There’s one thing guaranteed to massively boost your performance. It’s so easy, you can do it with your eyes closed!
Sleep.
Improving sleep can be an elusive pipe dream for many people suffering from insomnia, racing thoughts, or chronic stress.
However, when you break it down and make it simple, like any other habit, success in transforming your sleep can be attained.
Here are 3 key steps to transform your sleep:
1. Be Consistent
Your body and brain crave consistency. Whether it’s stretching, eating habits, or sleep, giving the body and brain consistent feedback, will often yield consistent results.
Setting a lifestyle pattern of going to bed and waking up at the same times each day gives your body and brain the consistent feedback it needs to know what to do at night.
If you want to transform your sleep, go to bed and wake up at the same times, seven days a week.
2. Regulate Your Stress Levels
Stress is cumulative, meaning, it adds up. The smallest events happening throughout the day cause your stress response to activate.
This could be a sales meeting, exercising, eating a large meal, or even a lingering thought about a past or future event.
It is important to learn to oscillate between stress and recovery throughout the day so that, when it comes time to catch some Z’s, your brain has been primed to rest.
Oscillation can come from a breathing practice, walking in nature, talking with a loved one, or really anything that you find joy in doing.
If you want to transform your sleep, take time every day for recovery.
3. Plan the Timing of Your Last Meal
If you execute to perfection on numbers one and two in this list, but fail in number three, it is likely you will still struggle to attain restful sleep.
Eating too close to bedtime causes the body to be more focused on the process of digestion, rather than restoration.
During restful sleep, your body’s systems work hard at a micro-level to heal, repair, and cleanse the body for the next day. If you eat too late at night, this process gets put off until digestion is complete.
If you want to transform your sleep, avoid eating 2-3 hours prior to going to bed.