Eight
Tips for Taking the Stress Out of Sleep
This chapter will equip you with super sleep knowledge, so you know what can help — and hinder — your chances of enjoying deep, reassuring shut-eye. Understanding more about slumber will mean you can work with your body and your mind’s natural ability to nod off. No problem.
It’s packed with tricks and techniques you can incorporate into your everyday life: treatments to try, self-help remedies, and mindset manipulations that should have you looking at sleep in a better light. All of which adds up to less stress and more serenity, when you lie down at lights-out.
Learn to fall in love with falling asleep again.
192 ✦ What’s your chronotype?
Are you a night owl or an early bird, or do you fall somewhere in between? Knowing which type you are could be the key to a better bedtime.
If you’re naturally an owl, going to bed too early could mean you lie there for hours struggling to nod off. You feel frustrated, and you may begin to think of your bed as a place of wakefulness rather than sleepiness. Here’s what to do to find out your chronotype — your individual natural sleep and wake times.
Next time you’re on a break, away from your normal routine — ideally for a week or longer — hit the hay only when you feel really sleepy and get up when you wake naturally, without an alarm.
After you’ve discovered your body clock’s rhythm, when your ideal bedtime is and how much sleep you ideally need, you can stick to this new pattern at home, or at least aim for as close to it as possible, depending on your commitments. Bear in mind that not everyone thrives on the ideal eight hours; some need more, others less.
Discovering your body clock’s personal preference means you can work with your chronotype, rather than against it.
193 ✦ Make friends with your feelings and welcome unwelcome thoughts
Lying in bed awake with no distractions means you can often become acutely aware of what you wouldn’t notice in the daytime when you’re busy. We’ve already discovered that your heartbeat can seem loud or fast; worries can flood your mind and whirl around in overdrive. It’s natural to tense up against unwelcome thoughts and feelings, to try to flee from them or push them away. But this sends a message to your body to pump out adrenaline, forcing you into fight-or-flight mode, which in turn makes that rapid heartbeat faster and those thoughts more panicky. A vicious cycle of anxiety!
Instead, accept the thoughts calmly, and by doing so give your body and your brain a different message.
The sleep specialist Dr. Guy Meadows, a proponent of acceptance and commitment therapy for insomnia, suggests an unusual response to unwanted thoughts and feelings. Instead of trying to push them away, he says, welcome them as you would a friend. Even say something like “Oh hello, anxiety — you again?” or “Welcome back, worry,” in a lighthearted way. Just this simple action can help you become more physically and mentally relaxed because you’re informing your brain that you are safe, not under any threat.
Once the welcome is made, you can turn your attention to something pleasant, such as enjoying the sense of relaxation as you lie down, or the warmth from your duvet.
194 ✦ Chillaxercise!
Exercise that increases your heart rate is great for cardiovascular health, and if you also incorporate a slow exercise into your week you’ll get a host of other health benefits, too.
Disciplines like tai chi, qigong, and yoga not only offer physical gains such as improved flexibility, balance, and strength, but they also teach you how to be comfortable with slowing down, retraining your body and mind to find calm and to be better able to cope with stress.
Don’t think you have to be expert at them, either. Join a beginners’ class or just watch a video online and try it out. You may well find you sleep better.
195 ✦ Keep a sleep journal
Filling out a journal can help you track any patterns that may be leading to poor sleep.
Buy a large notebook that appeals to you and that you’ll enjoy using. Look online for “sleep journal” templates you can copy into it.
Your journal may reveal, say, that you sleep badly on Friday nights (after too much alcohol, for instance?) or on Wednesdays after your 9:00 pm spin class (maybe you’re exercising too late in the evening?). Identifying patterns could help you take steps to change your habits to improve your sleep.
Don’t feel overwhelmed. Concentrate on changing one habit at a time, and you could soon be on the road to solving some of your sleep problems.
196 ✦ Enjoy comedy!
Giggling more during the day could help get you to sleep.
A study published in the Korean Journal of Adult Nursing found that elderly people who were prescribed laughter therapy, which included singing funny songs and laughing exercises, improved their sleep and reduced their symptoms of depression.1 Another, Japanese, study discovered that nursing mothers who had watched a comedy DVD had more of the sleep hormone melatonin in their breast milk than those who had endured an unfunny weather news DVD.2
So you may want to watch more comedy instead of dramas (or weather reports!) to get a good night’s sleep.
197 ✦ To reset your body clock, try camping!
If you’re thinking of taking a break, consider camping.
Researchers from the University of Colorado found that a group who spent a week sleeping outside in tents, with no manmade light allowed (only natural light and campfires), nodded off more easily and woke more refreshed than usual.3
Exposure to a natural light–dark cycle helped their melatonin levels rise earlier and synchronize their internal body clocks to natural, healthy sleep rhythms.
Our bodies respond quite quickly to nature’s light–dark cycle, so spending plenty of time in natural daylight and filling the nights with more true darkness for a weekend of camping, or even just being outdoors through the day and evening, should be enough to have an impact on your circadian rhythm and promote better sleep.
198 ✦ Learn to elicit your relaxation response
Coined by the cardiologist Dr. Herbert Benson, the term “relaxation response” is defined as your ability to switch your body into a calm state — slowing your heart and breathing rates, lowering your blood pressure, and clearing cortisol from the body.
In essence, it’s the opposite of the fight-or-flight (or stress) response. You can learn how to elicit your relaxation response, tapping into a resource within you, to conjure up calm. The technique involves using a gentle word or phrase, or a prayer, and repeating it.
Keep practicing the technique (every morning before breakfast is good, but any time of the day will do), and with time you’ll find it easier to focus on your breath and your chosen word. The more you practice, the better able you will be to evoke the relaxation response at night if you need it.
199 ✦ Find your ikigai
The Japanese word “ikigai” is often translated as “having a purpose in life” or “what makes life worth living.” Your ikigai could be anything from your children, or a hobby you can’t get enough of, to your job. And as well as giving your life meaning, it seems that having a strong sense of ikigai could also be key to sleeping more soundly.
A study published in the American journal Sleep Science and Practice in 2017 found that people who have a strong life purpose were more likely than others to enjoy good quality sleep.4
Can you name your ikigai? If not, then it may be worth taking time to find a new purpose in life. Think about volunteering to help others. Or taking up a hobby you’ve left behind, or a new sport you’ve always wanted to try.
It could be that this passion and purpose becomes the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning and also helps you sleep at night.
200 ✦ Restrict your sleep
It may sound counterproductive, but try this experiment — go to bed later than normal and spend less time there. It could help you get lengthier and better sleep in the long run. One study found that this practice, called sleep restriction, helped people with insomnia fall asleep sooner and stay asleep for longer when they tried it over a period of eight weeks.5 So it’s not achieved overnight and will require commitment. Here’s how to do it if you want to try it out:
Using a sleep journal, calculate how much time you spend in bed and how much of that time is spent awake. If you’re spending less than 80 percent of your total time asleep, you’re probably lying there for too long — and you’re learning to associate your bed with sleeplessness.
So, consulting your sleep journal, if you’re getting an average of, say, six hours a night over the course of a week and you normally need to get up at 6:00 am, hold off going to bed until midnight, even if you feel sleepy before then. The aim is to build up your “sleep pressure” so that you fall asleep quickly when you go to bed, and get a more solid night’s sleep, too.
This practice could help you regain confidence in your ability to nod off soon after your head hits the pillow and keep blissfully sleeping until it’s time to get up.
Keeping track in your journal, when you’ve found that for five or six days you’re sleeping for most of the six hours you’re in bed, go to bed fifteen minutes earlier. Keep up this pattern and hopefully you’ll be able to consolidate a better one, with longer and better sleep.
Plus you’ll boost your sleep confidence — and fall in love with your bed again.
201 ✦ Do yoga daily
Whether you prefer downward dog or camel pose, yoga moves could help you get better z’s. The stretches can help calm your nervous system whenever you’re feeling overstimulated or stressed. A Harvard Medical School study found that insomniacs who were taught yoga and practiced it every day for eight weeks improved their sleep quality, dropping off more quickly and staying asleep for longer.6
Join a local class or learn at home from a DVD or YouTube videos online. Remember, you don’t have to be an expert or wonderfully flexible to get the benefits of yoga.
Doing it daily seems to provide the best benefits, so try to incorporate a few yoga poses and breathing exercises every morning or after work.
202 ✦ Stay regular, but don’t obsess about it
Our bodies like routine, so sticking to a regular sleep schedule, like we did as little kids, could help synchronize our sleep–wake cycle and strengthen our bodies’ circadian rhythms. This means going to bed at the same time every night and waking up the same time every morning, even on weekends or after you’ve had a bad night and the temptation is to sleep in.
With good routines, your body gets to know exactly when it should be releasing your sleep and wake hormones. If you keep changing your bedtimes and wake times, or sleep in for hours on the weekend, you may well send confusing messages to your inner body clock.
Of course, you don’t need to keep to a completely tight schedule — we all have busy lives when sometimes it’s just impossible to get to bed on time or wake on time in the morning. So the caveat is this: worrying unduly about being late to bed and sticking to a strict schedule will just stress you out. And that’s not conducive to falling asleep quickly.
But if you can try to keep to within an hour of your regular times, the payoff could be better sleep.
203 ✦ Get enough exercise
If there’s one thing we should all be doing to improve our overall health it’s getting plenty of exercise. Not only can it boost our cardiovascular health, help lower blood pressure, and tackle obesity, but numerous studies have shown that being active, whether you’re a young adult or a retiree, can have a big effect on how well you sleep.7
It’s clear that taking part in regular exercise can help us drop off, increase how long we sleep, help us get more restorative sleep, and wake less during the night. It doesn’t seem to matter what type of exercise you do — aerobic or a mixture of aerobic and resistance training. The key seems to be to make it a regular habit, as well as to reach at least the current recommended guidelines for physical activity. This means aiming to be active every day, and that over a week we should be doing at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise such as biking or brisk walking, in bouts of 10 minutes or more; or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity spread across the week; or combinations of the two. Examples of vigorous activities are running and playing sports like soccer.
Health guidelines also say we should be doing muscle-strength-training exercises, such as lifting weights, at least two days a week.
Your body temperature stays elevated for a few hours after exercise. As your core temperature needs to drop in order for you to fall asleep easily, it’s best, if you can, to avoid anything but light exercise such as gentle stretching, restorative yoga, or a leisurely walk within a couple of hours of bedtime.
204 ✦ Be kind to yourself when you can’t sleep
If you’re lying awake at night feeling frustrated and angry with yourself for being unable to nod off, try treating your struggling mind and body with kindness instead.
By soothing ourselves we trigger the release of oxytocin, which can help us feel calm. Research also shows that feeling cared for can lead to less stress. In one study people were asked to imagine receiving compassion from someone.8 They were verbally prompted every sixty seconds with statements such as “Allow yourself to feel that you are the recipient of great compassion,” or “Allow yourself to feel the loving-kindness that is there for you.” The result? Afterward, the participants were found to have lower levels of cortisol, a hormone that will surely stop you from sleeping.
When we’re being self-critical, on the other hand, our bodies see it as an attack of sorts, and go into fight-or-flight mode, leaving us feeling tense and edgy.
Start by listening carefully to how your body and mind are feeling. Notice any tension or anxiety but don’t fight it or try to fix it. Instead — though you may feel a little silly at first — try tenderly stroking your arm or face, or gently tap your body as you’d try to comfort a baby or small child who was struggling to sleep.
Talk soothingly to yourself. Use phrases like “Be calm, be peaceful. You’ve had a long day. Relax now.” Showing yourself compassion can switch off your stress response and trigger the relaxation response instead.
There, there.
205 ✦ Go forest bathing
Shinrin-yoku is a Japanese term meaning to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the forest. This practice of forest bathing — walking slowly through woods and forests, watching nature and inhaling the trees’ essential oils — has been found to offer a host of physiological and psychological health benefits. These include helping to lower stress, to boost the immune system, and to improve people’s mood.
And it seems trees could also help you get better sleep. A Japanese study revealed that wandering through woods improved the depth and quality of the participants’ sleep.9
If you have countryside, woods, or forests near you, spend time exploring them and walking mindfully through them, using all of your senses to soak up the atmosphere around you.
206 ✦ Or bring the forest indoors
If you can’t go down to the woods today or you live in the middle of a city, try bringing the forest indoors — it can offer the same benefits.
Use essential oils from trees such as eucalyptus, Douglas fir, or cedarwood to scent your home in oil burners or diffusers. Bring plants into your house and workplace. Studies have shown that just looking at foliage plants, roses, and bonsai trees can reduce stress levels and relax the body and mind.10
207 ✦ You can bounce back
If you’ve had a couple of sleepless nights, it can set off a vicious circle of sleeplessness. Why? Because if you start to worry — panic, even — about what the lack of sleep is doing to your health, how you’re going to cope at work, how tired you’re going to look, how on earth you’re going to function generally . . . and so on, and on, and on . . . your brain can’t switch off and let you sleep . . . leading to more and more sleepless nights.
But the good news is that you can bounce back from a couple of bad nights. Scientists have discovered that the body has its own clever recovery system that helps make up for small periods of lost sleep, by spending more time in the deep sleep stages once we do fall asleep — the kind that restore us both physically and mentally — and less in the lighter stages.
So you can make up for the sleep debt of a couple of wakeful nights over the next two nights. Armed with this knowledge, don’t let worry keep you awake!
208 ✦ Try autogenic training
This relaxation method can teach you how to calm your nervous system and even gain some measure of control over your heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing. You can sign up for a course, or there are apps to help you learn the technique.
A study carried out by the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine found that people who underwent an eight-week autogenic training course fell asleep more quickly at bedtime as well as if they woke during the night.11 Plus, they felt more energized and refreshed when they woke up.
This method, a form of self-hypnosis, works on the premise that relaxation can be induced by suggestion. You learn to focus awareness on different parts of the body, then nurture sensations of warmth, tiredness, or heaviness — for instance, by repeating to yourself a script containing lines like “My right arm is heavy, my left arm is heavy, my arms are heavy.” “My right foot is warm, my left foot is warm, my feet are pleasantly warm.” “My heartbeat is calm and regular.”
In some ways it’s like a verbal body scan. You can practice the exercises a few times a day and during your bedtime wind-down routine.
209 ✦ Do a tech detox
It’s become the norm to respond to texts and tweets in seconds — with some of us swiping and checking our phones a staggering 2,617 times in one day. But using tech nonstop like this can make us cranky and keep our brains wired so that we find it hard to wind down at bedtime. Some experts are already advising that excessive use of tech and social media should come with a health warning, many of them suggesting it’s more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol.
Numerous studies have found that the pressure to keep up to the minute with updating social networking sites results in a great deal of tension and anxiety. When a study from the University of Copenhagen asked regular Facebook users to take a break from the site for a week, they reported better life satisfaction, feeling happier and less stressed.12 Researchers at the University of California found office workers who checked their emails frequently had elevated “high-alert” heart rates, while those who took a five-day break from email experienced more natural, variable heart rates, a sign of good health.13
Being in a state of high alert throughout the day is just not conducive to sleeping well, as we have seen. So make an effort to take tech breaks — not just at night but throughout the day, too. If you’re a tech addict, at first try putting your phone away for short periods — while watching TV or walking the dog, for example. Extend the amount of time you go between picking it up. Turn off notifications or at least tweak what you receive, so that your phone isn’t constantly tempting you to take a look at Facebook or Twitter likes, app updates, or incoming email.
Ironically, there are apps that can help you detox from tech. The Forest app, for example, lets you plant a seedling and “grow” a tree, which will die if you use your phone for anything other than necessities like taking calls. Plus, you receive credits to use to plant real trees around the world, thus enabling you to play your part in helping the environment.
210 ✦ Check your meds
Lots of commonly prescribed pills, such as alpha-blockers and beta-blockers (used to combat high blood pressure), SSRIs (selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors) for depression, and corticosteroids used to treat inflammation and rheumatoid arthritis, have been shown to disturb sleep in some people. Some over-the-counter medicines such as pain-relief or cold and flu treatments can contain caffeine, and ingredients in decongestants can mimic the effects of adrenaline, causing nervousness, a fast heartbeat, and insomnia.
If you think that your medication may be affecting your ability to sleep well, read the accompanying leaflet thoroughly and talk with your doctor or pharmacist about looking at any alternatives or about changing the time of day you take your pills.
211 ✦ Don’t fear waking during the night — it’s normal
If you wake up with an “Oh no, not again, why me?!” attitude, immediately anxious that you won’t be able to fall back to sleep — then you probably won’t. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and often one that subsequently happens night after night.
But what if you knew that waking up several times a night is absolutely normal and that it happens to everyone, so it’s really no big deal?
We sleep in cycles averaging about ninety minutes each. As we reach the end of one cycle, we may wake for a short period before slipping quite seamlessly into the next one. Regular stirrings may possibly hark back to when we were cavemen and we’d wake periodically to scan for predators. They also give us a chance to change position, of course, so we don’t get sore points or dead arms. Good sleepers might not even notice that they’ve woken, or they just turn over and immediately fall back to sleep. Problems start when you realize you’ve woken, then get anxious about being unable to nod off again.
When you do wake like this, try not to feel frustrated. Instead, accept it as a normal part of your sleep cycle. Smile, breathe deeply, and enjoy the fact that you’re lying in bed and that it’s not yet time to get up.
Recognizing that waking is a normal part of the night should make you more relaxed about it and help you drop off again quickly.
212 ✦ Clear the air
It has been found that people who live in areas with high air pollution can be up to 60 percent more likely to sleep poorly than those who live in areas with cleaner air.14 It could be that the pollution causes irritation in our noses and throats, which can affect sleep, or even that very small particles can get into the bloodstream and affect the regulation of sleep in the brain.
Try using an air purifier to clean the air in your home. Some have built-in sensors that switch on the appliance when the air quality drops — for example, if there’s a build-up of traffic outside.
If you are using one in your bedroom, make sure you choose a quiet model. Some come with a special night-mode setting designed not to disturb your sleep.
213 ✦ Get needled
Studies suggest that acupuncture can be an effective treatment for insomnia, concluding that individuals who had acupuncture sessions fell asleep faster and experienced a better quality of sleep than those who had sham acupuncture or a placebo.15
This ancient Chinese medicine uses needles to stimulate pressure points on the body to influence the nervous system and relieve stress and tension. It’s also thought to increase the body’s nighttime secretion of melatonin, the sleep hormone.
Do find a reputable, qualified practitioner — ask for recommendations and visit the website of the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM), the US’s main regulatory body for the practice. Don’t expect a quick fix, though. Most studies have shown that treatment involves at least five weeks of regular sessions to see effects on sleep.
214 ✦ Stop smoking
It’s as simple as that, I’m afraid. Puffing is not only linked to lung cancer and heart disease: research has shown it could turn you into a poor sleeper, too.16 Nicotine is a stimulant, so smoking too close to bedtime can stop you from nodding off. In addition, dependency can cause sufferers to wake in the night because of withdrawal symptoms.
Breathing difficulties among smokers can also make for restless nights. A study from the University of Nebraska Medical Center found that smokers were two and a half times more likely to have obstructive sleep apnea — where the airway becomes totally blocked for ten seconds or more — than non- and former smokers.17
To try to quit, visit betobaccofree.gov or get in touch with Quitline: 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669), a free telephone support service that helps people who want to stop smoking. Calls are diverted to your own state Quitline, which offers advice, practical information, counseling, and ways to cope with nicotine withdrawal as well as free or discounted medications to help in some instances.
215 ✦ Don’t fight for more sleep than you need
Getting eight hours’ sleep a night might seem to be the Holy Grail when it comes to recommendations for optimum amounts. But do we all really need that much? It’s been a contentious issue among sleep scientists, but most would now agree that just as we all need to eat differing amounts of calories to keep a steady weight, so we all have different sleep needs.
Your personal ideal sleep quota can depend on everything from your genetics to how active you are and your general health. While some of us thrive on eight hours, others get by on six and a half. The key is there’s no need to obsess about how much sleep you’re getting if you don’t feel excessively sleepy during the daytime. Remember, we all get dips and troughs in how alert we are through the day, no matter how much sleep we get.
So the message is this: if you’re heavily focusing on (and fretting about) achieving a solid eight hours a night, then you’re creating unnecessary stress that could, ultimately, stop you from sleeping!
Think about setting yourself lesser goals and instead, focus on getting good quality rest. If you relax more about exactly how much sleep you’re getting, you never know, you may just achieve more sleep anyway.
216 ✦ Get some vitamin sea
Take a trip to the coast whenever you can! Not only has research found that people living within a half mile of the sea generally feel healthier than those living further away,18 but a report by the UK National Trust found that people who took a coastal walk slept on average forty-seven minutes longer that night than they did the night before, and thirty-five minutes longer than people who took a walk inland.19
Some experts say that listening to ocean waves has a calming effect and that it changes the frequency of our own brain waves, putting us into a mildly meditative state. It’s also thought that our brains hear the ocean, with its gentle and gradual variations in volume, as a nonthreatening noise, something we can almost ignore or zone out, but which at the same time activates the parasympathetic nervous system, slowing our heartbeat and relaxing us.
If you can’t get to the beach, listen to an app or a download of ocean-wave sounds at bedtime.
217✦ Time your bedtime perfectly
As noted earlier, we sleep in cycles of about ninety minutes, going from wakefulness to light sleep to deep sleep to REM — rapid eye movement, when the brain is active and dreams occur — then back again in continuous loops. The quality of sleep is measured by how many complete cycles we manage.
If you want to maximize the number of cycles you get and to wake up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day (and who doesn’t?), you should aim to wake every morning at the end of a sleep cycle when you’re naturally close to wakefulness, rather than in midcycle when you’re in deep, restorative sleep.
To increase your chances of waking up at the end of a cycle, do this quick calculation:
Decide on the time you need to be awake — say 7:00 am — then count backward in blocks of ninety minutes: 7:00 am; 5:30; 4:00 am; 2:30; 1:00 am; 11:30 pm; 10:00 pm. So you need to try to fall asleep around 10:00 or 11:30 pm to complete either five or six sleep cycles and wake up ready and raring to go!
Head off to bed about twenty minutes before your ideal sleep time.
218 ✦ How to beat jet lag, and sleep
Our body’s circadian rhythms can go loopy after crossing time zones on long-haul flights. When you get to your destination you’ll either feel sleepy when everyone else is enjoying their afternoon, or wide awake when everyone else is fast asleep. Try these tips to help you adjust and sleep like the locals:
219 ✦ To sleep soundly you must feel safe
You need to feel safe at night to sleep well. Any fears you may have about being robbed or having a fire in the house, for example — or even after watching a scary film or the news — could keep you in a state of high alert and interfere with your sleep.
So if you hear a movement or a creak that you can’t identify, your body’s sympathetic nervous system will activate your fight-or-flight response. This will release adrenaline, which ramps up your heart rate and blood pressure, making it difficult to switch off and sleep. If you do drop off, chances are you’ll still be in a state of hyperarousal, with your brain (and subconscious mind) more active than it should be, monitoring what’s going on around you. So sleep will be light, not refreshing, and you’ll easily be woken.
Take action to feel safer. This might mean getting a house alarm fitted and using it at night, checking smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are working, installing better door and window locks. It may also mean, if you find the news is disturbing you, that you take a break from watching or listening to any updates after 6:00 pm. And avoid horror films, true-life crime stories, and disturbing books before bed.
If you do suffer from fear or anxiety at night generally, then try to make your evenings calm and carefree — watch some comedy or a lighthearted film, or read a book that won’t put you on edge at lights-out.
220 ✦ Forget rose-tinted glasses, go amber
So, we know that the blue light emitted by our smartphones, tablets, and laptops can keep us awake by suppressing melatonin production, but most of these devices have nighttime settings that emit amber instead of blue light to combat this problem. What, though, about the blue light that comes from our televisions, computers, and LEDs? The answer could lie in putting on a pair of amber-tinted glasses.
Researchers from Columbia University asked a group of people diagnosed with insomnia to wear amber-tinted glasses for seven nights in the two hours before bedtime.20 Four weeks later, they were instructed to wear placebo clear glasses for another seven nights. It turned out that they had on average around thirty minutes’ longer and sounder sleep on the nights they’d worn the amber lenses.
Ask your optician about amber-tinted lenses, or search online.
221 ✦ Be more optimistic
While not getting enough sleep may make you grumpy and pessimistic, there’s a plethora of research out there that indicates being a pessimist could itself make you a poor sleeper.21 People with a negative outlook on life are generally more anxious and suffer more symptoms of stress, which we know can adversely affect sleep. For example, pessimists are more likely to lie in bed thinking about what could go wrong with their sleep tonight, rather than what could go right!
Optimistic people not only enjoy better sleep, but studies have shown they have better heart health and are more likely to live longer, too.22 But can you make yourself more optimistic? Yes, say psychologists, you can learn to adopt a more upbeat outlook. Try the following two tips:
Positive reframing
Next time you have a bad day take time to write down anything about it that was positive. Perhaps your car broke down. You moaned about it on Facebook and a friend you hadn’t spoken to in a while sent a message. She asked to meet up and you’ve set a date. Result! Your partner realized how stressed you were after having to wait around for a tow truck and cooked you your favorite meal to make you feel better. Not a bad day, after all?
Regularly practicing positive reframing like this can help train your brain to find the positives more often, without prompting, helping you cultivate a more automatically optimistic frame of mind.
Mix with positive people
Pessimistic people give off negative vibes, whereas optimistic people emanate positivity — and both can be contagious. If you spend too much time with people who complain or snipe, it rubs off on you. Similarly, being surrounded by happy individuals means you’re more likely to be cheerful, too, as research has shown.23 So surround yourself with as many positive people as you can.
222 ✦ Oils are essential!
Aromatherapy — inhaling essential oils extracted from aromatic plants — is believed to have a therapeutic effect on our brains and bodies, and has been shown in several studies to help calm the mind, relieve stress, and make it easier to drift off to dreamland.24
You can use aromatherapy oils in lots of different ways. Add them to your evening bath, dot onto pot pourri in the bedroom, warm them in a diffuser, mix with water and spritz onto your pillow, or add them to carrier oils and massage into your skin. Oils thought to have soporific and calming qualities include lavender, jasmine, geranium, cedarwood, and ylang-ylang.
Always check for contraindications, as some oils aren’t suitable for use during pregnancy, for example.