Can’t Sleep? Have a Bedtime Snack!
How Eating Two Kiwis Before Bed Helped People Fall Asleep Faster, Sleep Longer, and Wake Up Less
Why Can’t I Fall Asleep
This might help somebody, somewhere, fall asleep. Even if it helps just one person, I'll take the win.
Great question! You tell me why you can’t fall asleep, rather, you tell yourself why you can’t fall asleep.
First and foremost, I firmly believe that most problems we face can be solved by asking ourselves what we should do to solve that specific problem. You are the closest to the problem, you feel the pain and the struggle, day in, day out. Who am I to tell you what to do? I’m a nobody doing nobody things, and can only make guesses as to why you have a problem with falling asleep. And you, well, you are somebody, and that somebody can do something about this, I can’t. What I can do is write these articles and hope that maybe this will spark something inside of you that will legitimately help you solve your problem, your way.
Sleep is never one size fits all. It is individual because only you can fall asleep for yourself. If I could give you some of my sleep to help you feel better, I wouldn’t, because I also need as much sleep as I can get. That being said, the human race has fallen asleep every day for entire existence. Sleep is life. Without it, we become a husk, a nobody that used to be somebody. Without sleep, we stop functioning, we stop acting like ourselves. We make wrong decisions easier, lose patience faster, and can’t focus on the things that matter most to us. If we can no longer act in the manner we expect of ourselves, if we can’t do the things we want to do and behave the way we want to behave. In essence, if we can’t be who we want to be and who we expect ourselves to be, then we stop being us and become something else, but it’s not me, it’s not you, not really. If not having enough sleep causes this to happen and stops us from being who we want to be, then by not getting enough sleep, we lose ourselves, we lose who we are, for a moment. The longer we go without sleep, the further we go from being ourselves. Sleep is your life, so I ask you again, why can’t you fall asleep? How is sleep not your top priority every single day?
I used to be like that. Sleep not being a top priority. It was an afterthought. Something that came after everything else. I was wrong. It is something that comes before everything else. Let me explain. This is a mindset shift. Think of a toaster, yes, a toaster, mainly because that’s what I could think of while writing this article to explain the concept. You can put any number of things in it, bread, bagel, frozen waffle, English muffin (but that gets a little messy), etc. Side tip, do not place anything metal inside of a toaster. You can change the settings to match your desired outcome, soft and warm, or hot and crunchy, a real choose your own adventure kind of appliance. So many possibilities with endless choices all catered to what you, personally, want. A toaster only works with power, you gotta plug it in. It can’t function without something driving it forward. I’m sure there are much better comparisons that much smarter people than myself have used, but I think you get the picture. Sleep is the source that drives you forward, that gives you the recovery power to be who you need to be.
These are some questions that can potentially help you out:
- Why can’t I fall asleep?
- The first thing that comes to your head. Say it out loud, write it down.
- For example: I work as an engineer and go into the office 5 days a week and keep to a specific schedule. When it’s the weekend, that schedule of when I go to bed and wake up goes out the window.
- What is something I can do right now to help with that?
- Make a list, even if the list only has one thing on it, that will help.
- For example: I need to wake up at the same time every day, weekday or weekend. I need to go to bed at the same time every day, weekday or weekend.
- How do I accomplish that?
- Make a plan. If you don’t know how to make a plan. Send me an email, let’s work through it together.
- For example: I am going to set an alarm to each night for when I need to go to bed and an alarm each morning for when I need to wake up.
- Why haven’t I done this before, what roadblocks are present?
- List out potential things stopping you from doing this.
- For example: I like to stay up late on Friday because I feel like I’ve worked really hard all week long and all I want to do is relax and enjoy my free time and that usually means staying up later to watch TV and relax.
- What can I do to roadblock the roadblock?
- List out everything you can do to figure out how to overcome the roadblock listed above.
- For example: My work-life balance is out of whack. So maybe that’s why I feel like I need to overcompensate for my lack of relaxation during the work week. Thinking about why I feel overworked could stem from me not taking breaks or lunch during the work week. I may be a workaholic. So, I am going to start taking quick 10-15 minute at least in the morning. I’ll work up to both morning and afternoon. I will also take a lunch break where I don’t eat and work at the same time.
- This is not a question, obviously. After a week or so of executing on your plan, honestly evaluate if it helped or not.
- If you didn’t actually do it, go through the same questions but try a different way to roadblock the roadblock.
- If you want someone to ping ideas off of. I’m here for you, send me an email and we can figure it out together.
Thanks for reading. If you are reading this when you should be sleeping. I appreciate the sacrifice but for the love, turn off the screen and close your eyes.
-Mike Lindsey
P.S.
I may add pictures later to make this more exciting, I dunno, that’s a lot work and I need to get ready for bed. Picture somebody shrugging…
Share the Post:
Related Posts