Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. – Mark Twain

You wake up in the morning, get ready for work, wake up the kids, get them dressed and drop them off to school. While on your way to work, you get stuck in traffic while chowing down on your breakfast. When you walk into your office 15 minutes late, you have ten calls on hold for you, and six memos from the other side of the building. By the time lunch rolls around, you’ve already written three reports on stuff you don’t even really care about, but you know you have two more to write so you skip lunch and keep working until 2 pm. Then you finally walk out into the hallway, when your boss comes up to you with a crisis situation that you need to handle right away. You get back on the phone and make some calls, which seem to last three hours each. When you’ve finally clocked out, you sit once again in traffic and wonder what the hell you’re doing with your life. Read More.

O sleep! O gentle sleep!
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
2 Henry IV (3.1.7-16)

How often has “Nature’s soft nurse” become a hateful bitch who delights in not coming when you need her most?

Here are tips to lure the soft nurse back with all of her powers to heal.

1. Use your bed exclusively for sleeping. Get your Pavlovian self used to the idea that when you head hits that pillow, there is only one thing to do. No emailing. No phoning. No journaling. No Reading, especially page turning novels. No TV. If you can manage it, find another bed to have sex in rather than the one you sleep in.
2. No alcohol, especially on work nights. Alcohol is the chief villain that wakes you up in the night and won’t let you fall back to sleep.
3. No caffeine after three in the afternoon.
4. Eat early. Eat lightly. Your body cannot possibly rest when it’s trying to digest a large steak and a piece of cream cake.
5. No tobacco at least an hour before bedtime, preferably longer. Tobacco gets your heart rate up. What do you need that for?
6. No napping after dinner. If you can’t stay awake, get up out of the lounger and take a walk. Stay awake until a reasonable bedtime.
7. Are you taking medications? Could they be conflicting with the soft nurse?
8. Avoid sugar at night. God knows what your system goes through struggling to store that excess energy.
9. Do something relaxing two hours prior to bedtime. Take a walk. Read. Enjoy mind candy on TV.
10. Black out your bedroom. Make it as dark as possible. Some research has shown that very dark equals very restful. If you live in a city and can’t get total darkness, try an eye mask. I like the contoured ones that don’t press against my eyeballs.

Need a snack before bed? Try a smoothie with skim milk, banana and a reasonable scoop of your favorite protein. The goal is to take in the amino acid tryptophan, which is thought to promote sleep.

If all else fails, try C-span. Turn on a C-span channel and set your timer to turn it off in 30-45 mins. Turn off the picture. Go to your bed and make a mighty effort to listen. The more dense the program, the better. Something like a congressional hearing on highway appropriations should do nicely. When you notice your mind wondering, gently take it back to the hearing. Most of the time, you won’t remember when you fell asleep or even what the hearing was about. C-span, like the good nurse, will “steep your senses in forgetfulness.”

Warning: don’t choose anything political that’s going to get you riled up.

About the Author

Harry Chittenden lives in Florida and gets great sleep aboard an old houseboat that he’s redoing. He works out, eats really well, and enjoys doing the tango. He blogs at http://basicpursuits.com.

Photo Credit: Noah