Why sleep is so important for your mental health

I’m John Glanvill, author of The Calmness in Mind Process for Overcoming Anxiety, OCD and Depression.

In this video, I will be talking about sleep, how it seems to work, how critical it is for our mental and physical health, tips for improving our sleep and comments on how catastrophic not getting enough sleep is for our wellbeing.

I had purposely delayed discussing this topic until now until you had become more aware that psychology (or we could say the science of mental health) is not truly a science, not like physics or chemistry which is provable and repeatable.

Emotional wellbeing is something that has so many variables and is the outcome of the deeply interconnected function of chemistry, biology, physiology, genetics, parental influences, sibling positionality, cultural inputs, religion and how open we are to adopting skills that will enhance our abilities to handle the ever-changing environments we live in.

In psychology, there is a lot of guesswork going on – often, they don’t know what will happen, and different people respond differently to the same stimuli – a pandemic might scare some people yet not bother others.

In fact, might the story about an illness may be more hazardous than the actual illness itself?

Meaning, a person might not have the illness, but because they are petrified of catching it, the fear it engenders stresses their immune systems, thus making them more susceptible to any illness.

As you know, this program is all about common sense – therefore, and undoubtedly, developing and maintaining a healthy immune system – through calmness and rest is one place we should prioritise our attention and actions.

In addition, mainstream medicine is often treating the symptoms, not the causes.

As I have said many times, if you have depression, most conventional doctors treat those symptoms by giving you anti-depressant drugs to try and lift your mood.

But they don’t explore the causes – loneliness, social isolation, poverty, grief, boredom, working too hard, low self-esteem, exhaustion, trapped trauma – they are not exploring whether your physical, mental and spiritual needs are being met.

They are likely to prescribe a sleeping tablet rather than explore in-depth why you can’t sleep, then teach you what to do to return to a healthy sleep pattern.

It seems evident to me, but many people seem to miss this – we need to treat all aspects of ourselves – because you may be physically well, but mentally ill, or mentally well but spiritually void – or any combination of the three – therefore finding a balance between all three, is likely the most effective path forward.

That’s why what I am teaching you here is about drilling down to the fundamental questions of how do we humans operate, how can we influence our own biology and chemistry – Who are we? What are we looking for?

And what can we do at the causational level to (over time) engender within us good symptoms like calmness, pleasure, joy, fulfilment, connection, contentment, meaning and love – or whatever else it is that you are knowingly (or unknowingly) desiring?

Now, as hard as this is for me to do, I have decided to stay out of big pharmaceutical company strategies, illness and mental health as a revenue stream and governments using fear to restrict the free-thinking of their population, type arguments.

Because in my mind (and I’m an idealist) – in an ideal world, Doctors and hospitals would be paid on how well their patients were, how often they didn’t see them, how quickly they recovered from operations, how few drugs they were on, how little of a drain they were on medical resources and how happy their patients were.

This would mean Doctors and hospitals would be teaching wellness, the value of eating healthily, taking exercise, having self-esteem, meditation, how to boost an immune system – and, of course, the essential function that sleep performs in our emotional and physical wellbeing.

What’s the common link between all people with anxiety, OCD and depression?

Well, it’s exhaustion, they are tired, they feel lethargic, they don’t have any energy.

So, to me, as an engineer, my first guess at where to start when looking to solve this problem – would be to focus on sleep, the recharging of energy and the disconnection from anything leeching energy from you.

So, although I don’t claim to be a sleep specialist, I would like to share with you what I learned, and how I behaved, which transformed me from an insomniac who hated sleep – to a reasonably good sleeper – who takes sleep very seriously indeed – and who still wants to embrace and incorporate sleep even more deeply into my life.

And even if you are a good sleeper, I would urge you to watch this so you can be more aware of those you care for who may not be good sleepers and perhaps influence your children into life-enhancing habits at a young age.

My goal in this video is to give you enough information to inspire you further to explore this topic and teach you strategies that I think are definitely worth experimenting with.

My learning to embrace sleep, by changing my story about sleep, was in the top three actions that led me out of anxiety, OCD, and depression.

But know this, disrupting THE bodies sleep is in the top three weapons your little eight-year-old uses to sabotage and trap you!

So, though not easy, it is a struggle well worth winning!

I’m told as a child, I would only sleep for a few hours each night and until about fifteen years ago – the story I told about myself was that I didn’t need much sleep, I was a night owl, I could (and would) sometimes not even go to bed if I was working on a project or having fun with friends.

I could go to bed late and still get up early for work; I could handle jet lag and just work through it, I could pick up any slack on a project and get it done.

I used to tell myself – there’s no point trying to sleep on an aeroplane as I couldn’t do it – so I rarely even tried, I just watched the films and drank their wine.

I hated Sunday nights as I would spend most of the night just awake ruminating over the upcoming week, getting more and more frustrated as I needed sleep but could not get it, then I would fall into a deep sleep only to be awoken an hour later from a deep slumber by my alarm clock.

And although I never felt rested when I awoke, I would just jump in the shower and slurp down some coffee as the process of waking myself up.

And if there were any distractions in the room, like noises, being too hot, too much light, people snoring or breathing heavily, these would drive me mad and become the focus of my attention and the projected blame for me not being able to sleep.

I believed I was a poor sleeper and that was that unlucky me (or it’s not fair) – and although I wouldn’t say I liked it – I thought there was nothing I could do about it.

I hated sleep – I hated going to bed – I hated laying awake all night, and I honestly thought that I didn’t need much sleep – and worse still, that there were no consequences to pay for my sleep deficit.

If I napped in the afternoon, I would go into a deep sleep but then feel groggy all evening – and wouldn’t be able to sleep that night, so I avoided napping too.

You could say my attitude towards sleep was that it’s not very important, and it’s quite a nuisance in my life and that those who could sleep were just lucky and perhaps even lazy!

Then, in 2007, three things happened simultaneously, which became the catalyst for a massive transformation in my attitudes and behaviours towards sleep.

The first one was working for myself, starting my own company; I wanted a few rules that I could incorporate into my new business that would suit my happiness – which would be hard to have if I worked for other people.

Those four rules I chose were:

1. I wouldn’t see clients Friday evening or at weekends.
2. I would spend at least one hour per day during work time to learn
   something new each day.
3. I would never interrupt what I was doing to answer the phone.
4. My working day wouldn’t start before 10:00 am.
   

And it’s that last point that is interesting – because I no longer had to get up at 06:00 in the morning to travel to an office, I could allow myself to wake each morning naturally, and my natural waking time turned out to be between 08:30 and 09:30 each morning.

My brother, who also works for himself, naturally wakes up at about 05:00 in the morning.

He’s genetically a Lark, and I’m genetically an Owl; it’s just the way it is, neither is right or wrong; it’s just in our make-up. He adapts that behaviour to his company; I adapt my innate behaviour to mine.

I think that it may be a little harder for Owls, though, as life tries to get them up earlier for school, office work and to fit in with society.

To this day, I rarely use an alarm clock, I go to bed at between 11:30 and 12:30, and I wake up naturally between 08:30 and 09:30.

The second thing to happen was I studied how to meditate; I retrained myself to see that thoughts were of the mind, the mind was of the brain, and the brain was of the body. And that I was consciousness, the observer, the awareness that was witnessing those thoughts.

This stopped me from getting caught up in the thoughts and taught me I didn’t need to find answers to the minds incessant questions – they weren’t my problem.

They say ignorance is bliss – or perhaps a better way of looking at it comes from the great spiritual teacher J Krishnamurti – who when asked, “Why are you always happy?” He replied, “I don’t mind what happens next.” And the Buddha said, “The route of suffering is attachment.”

I was slowly seeing that my observer could let go, could have no opinions and could forgive – but my little eight-year-old (or my ego) had an opinion on everything!

In the early days, I said to one of my meditation teachers, “I am enjoying learning to meditate but I don’t really have enough time to apply to it as I am often too busy working.”

She reminded me of the wise proverb – “I try to meditate for at least 30 minutes each day unless I am far too busy – because then, I like to meditate for an hour each day!”

She said, “Make time for it! If you are too busy, you are doing too much – do less.”

She also said, “You told me you were a bad sleeper – why don’t you use that awake time at night to practise meditation?”

She added that she spent ten minutes as she dosed off reminding herself what was essential and ten minutes as she woke up consciously reminding her unconscious mind what she needed from it for the upcoming day.

So I began to copy her, and although it took me a long time to form that behaviour, it was life-changing when I did.

Now, the third thing to happen (and it’s funny how life seems to give you what you need just when you need it) is a friend leant me a book about sleep.

In it, it said something like; we can live without air for just a couple of minutes – and about three days before we die without water – and no more than eleven days without sleep, before we die!

As silly as it sounds, I had never classified sleep in the same category as life- giving factors such as air, water and food.

No person has ever lived more than eleven days without sleep and not died!

We can live longer without food than we can without sleep – I had never even thought about these things.

The Guinness book of records has even stopped reporting on the record for staying awake to stop people attempting it, as it is too dangerous!

Plus, there is tonnes of evidence that points to poor sleep causing weight gain, which may cause distress, which may cause anxiety, which may cause poor sleep patterns – and around and around you go.

But who thinks about focussing on sleep as a serious part of a weight-loss program? Well, I do…

And, although (as a therapist) I don’t work with weight loss, it is a subject that fascinates me – and a pattern I have seen repeatedly over the years – is when an overweight person’s partner passes away, they often lose weight and maintain a healthier weight far more easily than before.

And it’s often crossed my mind whether, during the relationship, when they shared a bed, the person trying to lose weight had encountered disrupted sleep from the other person snoring, breathing heavily or having an anti-social sleep pattern.

Many clients have complained to me that they don’t sleep well because of their partner snoring – and when I say sleep in the spare bedroom, they reply, “I can’t do that we always sleep together.”

Or they say, “My cat woke me up this morning as he was fidgeting on the bed” – and I say put him in the kitchen then, and they say, “But he always sleeps with me he likes it.”

Well, maybe the cat does like it, and maybe you are married and have always slept together – but a more wellbeing biased way of looking at it is…

Is my body getting the life-sustaining deep uninterrupted sleep it needs? And if not, what beliefs, habits, or stories do I need to change within myself?

In my case, this led to my partner and I having separate bedrooms for seven years until my sleeping patterns had become reformed.

Everything is linked; we need balance – work eight hours, play eight hours, sleep eight hours!

So, at that time, I was waking up to the concept that mind, body and spirit should all be working together – fuel, rest, repair, growth, connection, love, meaning and purpose – and I needed to find out how to incorporate all aspects of that into my life – and sleep was the bit I had been ignoring.

Whilst at the same time – I was being programmed by society, TV, mainstream media and my peers to achieve more, work harder, play harder, stimulate myself with caffeine and alcohol – sleep is for wimps, real leaders only need fours sleep and things like that.

Well, they are not the conditions the human body was designed to thrive in – and there are high prices to pay for not getting enough high-quality sleep.

Imagine you heard this commercial on the radio…

“Amazing breakthrough, scientists have discovered a revolutionary treatment that makes you live longer, it enhances your memory and makes you more creative, it makes you look more attractive, it keeps you slim and lowers food cravings, it protects you from cancer and dementia, it wards off colds and the flu, it lowers your risk of heart attacks and stroke, and diabetes. You’ll feel happier, less depressed and less anxious too – are you interested?”

Most people wouldn’t believe it – or would pay large sums to get this solution – but these are the provable facts about getting a good nights sleep – documented in over 17,000 scientific reports.

But, of course, who would financially benefit from you being well and healthy through something as freely available as sleep?

So, this, it seems, is why sleep is so rarely discussed, and those who sleep a lot are often called lazy.

As crazy as it sounds – it’s almost as if the powers that be – don’t want you to think clearly or be naturally well!

As I have said before, I think Doctors and the medical world do incredible things – but I can’t see why common sense escapes those organisations – why would

doctors be worked so hard and be so sleep-deprived when we have scientifically provable evidence that lack of sleep impairs judgement and biological health.

Let me give you some more facts:

Men who sleep for 5 hours or less have significantly smaller testicles than those who sleep for seven hours or more!

Men who sleep only 4 to 5 hours per night will have reduced testosterone levels like a man ten years older – so a lack of sleep will age a man by a decade.

Unless you get high-quality sleep after you learn something, your ability to retain information is compromised.

Just missing one night of sleep reduces the brains capacity to make new memories by 40%

Now, in my capacity as an anxiety therapist, some of the most common statements I hear are based on memory and learning, things like; – I just can’t retain information – I’m finding it impossible to revise – my brains all foggy – there’s no point me trying to read anything as I just forget it.

And it turns out that deep sleep – conditions the brain to be open to learning and memory, and poor sleep inhibits the brains capacity to learn and retain information.

You could say that deep sleep benefits the transfer of data from short term memory to long term memory.

Research is now revealing high correlations between poor sleep and dementia – I was always told that older people need less sleep – we know now, that’s false; they need just as much sleep as any adult – and those older people who get the most sleep have fewer medical ailments.

Consistently attaining 7 to 8 hours a night of deep sleep shows to be a significant factor in wellness – surely this should be obvious?

Still, for some reason, many people are in denial of the absolute importance of sleep, which dogs cats and hamsters just intrinsically know.

In the spring, when clocks go forward one hour, and we lose an hour of sleep due to daylight saving – during the following day, there is a 24% increase in heart attacks – such is the measurable effect that less sleep has on the body.

Conversely, in Autumn, when we gain an extra hour of sleep, heart attacks diminish by 21% the following day.

Other studies show that men who napped for 90 minutes each afternoon and slept well at night had four times fewer heart attacks and lived longer than men who didn’t.

And for students revising for exams, it has been proven that it is more effective to sleep well, then revise during the day, and then sleep well again, rather than staying up all night cramming.

It seems that the first night of sleep empties the brains short term memory, the revision fills the short term memory, then the second night of sleep converts that short term memory into long term memory and empties the short term memory again for the following day.

It’s been proven that learning this way can increase memory by 40% – Just by using the brain the way it was designed to be used, rather than thinking that we know best.

Good quality deep sleep extends your life, reduces illness and positively affects mood – can you see how (if you are a bad sleeper) forming a wonderful new relationship with sleep can improve your life enormously.

In 2007, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a part of the World Health Organization, classified the disruption of circadian cycles by shiftwork as a probable human carcinogen.

Now, this is important information but for some reason, most people are not getting this information from their doctors, schools or the mainstream media.

Now, as you do this research, you will be introduced to circadian rhythms and your chronotype; circadian rhythms are the bodies natural cycle of being awake and asleep, and of course, if you are trying to sleep at a time when your body is awake, then sleep will be more elusive, so it makes sense to understand your cycles and organise your life around them.

(add image)

Then, chronotypes are how we might label certain groups with similar circadian patterns like Larks who get up early and like to go to be early – and Owls who tend to sleep later and awaken later.

There are thought to be about six chronotypes that cover:

Morning Type
Evening Type
Highly Active Type Daytime Sleepy Type Daytime Type Moderately Active Type

(https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-say-there-are-6-human-chronotypes- not-just-morning-people-and-night-owls) image

I suggest you research your circadian rhythm and chronotype because I’m urging you to not fight your own biology – recognise it within you, then align with it.

We see it in babies and pets, their sleep patterns, eating patterns and toilet patterns; we know which part of the day they are most playful and when they are most likely to be grumpy.

Plus, we know if children miss sleep, there will be a price to pay the following day – well, it’s the same within us, via our emotional fluctuations and health implications – but we seem to ignore it!

I believe that lack of sleep and the overstimulation of our bodies and minds during both the day and night are plaguing our health worldwide.

In my experience, sleep is not taken as seriously as it should be by those experiencing anxiety, OCD, and depression. I would urge them to spend six months to a year, taking sleep seriously – though hard, it is one of the most beautiful things you can do for yourself.

One last thing in this section, because we are biologically driven by our circadian cycle, once we understand it and align with it, it will mean that the time we go to sleep and get up should (as much as possible) be maintained every day, all week.

As I said earlier, I try to operate between a consistent sleep window between 11:00 and 09:00

However, this may cause some significant changes in your life – but I think they are worthwhile. It may mean that you have to talk to your employer about starting earlier or later – or exploring different shifts that might be more suited to your chronotype.

At very least looking to add a nap to your day if your job and your cycles are not compatible, but remember, it’s your job that is not compatible, not your natural cycle.

If I were unemployed or had anxiety and couldn’t work, I would still get up and go to bed in line with my circadian cycles.

I would still be living to the adage; 8 hours working, 8 hours playing, and 8 hours for sleeping.

And though I might not have a job, I would still be doing something creative, learning something new or giving my time for free in an organisation to get more knowledge and experience.

If you are awake during the night chatting in forums, watching videos or playing video games – then biologically speaking, you are probably harming yourself to a degree far exceeding that which you have ever been taught.

Now, before I discuss things you can do for better sleep, it is worth outlining some basics of how sleep works – but once again, I am urging you to go and research it for yourself.

And one quick point I need to make – resting is not sleeping; they are entirely different things – so don’t kid yourself that just because you had some rest, you’ll be fine.

We sleep in approximately 90-minute cycles, with five of these cycles being optimum for our health, meaning between seven to eight hours of sleep per night.

The cycle begins with a light sleep called n stage 1, which deepens to n stage 2, then deepens again to n stage 3, where we are in the deep slumber that is incredibly restorative and vital for our physical bodies.

We then move into the REM phase of sleep – denoted by our eyes rapidly moving from side to side. Our bodies become temporarily paralysed as our brains become very active in the state we call dreaming.

Simply put, during this phase, the brain reviews information from our short-term memory (all the things we learned and happened to us yesterday); it takes all the lessons and learnings – and decides what will be stored as long-term memory and what will be discarded.

That information is then logged in the long term memory, and the short term memory is cleared out, ready for new information to be added the next day.

And I think it is worth reminding you of two things here, firstly, if you are not getting enough sleep, the short term memory doesn’t get fully emptied, so there is less space to learn new things the next day – and what you did learn the previous day is often not converted to long term memory.

This can be seen as the fogginess or forgetfulness that many anxious or depressed individuals experience – they think the anxiety is causing it, but it is the lack of 7 to 8 hours of quality sleep needed for your brain to function optimally.

As explained in video 18, the second point is, what does the brain use to decide which information passes from short-term memory to long-term memory and what gets forgotten?

It’s the RAS, the Reticular Activating System, which you could say are driven by your belief systems. Therefore any work you can consciously do to retrain the unconscious RAS part of your brain – can enhance your life enormously.

For example, training it to move from pessimism to optimism – from glass half empty to glass half full – from seeing all the things that might go wrong in life, to all the things that could go right.

Can you see that we are breaking the old addiction to fear that many anxious people experience – and updating the negative outlook which many depressed people experience to one of more positivity?

Sleep is the catalyst that embeds all the knowledge discussed in my previous videos and is the missing link in physical and mental health wellbeing!

OK, back to the first 90-minute cycle – In this first cycle, the n stage sleep is the majority, and the REM stage sleep is a short period at the end, but as each cycle progresses, the REM sleep increases in length – until by the final cycle it is most active.

Very crudely stated – the first half of the night is restoring the body, and the second half is restoring your brain.

But the important message is that you need both.
Now, as each cycle ends, you may temporarily wake up or just slide down into the next cycle.

That’s why, in those moments, if you awaken between cycles, try to keep still and calm, avoid reaching for your phone or getting up, try to keep your attention away from your thoughts.

Try to avoid any stimulation so you can slip back into sleep.

And if your partner is snoring, jump into the spare bed, get some sleep, and talk to them about what you can both do about the snoring in the morning.

Now, there is one bit of good news – very often, poor sleepers can have one (or two) of these 90-minute sleep cycles and not realise it.

This was one thing that surprised me – back in my poor sleeping days, I used to have an illuminated digital clock in my bedroom that would drive me mad – knowing how long I had been awake and how few hours were left to get any sleep.

But once I learned that we slept in 90-minute cycles, I could see that at one moment it was 03:00 in the morning and then suddenly it would be 04:30 – We often have one or two of these sleep cycles but don’t know it.

This means poor sleepers may be getting more sleep than they think and this may alleviate some worries.

There are many Youtube videos on sleep cycles, circadian rhythms and chronotypes, and I urge you to check them out.

One final thought in this section is that in the hypnogogic moments before we sleep and the short period as we awaken in the morning – our brain operates in slow theta waves, these are optimal times for unconscious learning.

This is why consciously programming your unconscious mind and your RAS for what you do want from life – are so powerful at these times, and why I am urging you to have a nodding off and a waking up short routine to use each day.

So, as I decided to take sleep seriously, I broke it down into a few steps;

The first step was to work on my attitude towards sleep – remember how I talked about attitudes in video 24?

And that when you want to change something in your life, you must keep talking yourself into it, so my internal dialogue became more positive – saying to myself, I was looking forward to bed, that I was expecting to sleep well – and even if I was awake, I’d be saying “I’ll be asleep again soon.” – I was talking and thinking like a good sleeper, within my head, regardless of the current truth – because this is how change happens.

Then I had to explore where this new attitude sat within my hierarchy of needs.

The example I used in past videos was that my weight is more important to me than food. And that both my health and my relationship are more important to me than my job.

So, if my job was negatively impacting my health or my relationship, I would adjust how I did my job, take a break from working or change my job, or maybe see it as just a job and not a career, to lessen the degree of responsibility I assumed – rather than compromise my health or my relationship.

I suggest that you bring sleep right up near the top of your needs hierarchy for a while – so everything you do is factoring in the impact it may have – on your ability to sleep and the time available for you to sleep.

Let’s now explore proven facts that do enhance sleep, whereby to not follow them would be foolish, even though they may involve you making significant changes in your life.

The first one is caffeine, like in coffee, tea, green tea, fizzy drinks, sports drinks, chocolate, cocoa, and many supplements.

Careful too, because many decaffeinated drinks still contain caffeine, just less caffeine than their full caffeine counterparts – so be sure to check the labels.

Now, the stimulant caffeine, attacks and neutralises the chemical adenosine, which is the one that causes sleep within us! Therefore any substance that stops us from sleeping needs to be avoided, especially if we will spend six months focussing our attention on sleep.

Let me say this again – Caffeine will make it harder for you to sleep well – end of argument!

In addition, caffeine has a seven-hour half-life, meaning it takes seven hours to diminish its effects by half, so a coffee after a meal at eight at night will still be turning off your sleep chemicals at three in the morning!

So I would certainly recommend that you cut out caffeine completely – or at least stop its intake after lunch.

From my own experience, stopping caffeine after lunch made a big difference to my sleep, but when I stopped it completely, I was really shocked at how much my sleep further improved.

However, stopping caffeine gave me a three-day headache, which showed me how unknowingly I was addicted to caffeine via coffee, tea, chocolate and soda drinks.

When I hear people say, “I need my coffee in the morning”, I feel a little sad, because that means they are not getting enough sleep – and what they are using to stimulate themselves into action is also stopping them from getting good sleep!

And, as I keep saying – If emotional wellness is your goal – we need to break these patterns.

Another substance that disrupts sleep is alcohol – however, in a different way. Alcohol does make you fall asleep sooner; however, it deeply disrupts the depth and length of your sleep.

Therefore any benefit of getting to sleep quickly is negated by this poor quality of sleep.

So, if you are looking for a good night’s sleep, it is best to stop drinking alcohol in the late afternoon or early evening or to avoid it completely.

As I keep saying, we need to prioritise what is important to us, and I urge you to make sleep one of your highest priorities for six months – because you will be amazed at what happens.

I would like to say a few things about computer games too because so many people play them – they are cool, they are exciting, they pass the time, they may connect you to others, distract you from anxiety and stop boredom.

However, when it comes to anxiety and sleep, they should be avoided or limited to that 8 hours in the middle of your circadian cycle furthest from sleep – leaving a gap of at least 4 hours to calm down before sleep.

Because, as far as your body is concerned, these games are real, whether you are shooting up the enemy, scoring a goal, winning the Grand Prix or completing a level in Candy Crush.

The emotions you get of excitement and frustration come from your body dosing you with chemicals, many of which are not conducive to sleep!

Secondly, your brain gets addicted to (or used to) the need for stimulation – therefore, it is much harder to just do nothing – to sit calmly and to just be with yourself – which is a calm state that is good for the mind and body – which its why we learn to meditate.

Now, other actions that help facilitate better sleep include; stopping eating four hours before bed, a warm shower before bed – and avoiding drinking too many fluids to avoid having to get up and use the bathroom at night, which of course, breaks your sleepy state.

And finally, a few words about your sleep environment, which I feel is of paramount importance, and you should take action where possible to make it sleep-friendly. However, I appreciate you may face environmental or financial constraints – but do the best you can.

Because darkness triggers the release of melatonin, the hormone that triggers the sleep procedure – the darker you can make your room – the better. Blackout blinds and blackout curtain linings are quite inexpensive and make a tremendous difference to sleep quality.

If not, a good quality sleep mask can make a big difference, though it may take a day or two to get used to wearing it.

And if a story comes up in your mind like “I hate dark bedrooms, they scare me” or “If I had a mask on it would frighten me”, – consider that this might be the unconscious little eight-year-old sabotage that I have been discussing through the whole series.

These are usually out of date stories, and they can be challenged – of course, you can do those things; you are an ADULT – just get on with it.

Interestingly, the body cools by 3 degrees as it falls to sleep, so a cooler bedroom is better than a warmer one, and wearing fewer clothes helps too.

Where possible, a comfortable mattress, pillows, and duvet is money well spent.

One of my luxuries in life is high quality down pillows, a very light yet warm duvet, and quality cotton bedding.

Each time I slip into bed, it feels lovely and comfortable; I like a big bed too – and because I spend one-third of my life in there, I want it to be comfortable as I can make it.

Can you see what a positive attitude this is – in the past, I never considered the comfort of my mattress and would have been horrified at the idea of spending £80 on a pillow?

But these I embrace sleep – my bed is more important than my car because I spend more time in it.

When I stay in hotels, I am reminded of how wonderful my bed at home is and the vast difference a quality pillow and mattress makes to my deep sleep.

Personally, I refuse to have a TV in my bedroom; my TV is in my living room, that is where I watch TV, my bedroom is for sleeping, and I don’t want any distractions to me sleeping.

And the final thing to consider is – do you want or need your phone, PC or tablet in your bedroom? If you use your phone as an alarm, buy an alarm clock – and

leave your devices in another room, so you won’t be tempted or distracted by them – or bathed in their radiation field as you sleep.

Can you, for six months, make your bed the place you go to sleep, with as few distractions as possible and the place where you learn to practice rest and quiet meditation until sleep comes upon you?

And if you wake between sleep cycles can you use that relaxing time to stay calm, avoid your thoughts, and retrain your mind, whilst you silently lay in the darkness creating the best possible environment for sleep to return?

OK then, in this final part of the video, let me outline things you can do as you go to sleep, or if you can’t sleep, or if you awake during the night.

Starting with the lead up to sleep – I would have stopped the consumption of caffeine by 2:00 pm and alcohol and computer games stopped by 7:00 pm – and I would have stopped eating after 8:00 pm.

Between 8 and bedtime, read, watch tv, go for a walk, socialise – do what you do. Then an hour before bed, start winding things down, dim the lights and try not to stimulate your mind or body.

Thirty minutes before bed, sit down and do the “decompress your day” tapping routine that I detailed in video 14 from about the 33-minute mark.

And, for those who CAN get to sleep relatively easily, I would suggest that you use that short time to tell your unconscious mind just what it is you are looking for in life – as I outlined in video 18 from about the 17-minute mark.

Where I teach you how to keep consciously talking yourself into what you want from your life, stated in the positive, with the outcomes you desire and the mindset you want to use.

And if you have designed your vision board, this is the time you pull it up in your mind and visualise all those things happening and try to feel within your emotions the feelings you would have, as if it had already happened.

For those of you who don’t go to sleep quickly, you are lucky, as this gives you even more time to go even deeper programming your unconscious.

A quick note about vision boards – as whacky as they seem, they work, for two reasons, firstly you have to know what you want from life to make one – so this act alone forces you to articulate your intentions.

And secondly, it retrains your unconscious minds RAS which controls about 95% of what you do.

So, you spend ten minutes or so consciously reminding your unconscious mind and the RAS what you want it to do!

Once you have done that, I would suggest a period of quiet stillness.

What I mean by that is a period whereby you place your attention on your body and not the thoughts of the mind.

Practise keeping your attention on a toe, or both hands, become fascinated with the feelings and sensations within your body – but give them no meaning.

Train yourself to keep the focus of your awareness on your body – not on the thoughts that arise unrequested from the mind.

If a thought grabs your attention, just smile, let it go and place your attention back on your body.

Now, if this is too hard – just keep your attention on your breath. Will it be boring, yes, but boring is good as it brings on sleep.

So, if after a while you still can’t sleep or the thoughts about tomorrow or upcoming events are loud in your head – know this…

There is nothing you can do about those things because you are lying in bed; they’ll probably still be there tomorrow – so you gently and repeatedly say to yourself, “I accept these issues” or “I surrender to what is…” or, “This is not my problem!”

Stop looking for answers or solutions because this is the anxiety and depression trap – your solutions will come from tomorrows actions, not your thoughts in this moment!

So many people fail to recognise that – as you sleep, all those problems are fed into the supercomputer of the incredible unconscious mind, and it will find solutions that will just appear to you the next day.

We’ve all done it, gone to bed with an unsolved problem, only to get a brilliant solution the next day, pop into your head as you are in the shower! Yes, because sleep is the faculty that allows this natural process to work.

However, we muddled twenty-first-century humans think we are doing the thinking – but we are not; it’s all connected, it’s an electrical, biological, chemical and genetic system – and sleep is the glue that holds it all together and makes it work – and we must learn to trust and embrace this.

So during sleep times, if we are awake, we are learning to trust ourselves, trust our brains, we try to get out of the minds way, we are just watching the musings of the mind, as it swirls everything around in short term memory, ready for the process of sorting, aligning, pattern matching and solving, that will be done during the five stages of deep REM sleep – assuming that the individual lets the body have the luxury of that necessity!

I hope this is making sense?

Your job as you lay awake at night – is just to realise that, in this moment called now, none of those things matter – because all those things are virtual reality stories about the future – when all that matters right now is sleep.

So, we lovingly and silently say to ourselves, “I accept that right now, this is out of my control.” Or if a person had annoyed us, we say, “I forgive that person as I don’t want to agitate myself!”

As I said in an earlier video, one ploy that worked well for me when I had a racing mind was to just say “I don’t know” – the mind might be saying, “What will happen if you lose your job?” And I’d lovingly say, “I don’t know.”

“What if that person dies, what will you do?” – “I don’t know.”

Who said I should know – moreover, it’s a virtual reality story, so I don’t need to go there!

Can you see how we are learning to be calm and still regardless of our thoughts – thereby attempting to create the best environment for sleep to prevail?

Let me give you some more things you can try – to use this rest time wisely; if you are awake, stay still and start running through your mind all the things you feel grateful for.

Years ago, I used to scoff at routines like this; however, these days, I am shocked at how effective this procedure is for changing attitudes and perspectives that shake off depression – I’ll even be making a video about it sometime.

As I have said a thousand times, there is the world out there that we can’t control and the world inside our heads that we can profoundly influence from a place of lack and fear to one of beauty and positivity.

You could be miserable in prison, or you could be having an OK time remembering beautiful events from the past and envisioning a lovely future.

One story will make you sad and dump sadness chemicals within you – the other will make you feel good and release good chemicals within you! Regardless of the truth of what is happening around you!

We are learning to make the inside job a good one, with nice stories, optimism and positivity – and gratitude is a great place to start, regardless of what is going on in the real world.

So, as you lay there, you gently and lovingly say to yourself, “I am grateful for my health, grateful for my home, grateful that I have food, grateful that I have a bed, water, electricity, sanitation, a family – and so on.

Really connect with positivity and stay out of negativity – it’s quite a skill to master – and remember, it is not about what is right or wrong, good or bad; it is about making the space inside your head as lovely as you can.

You are learning to be nice to yourself.

Remember how in video 22, I said people treat us the way we have trained them to treat us – that they have a virtual reality story of who they think we are and treat us accordingly?

Well, I think another excellent use of this quiet downtime is to practice what behaviours we might adopt, to update how the world might see us and interact with us.

To practice in the safety of your mind what it might be like to be braver, more assertive, more loving, to ask for what you want – to look at all the people in your life and ask yourself things like – how could I make their lives happier?

Or what behaviours could I adopt that will change how they treat me? Or how would I like to world to see me?

Therefore, how would I need to behave so the worlds virtual reality story of me is updated in that way?

Your mind is a beautiful, safe practice arena, where you can jump from person to person trying to see the world from their perspective and your role within it; you can practice being more warrior, more nomad – just for fun.

But remember, this practice arena also updates your RAS, which may lead to powerful new behaviours. Your unconscious mind can’t tell the difference between you imagining it or doing it – like if you put a VR headset on.

And finally, a note about boredom.

A few days ago, I was awake for what felt like quite a long time in the middle of the night, but it was OK, I just laid there, I had no story in my mind, it was just quiet and calm, nothing was happening, I didn’t need anything to happen, the body felt OK, sleep would come back – it was a nice calm and quiet experience during the night – a pleasant gap between sleep cycles.

I am saying this because ten years ago, that would have been so boring to me that I would have hated it, I would have driven myself mad needing sleep or worrying about this or that – it would have been hellish.

I guess I have just learned to be with myself, be OK, having no thoughts, no opinions – you could say just calmly being, like a dog or a cat might do.

Or another way of looking at it is – I have no opinions or worries during this rest time, even though my little-eight-year old might! But, that’s not my problem.

I managed it, so I know it is possible, but it takes effort, it takes repetition, it takes new attitudes, and it takes breaking the old cycles of avoidance, distraction or medication.

One last comment, in the immediate, groggy few moments as you awaken, it is a powerful habit to watch your intention video or run your “I am grateful for” routine – or to positively state your intentions for the upcoming day, and try to feel the feelings that you would get if you achieved it.

Because the unconscious mind is very accessible in that short window of brain wave activity, so it makes sense to consciously program your unconscious during the time it is most receptive.

Now, I know this works, but even if you don’t believe me – running a good story in your mind will feel better than a bad one; it will also release nicer hormones into your body, which will affect the cells to have more receptors for happy chemicals – you know the story…

Health and emotional wellbeing is an inside job – and only you can do it…

So, in summary, sleep is far more vital than you have ever been told – its benefits for biological and mental health are incredible – and I would advocate that you dedicate at least six months of your life to exploring it.

I did – and it changed my life profoundly.