How to Turn Your Thoughts Off At Night & Fall Asleep Faster

hey it's Julia Cristina and if this is the first time we're connecting I'm a registered clinical therapist a life coach a researcher and an online course creator and today we're going to be talking all about sleep and specifically how to turn our brains off at night and get a good night's sleep because this is a big struggle for a lot of people and I probably don't need to tell you how much our sleep is connected to things like our physical health our mental health and well-being the quality of our relationships our self-esteem how we just sort of handle things in life that come up on a daily basis that getting adequate sleep is really important and they say that sleep is the new sugar meaning that a little while ago and maybe even still now sugar was seen as the root of all evil which we're not going to get into talking about that but now their research is shifting and they're showing how sleep is so often rooted at so many of the physical and mental health things that we struggle with so let's talk about this let's get right to this how do we turn our brains off at night and get a better night's sleep well the first one is pretty straightforward and this one just looks like dot not doing anything stimulating before bed because if it you know even if it's physically stimulating physically stimulating or mentally stimulating so the rule is that no exercise at least two hours before bed no vigorous exercise if it's doing some stretching or you know maybe a little bit of a little bit of light yoga that's different but no strenuous exercise at least two hours before bed because we need to give our give our bodies some time to unwind which helps to unwind our minds as well and then this also goes for mentally stimulating things so not having a screen time and the rule around that one is thirty minutes so no TVs no tablets no smartphones and there might be a hard one for a lot of us especially the smartphone or tablet thing and there's two reasons for that and the first one is you may have heard this already that smartphones and tablets emit a blue light so the light that the sort of normal light that's on the screen has this blue quality to it that messes with our circadian rhythm or our wake sleep cycles and so that's part of it and some people say well I've just got one of those filters on that takes out the blue light so it's not doing that but that's not the only thing that disrupts our sleep about about about technology about tablets or smartphones the other thing is that when we are on those devices typically we're not sitting and watching a scene of like a meadow or a babbling brook we are flicking and scrolling and clicking and there's all these images and all these things coming at us and really causing our brains to be overstimulated which is why we often have a hard time calming our minds down before bed this also means no stimulating controversial upsetting conversations before bed so no political debates no big arguments and and no having anything that's really stimulating like any even just even conversations before bed because that makes our brain start to go and it makes things start to spin it can be really hard to turn our thoughts off to calm things down if we're doing that before bed so having wind down time half an hour if it's you know anything to do with devices to hours if it's exercise maybe even longer if it's if it's if it's some challenging or difficult conversations giving ourselves that break that time the next one is to eat something now one of the things that often times people do if they're trying to manage their weight or trying to kind of be on like a diet regimen or whatever it is is that one of the rules that that has come up in a lot of the diets is don't eat past 6 or 7 o'clock at night and now that's fine if you're going to bed at 8 or 9 but if you're not eating past 7 o'clock and you're going to bed at 11 or 12 at night that's a really long time and so your body by the time you're going to that is hungry is stimulated and ready to eat and so it can be really hard to calm our body which then impacts our minds so it can be really hard to calm our body and minds if our bodies are hungry so giving ourselves having a little snack before bed doesn't have to be a huge meal because that's not good either for eating too much it can be overstimulating for us but having a little bit of a snack and there are foods that have natural calming chemicals in them so usually things that are higher in protein or higher in complex carbohydrates so things like like raw nuts like almonds or walnuts cashews or pecans or whatever having a few of those before bed they're high in protein and they they're really satisfying so just having a small handful of those having some oatmeal oatmeal has some natural calming chemicals in it it's again it's a complex carbohydrate eggs are actually have been shown to have some natural calming tendencies or properties went to them so having some hard boiled eggs maybe even having some multigrain toast again that's higher in complex carbohydrates and and yogurt it's high in protein but not the sugary kind usually the kind of fuller the fuller fat plain kind and again of course warm milk because warm milk has tryptophan in it which is a natural sedative a natural calming chemical so having a snack before bed but a snack that is high in high in protein or high in complex carbohydrates can help with the body just being more calm which then impacts our minds the next one is more specifically to do with our thoughts and our minds inc because often many of us go to bed and we lay in bed and then we start thinking about all of the things that we want to get done the next day all the things that we need to do all the things that we don't want to forget to do and then we have a hard time turning our minds off because we start thinking don't forget this you need to do that and make sure you do that so one strategy that's really effective around this one is to do something called a brain dump and maybe you've heard of this before maybe you haven't but that means just sitting down fifteen minutes or so before bed and writing down everything that you don't want to forget for the next day or the next week or whatever it is anything that's in your mind that you're telling yourself make sure you don't forget this write it down and then you don't have to worry about not forgetting it you don't have to lay there thinking don't forget this and how are you gonna remember that and you better be sure to do this so that will help to clear out the mind as well the next one is around those among us who are night time warriors now you might be someone who feels like you can go through your day and life feels pretty not manageable and things are pretty okay but then something happens at night when you lay down you get into bed and all of a sudden your brain starts worrying about everything things you didn't even know that you were worried you were worried about they just start coming into your mind and you start worrying about them so for situations like this it's really helpful to sit down and make a worry list so write down everything that you are worried about and then next to the ones that have a solution write down the solution how will I deal with this how will I resolve this how will I get through this for those worries that don't necessarily have an easy or straightforward solution keep them on your list and put them aside and tell yourself if I need to I will worry about these tomorrow because sometimes what can happen is we keep those worries in our mind because we worry about forgetting to worry about them I know we are such complex beings but it is true that we can think like if I need to I need to make sure that I worry about this so research actually shows that putting down the things that we're worried about and having a set time where we can worry to our hearts content helps to clear that stuff out of our minds so that we can be present and not worried about it now but with the commitment or the intention or the promise that I worry about it later or specifically from this time to this time our next one and this is a big perspective shift for those among us who 10 to be clock watchers who lay in bed and tell ourselves okay I'm in bed now and if I fall asleep now I will get enough sleep to feel good tomorrow okay self fall asleep now Paulo sleep fall asleep fall asleep fall asleep and then we lay then we're like how come I'm not falling asleep I need to follow see if we look over half an hour has gone by and I'm still not asleep so we tell ourselves okay I can I can still scrape by on this much sleep I'll be okay and we tell ourselves fall asleep fall asleep fell asleep and another hours gone by er or 45 minutes or half an hour or whatever it is we tell ourselves oh my goodness I'm gonna be a total mess tomorrow I'm gonna be a total wreck tomorrow I'm not gonna be able to handle it I'm gonna fall apart I'm gonna be grumpy I'm gonna be irritable I'm gonna be sad whatever it is I'm not gonna be able to think clearly then we get ourselves even more worked up and can't fall asleep but the truth is is that there's been research that shows that we get eighty percent of the benefits of sleep simply from laying still and relaxing our bodies that our bodies and our minds are are regenerating themselves they are getting that rest just from laying there and relaxing so to remind yourself of that so you don't need to be quite as concerned about not falling asleep right away remind yourself I am getting so many of the benefits just from laying here now Filey and another thing when it comes to quieting our mind at night is to practice mindful meditation and that might be something that's new to you you may not have heard of it before but I have a free 10-minute guided mindfulness audio exercise for you to do that will really help you to turn your brain off at night and get a good night's sleep and really will be really calming for you so that you can fall asleep faster so make sure you grab that audio I'm gonna put it in the comment section below if you're new to mindfulness don't know what it is when you get that audio I also send you a link to a video that explains just simply what mindfulness is if you're not entirely sure so make sure you grab that before you go and if you haven't already like the video share it out subscribe to the channel so we can stay connected and come and join my Facebook group good for me group comm I'll put the link below there as well it's a group of some of the most supportive kind caring compassionate and fun men and women so come and join our community on Facebook really good to see you really good to connect with you until next time take good care

Channel: Julia Kristina Counselling

Views: 27,667

Rating: 4.9706421 out of 5

Keywords: how to turn your mind off at night, how to stop overthinking at night, how to stop being anxious about sleep, how to stop feeling anxious at night, getting a good night sleep, julia counsellor, J-D Robertson, how to stop your thoughts at night, how to improve sleep quality, how to turn your thoughts off at night, how to fall asleep fast, ways to turn your thoughts off at night, turn anxious thoughts off at night, how to stop worrying at night, turn racing thoughts off

Id: tCeJSb-CoEk

Length: 11min 35sec (695 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2017