Controlling What Can Be Controlled
There’s no way you’ll be able to take control of how loud it is in the street, unless of course you have the time, resources, and will to move into the country. Even then, should some rowdy woodland creature decide to make noise, you might not be able to stop it. An angry bear, raccoon, fox, coyote, cat, dog, wolf, or mountain lion can be loud.
Still, country life tends to be slower and more quiet than that in the city. You’ll have fewer instances of things that go “bump” in the night. In the city, things will be louder. Controlling your environment there will require bedrooms specifically configured to be sound-proof, and that can be expensive. Still, this can be an option to help you sleep better.
However, what if you get the perfect house in the perfect location with ideal soundproofing, and you’re still having trouble sleeping? How will you handle that? Sometimes the issues that cause you to have trouble sleeping have nothing to do with your environment at all, and everything to do with your mind.
Mistakes keep people up at night, so does anger, confusion, and fear. Depression will put you to sleep in the middle of a war-time blitz. Internal factors play a part in how you sleep, and how rested you are when you wake up every morning. So if you’re going to wake up smiling, you need to take both external and internal factors into account; we’ll explore how here.
Get A Handle On Your Own Mind
When you have internal issues, those will exercise an external influence on you that can definitely keep you awake. Anger, guilt, fear—these emotions send thoughts on an all-expense paid tour of your brain, and like sine waves they ebb and flow in your mind, keeping you occupied for hours over useless minutiae.
Even if you’re not particularly emotionally impacted, there is a restlessness that can develop from irritation, or even boredom. Sometimes you can’t sleep not from any severe emotional issue, but from a lack of any emotional stimuli whatever, leading to a sort of dissatisfied malaise.
Resolve what can be resolved with friends or family who may be the root of emotional issues, and give yourself something to look forward to one way or another—we’ll explore that tactic in a subsequent point with more detail.
Control Your Physical Surroundings
Beyond internalized emotional or cognitive issues leading to sleeplessness, another thing that could be causing you trouble is where you sleep. Perhaps the issue you’re having is that either your significant other is never comfortable at night, or there are intimacy issues made more difficult by a less-than-ideal mattress.
Especially for couples, it can be a good idea to do a little research into what might just be the best mattress for couples for your situation. Sometimes you’re fine, but it’s your spouse that is tossing and turning, and all you need to do is change some relatively innocuous thing like the mattress to fix the issue.
Give Yourself A Reason To Be Happy In The Morning
Maybe your thought life is healthy, maybe your surroundings are fine, but you still can’t sleep because life just doesn’t hold any excitement anymore. A lot of insomniacs are dealing with this particular issue. Well what do you do in that scenario?
Admittedly, this requires a bit more thought; but here’s what you can do: figure out what you like, what moves you, and what you have yet to achieve in your life. Sit down, make a list of those things. Now prioritize them based on your ability to achieve such goals, and start with a single step. Design for yourself an itinerary for the following day before you go to bed.
If you do this, what you’ll be thinking about is what you’re going to do, and how you’re going to do it. This will help you drift into dreamful sleep wherein your mind will continue running scenarios of the following day’s goals. You’ll wake up happy and excited to pursue your goals.
Enabling Proper Sleep
For better sleep, and even the prospect of waking up with a smile every morning, there are definitely best practices to consider. Several include giving yourself a reason to be happy, controlling external factors as best you can, and doing what’s possible to mitigate internal issues that make sleep difficult.
