street noise
- unknown noises between big cities and dairy farms
- the weather
- heat
- illness
- being in love
- pain
- preoccupations
- unease before an important day
- strange beds
- jetlag
- interesting times, even when interesting in a positive way
- …
You will have lots of other reasons coming to mind, I am sure. Especially gifted people and Renaissance souls do have difficulty with calming their vivid imagination and their busy minds enough to fall asleep, not even mentioning ADHD or autism. So much input needs to be worked through and so many thoughts need to be followed through, on any given day. If, on top of that, there are plans to be made, or things to be worried about, finding sleep can turn into an impossible task.
Much more interesting than the reasons for being sleepless, are our different strategies to deal with it:
- What do you do?
- What is your emotional situation at the beginning of your sleeplessness and how does it change three hours in?
- What does the fact that you cannot fall asleep do to you?
- Do you consider it a personal failure?
- Or is it a gift of freedom?
- Do you feel lonely, or do you enjoy being with yourself?
- Can you change your plans for the next day, or do you need to pull through albeit feeling numb and tired?
- Are you even exhausted after a short or sleepless night?
- Do you have certain routines or is the situation quite rare?
- Can you see positive aspects in sleeplessness?
- Do you feel powerless and helpless lying awake?
- Do you take it in good spirit?
All these questions can and should serve as inspirations for you.
To be happy and content with our lives, we need primarily to accept ourselves just the way we are. This might not be easy in the beginning, and false beliefs do not surrender easily… But to explore yourself and accept the discovered self lovingly: this might be the straightest and easiest road to happiness.
The better you know yourself the better you can deal with your own idiosyncrasies, never mind how gifted or how sensitive or how exceptional you might be. You are perfect! You are lovable! Whenever you cannot sleep this kind of self-acceptance seems to be unattainable, I know. And yet:
sleep disorders and how you manage them, are an opportunity for growth…
I want to make yet another list,
a list with things you can do instead of sleeping:
- to read, unhindered and without interruption
- to think, completely undisturbed
- to write, in the flow, no interruptions and with this special disinhibition that is the gift of sleeplessness
- to meditate
- to prepare oneself for the following day
- to make lists
- to go for a walk in a sleeping and enchanted world
- to discover the own garden in the dark
- to have conversations with creatures of the night
- to explore the nature of night, on your balcony, in your garden, in a park, or just at the open window
- to prepare and enjoy a soporific tisane with utmost devotion
- to prepare a warm milk with honey, calming for body and soul
- to anoint yourself with a fragrant lotion (think Jasmine or lavender)
- to watch the moon and the stars in silent awe
- to pray, unobserved and unwitnessed
- to love yourself
- to love your partner (if both of you are awake)
- to listen to your favourite music over earphones
- to listen to your favourite audiobook over earphones
- to write letters – but only decide on the next day if you want to send or burn them
- to finish your day’s work or get up early
- to get up early to start the new day earlier than planned, maybe with a luxurious breakfast or having a bubble bath
- to fill three evening pages or morning pages, to then fall asleep at last
- … this list is completely arbitrary, made for you as a suggestion to expand it in your own personal way.
The items on this list are mostly things that require a certain calm and privacy. Surely you would not want to be the reason for other people’s sleep disorders, therefore loud singing, making music, rope skipping and other things will not do, unless you are living in a lonely cottage, far away from your fellow humans. That would be an incredibly special situation to live in, a kind of retreat where a different set of rules apply and sleep would normally not be an issue. Neither would timetables or clocks…
Mindfulness and contemplation are your allies when your sleep is troubled – not exclusively in these nights, of course, but here they can really shine and hold meaningful gifts… if you are prepared to accept them.
If this blog post encourages you to see your next sleepless night as an interesting challenge or even as a gift, I did a good job. (And this as sleep deprived as I am these days!)
Heartfelt, wherever you are dreaming,
What do you do if you cannot sleep? Do you toss and turn, or do you lie there and get angry? Or are you able to accept this gift of peaceful time?
Sometimes things keep us awake, we all know that
there are billions of reasons for not being able to sleep, to fall asleep or to sleep through the night. For example:
You will have lots of other reasons coming to mind, I am sure. Especially gifted people and Renaissance souls do have difficulty with calming their vivid imagination and their busy minds enough to fall asleep, not even mentioning ADHD or autism. So much input needs to be worked through and so many thoughts need to be followed through, on any given day. If, on top of that, there are plans to be made, or things to be worried about, finding sleep can turn into an impossible task.
Much more interesting than the reasons for being sleepless, are our different strategies to deal with it:
All these questions can and should serve as inspirations for you.
To be happy and content with our lives, we need primarily to accept ourselves just the way we are. This might not be easy in the beginning, and false beliefs do not surrender easily… But to explore yourself and accept the discovered self lovingly: this might be the straightest and easiest road to happiness.
The better you know yourself the better you can deal with your own idiosyncrasies, never mind how gifted or how sensitive or how exceptional you might be. You are perfect! You are lovable! Whenever you cannot sleep this kind of self-acceptance seems to be unattainable, I know. And yet:
sleep disorders and how you manage them, are an opportunity for growth…
I want to make yet another list,
a list with things you can do instead of sleeping:
The items on this list are mostly things that require a certain calm and privacy. Surely you would not want to be the reason for other people’s sleep disorders, therefore loud singing, making music, rope skipping and other things will not do, unless you are living in a lonely cottage, far away from your fellow humans. That would be an incredibly special situation to live in, a kind of retreat where a different set of rules apply and sleep would normally not be an issue. Neither would timetables or clocks…
Mindfulness and contemplation are your allies when your sleep is troubled – not exclusively in these nights, of course, but here they can really shine and hold meaningful gifts… if you are prepared to accept them.
If this blog post encourages you to see your next sleepless night as an interesting challenge or even as a gift, I did a good job. (And this as sleep deprived as I am these days!)
Heartfelt, wherever you are dreaming,