Shift Your Mindset, Keep Your Focus
Written by Cindy Leavitt
I think of sleep as one of my superpowers. I can typically fall asleep within a couple of minutes after climbing into bed and rarely have insomnia. Unfortunately, as I have been moving and changing jobs, my sleeping superpower has gone on hiatus, and I have been waking up several times each night and unable to go easily fall back asleep.
Because this has been happening for several weeks, I have had a chance to try many different techniques and remedies, and none of them have been particularly effective. I found that as the weeks went by, when I woke up in the middle of the night, my anxiety about not being able to go back to sleep was increasing and compounding my insomnia.
After several weeks of the same approach, I shifted my mindset. I decided that I was not going to think of this as a problem but started paying close attention to what my body was saying that it needed and doing what it was saying it needed without added internal commentary.
The first night after I decided to shift my thinking, I woke up at 1:30 am and immediately started thinking about a couple of things I needed to do, so I got up and started doing the tasks. After I completed the tasks, I felt sleepy and went back to bed and slept for a few more hours. Finally, I woke up feeling refreshed and not tired.
The next night, I woke up around 2 am and felt tired, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.
Every night has been different. I have started to pay attention to when I feel sleepy at night, and instead of finishing watching a show or writing an email, I stop and go to bed.
This mindset shift has been helping me get the rest I need, even if it is in a different pattern than I have in the past.
Accepting what has changed turns out to be the most effective way forward. Resistance only shifts our focus and energy to what we don’t want, making it more likely to happen. This is especially difficult to do when we lose one of our superpowers.