I occasionally have nights that I wake up approximately every 1-3 hours which is in between REM cycles or dreams for me. Those are usually the nights when I have had “too much” on my mind when going to bed. My life has a lot going on in it all the time and I don’t really want the excitement to fade down. So my “solution” came from the question “How do I get back to sleep super fast?”.
My Rule: I do NOT look at the clock when I wakeup. Knowing what time it is will only make me start calculating how much time I have left to sleep, if I will need caffeinated coffee in the morning, if I should cancel a mentally intensive project or meeting for the next day because of all the sleep I’m losing. If that resonates with you, the rest of this will probably help you too!
My Process: I need to distract my brain from whatever woke me up so that I can get back to sleep or I’ll go into motormind mode and at that point, my day will have pretty much begun. Even if I went to bed at 11 and woke up at midnight. So, distraction for me is key here!
I ask myself a silly question to distract myself from whatever thought woke me up and got my brain humming. I then focus on the first positive or funny thought that comes up from thinking about the question and/or it’s answer that comes to mind. I normally fall back asleep pretty fast, sometimes even giggling a little.
It took me a bit to train my brain do this, but it was worth it. Because of the distraction and switched focus, I am usually able to get right back to sleep with little to no large scale effects to my quality of sleep when I wake up the next morning.
I’ve had quite a few of these nights lately as I have been working at helping the engineering firm I work at as the IT Manager for 18+ years get acquired. I will wake up for “no reason” or be thinking about something that I’m working on, need to work on, etc. So I wake up pretty wired, I’ve got a cortisol spike going and I need to respond quickly.
My brain to the rescue…I ask my brain for a thought that will help me prepare for tomorrow. One of them was “remember heavy duty pants, lots of heavy lifting and crawling around on the floor tomorrow”. ***What follows is approximately what went through my brain that I remember*** It doesn’t all necessarily make sense if you aren’t in my head, so please bear with me a bit.
So, along comes the thought…I wonder if my pants are wrinkled…they will be…how many wrinkles will I get in my pants after crawling around on the floor? Maybe a million?! Ha ha ha, a million wrinkles. Ok, that’s what I focus on, a million wrinkles in my pants. I just let any other thought that tried to barge in flow through and return my focus to the humor of 1,000,000 wrinkles in my work pants.
Might have been 2 minutes, might have been 20 minutes, but I fell back asleep and when I woke back up 1 more time that night, I remembered wrinkly pants, smiled, and then went back to sleep quickly. The next day I was refreshed as usual from my sleep.
Just in case you’re wondering I have no idea how many wrinkles my pants got in them that day and actually haven’t even thought about that whole thing again until I wrote this. It’s just part of a process that I use to live the best life that I can!
That’s it for now. Thank you for reading. Make it a magnificent week. If you have an idea for an article or want to engage my consulting or research services, please contact me.
Wishing you happiness, health, and success!
-Gregg
