Personal Growth Experiment

After having used the sleep activity selection tool to determine which activities are likely to help you the most, use the table of contents to navigate to your chosen activities listed below. Enjoy and sweet dreams!

Most are familiar with the story of “The Princess and the Pea.” A young lady arrives at the castle of a royal family, claiming to be a princess. To test her claim, the prince invites her to rest in the castle and provides her with a heaping stack of mattresses to sleep on. However, he hides a single pea beneath the bottom mattress. The pea, he believes, will prove whether or not the stranger is a true princess because a true princess, of course, would be sensitive and delicate enough to detect the pea. When she has a restless night due to the pea, he concludes she is a true princess.

Contrary to what the fairy tale would suggest, humans have a profound physical need for sleep, and minor nuisances are unlikely to disrupt it significantly. Still, some attempt to improve their sleep by looking for the “pea under the mattress.” Some use special white noise machines, some buy expensive and gimmicky mattresses, some diffuse essential oils into their bedroom, and so on. In this module, however, we encourage people not to think of their sleep struggles as a pea under the mattress. Focusing on small and probably inconsequential parts of your sleeping environment instead of addressing bigger issues (like conditioned arousal or negative sleep beliefs) likely won’t lead to much change. 

When it comes to environmental changes that do work, however, research has consistently shown that there are a few basic factors that primarily foster a good sleep environment (Caddick et al., 2018). So, before putting on binaural beats or dropping $1000 on a crystal-infused sleep mat, try making the following changes first:

• Cool room temperature: Keep your bedroom between 63-82°F with 40-60% humidity if possible. Researchers have found that sleeping in an environment that feels slightly cool to you may actually help you fall asleep faster and sleep better by facilitating the natural drop in body temperature that happens when you fall asleep. Choose a temperature that feels cool but isn’t so cold that it’s uncomfortable. Some experts recommend starting at 67 degrees. 

• Darken the room: Your bedroom should be as dark as possible as you sleep. Even moonlight through the window or a computer screen that was left on can disturb your sleep. If possible, installing blackout curtains can help darken your bedroom.

• Clean the room: Maintain a clean and organized bedroom to create a calming, stress-free space.

• Quiet room: Noises as loud as 35 decibels can disturb sleep, even if they don’t wake you up. That’s like the hum of a computer, an aquarium filter, a buzzing fan, an electric toothbrush, or the turning of a page. Where possible, remove noise from your room or wear earplugs. If it’s uncomfortable or potentially dangerous for you to wear earplugs, then it may be helpful to play low-volume white noise while you sleep. 

• Remove Clocks: If checking the time or calculating the exact amount of sleep you will get causes stress, remove clocks from your bedroom.

• Clean air: Cleaner air may help you sleep better, particularly if your home has an excessive amount of dust, mold, or foul odor, like cigarette smoke. Simple things like cleaning, ventilating, and regularly changing your AC filters will probably be enough, but there are special plug-in air filters you can buy that some swear by. For more tips, see here.

• Safety: It is not surprising that it would be hard to sleep in an environment where you do not feel safe. Things like a fear of intrusion, natural disasters, crime in your neighborhood, bright lights or loud noises, or any other threat--real or perceived--can easily disrupt sleep. Enhance your sense of security with measures like locks, blackout curtains, or a security system.

Identify the most lacking issues in your sleep environment and brainstorm ways to resolve them. Write your plan in your goal tracker.

As we mention throughout this module, difficulty falling asleep is a common problem. Healthy adults usually fall asleep between 10 and 20 minutes after getting into bed. Taking a little longer is normal and does not necessarily mean something’s the matter with your sleep (Kushida, 2013). However, if it takes you 30+ minutes to fall asleep multiple times a week, then you may be struggling with your pre-sleep mental status. Often, this is caused by racing thoughts, heightened alertness, and stressful emotions leading up to bedtime. 

Experiencing these things is frustrating and not helpful for falling asleep, but luckily, there’s a solution. Recall the metaphor of waiting until the last second to slam on the brakes before a red light. “Slamming the brakes” on your thoughts just before sleep typically doesn’t work and may get you into the habit of going to bed in an aroused, stressed, or anxious state, making the bed a place of wakefulness. What you need now is to learn the habit of going to bed in a serene, calm, and relaxed state in order to make the bed a place of restfulness. Creating a healthy sleep routine is the equivalent of gently pressing on the brakes as you approach the light instead of screeching to a halt at the last moment. Not only does going to bed in a serene state facilitate falling asleep, but it can also boost sleep quality and limit nighttime awakenings (Edinger et al., 2021; Yeh et al., 2015). 

After reading the following guidelines, write down your sleep routine wherever you can keep it handy and refer to it often, perhaps in the Notes section of your goal tracker. The specifics of your sleep routine are generally unimportant. What you do is up to you as long as you follow these guidelines:

1. Your sleep routine should last between 30 and 60 minutes and should be the last thing you do before sleep. 

2. Sleep routines should be calming, not arousing. Some studies have found that reading books, watching TV, and listening to music before bed can be helpful for sleep, while others have drawn the opposite conclusion. You can experiment to see what works best for you, but sleep experts generally encourage people to choose books, shows, music, and other activities that are calming rather than engaging. If you can’t tell whether your activity is too engaging, clinical sleep researcher Dr. Grandner encourages you to ask yourself, “Could I put this book down at any given moment, or is it a page turner that I feel like I need to keep reading?” If your activity is so engaging that you feel like you can’t pull away from it, you may want to consider something else.

3. Sleep routines should make sleep predictable through natural hints. Since sleep is one of your physical needs, your body is designed to give it to you, and it knows when to do this through environmental, biological, and behavioral cues, or “hints.” Remember from one of our first sections, Basics of Human Sleep, that your body uses the following hints to tell your brain when it’s time to sleep. 

• Environmental hints (dimming lights, cooling temperature, and a decrease in noise levels)

• Biological hints (brain releases melatonin, drop in body temperature, and changes in your levels of certain hormones and neurotransmitters)

• Behavioral hints (decrease in social activity, decrease in eating, decrease in physical activity, a predictable set of bedtime behaviors)

All of these hints are things that work together to make sleep predictable. If sleep is predictable, then your brain will know when bedtime is coming and it will get ready for it, just like applying your brakes well in advance of the red light. Luckily, many of these sleep “hints” are in your control, and you can include them in your bedtime routine to make sleep more predictable for your brain. The more predictable your sleep is, the faster your brain will understand that it’s time to sleep, therefore helping you fall asleep sooner. 

If your bedtime routine includes some of the above “hints” that are in your control, then it will be a naturally sleep-inducing ritual. Specifically, the behaviors that are in your control include the following: dimming lights, a decrease in noise, a cool environment (67 degrees F is generally preferred), a consistent set of behaviors (see below), and a decrease in social activity, eating, and physical activity. It’s ok if you can’t include every single one of the “hints” in your routine. In fact, it’s probably better that you don’t try to do it all at once. Just choose one or two to begin with and go from there!

Sleep routines should be consistent and habitual. With a simple Google search, you could probably find a thousand different “tricks” and “hacks” for falling asleep. Some people will challenge you to read a book, pray, write in a journal, meditate, or whatever. All these things could be good because (as mentioned above) they are 1). calming and 2). don’t go against your body’s natural “hints.” Just remember that it matters less what you do and more how consistently you do it. For example, if you choose to take a warm bath every night before bed, it may not be that the bath itself is making you fall asleep faster. It’s more likely that your brain is learning that a warm bath means that soon, it’s time to sleep, making it so that you fall asleep faster. So, whatever you choose to do in your bedtime routine, just make sure it’s something that you will be able to do consistently!

Finally, there are a few things you should avoid:

• Avoid eating food 60 minutes before sleep, especially large meals.

• Avoid being under the influence of alcohol and drugs (including marijuana and nicotine) while you sleep. See why here.

• Avoid exercise 60 minutes before sleep

• Don’t feel the need to avoid sex before bed. Although it may seem counterintuitive, studies have found that it can actually increase the quality of your sleep and decrease the amount of time it takes to fall asleep, a finding which did not vary between sexes (Oesterling et al., 2023).

If you struggle with not being able to fall asleep at the beginning of the night or with falling back asleep after waking up, then this may be the exercise for you. As mentioned earlier, conditioned arousal is the harmful learned association between trying to sleep and feeling awake. Conditioned arousal is one of the greatest driving forces behind sleep struggles. While all of our activities work to address this central issue, stimulus control is the foundational intervention that most directly resolves the association between wakefulness and trying to sleep. In our attempt to decouple your association between these two things, we recommend two main changes:

1. Reducing the conscious effort you make to fall asleep.

2. Getting out of bed when you cannot sleep.

Firstly, let’s discuss the effort you exert to fall asleep. As Gillian Flynn once wrote, “Sleep is like a cat. It only comes to you if you ignore it.” Interestingly, “trying” to go to sleep is a completely contradictory and self-defeating thing to do. One of the most important ideas of this whole module is that nobody ever got better sleep by trying harder to sleep. Thus, a big part of addressing conditioned arousal is finding another way to fall asleep besides trying harder. Other activities in this section, such as bedtime routine, bedroom environment, etc., remove the need to control sleep by cultivating the conditions whereby good sleep occurs. Another important method for removing the need to control sleep that we’ll mention here is acceptance.

Though counterintuitive, accepting when you cannot sleep rather than trying to change it will allow you to loosen your white-knuckle grip on sleep, causing the associated stress and anxiety surrounding your sleep to gradually subside. We go into great detail about how to improve your relationship with sleep in the following activity, Sleep Beliefs Activity, which may pair nicely with Stimulus Control. 

So, what is stimulus control? In plain speak, it is the practice of making the bed a safe place to rest by leaving your bed whenever you cannot sleep. The logic for this is pretty straightforward. Many people who struggle with insomnia equate more time spent in bed with better sleep. They may tell themselves, “I spent 7 hours in bed last night and only got 5 hours of sleep, so tonight I will spend 9 hours in bed. That will allow me to sleep for longer.” Sadly, this transactional belief (more time in bed=more sleep) leads to worsened symptoms of insomnia. Over time, spending enough time awake in bed will eventually teach your brain that the bed is a place to anticipate feeling alert and maybe even anxious. In the same way that a bell caused Pavlov’s dogs to salivate, the bed itself will begin to make you feel awake. Luckily, a promising solution to this harmful association is simpler than you might think. If you’re ever in bed and you can’t fall asleep for whatever reason, and you stay that way for more than 30 minutes, simply leave your room and do something else! Once you begin feeling sleepy again, head right back to bed. By leaving your bed whenever you can’t fall asleep, you’re basically unlearning your association between your bed and feeling awake. With time, this association will eventually go “extinct.” This is an essential first step toward resolving conditioned arousal.

Among sleep experts, this practice in specific is regarded as a “gold standard” for treating issues with sleep. Even those with serious sleep disorders who may not benefit from every exercise in this module see consistent improvements to their sleep from practicing this exercise in particular. As such, we cannot stress enough how important it is to adhere to this exercise if you consistently suffer from lying in bed without being able to sleep. That being said, it may be easy to get yourself out of bed if you can’t sleep, but the hard part may be finding something to do that won’t further harm your ability to sleep.

Choose any task outside of your room that you’d like to engage in and go do it (Perlis et al., 2005). You may want to clean a room, write in your journal, go for a drive, watch a familiar TV show, read a relaxing book, or whatever. It should simply be in line with the guidelines in the bedtime routine activity (i.e., don’t use personal electronics, eat food, exercise, or do anything else that isn’t inherently relaxing and calming). Ask yourself, “Will I want to go to sleep again if I start doing this?” If the answer is “no,” try choosing something more mindless, repetitive, soothing, unengaging, or unimportant. Remember that if you fall asleep, say, on your living room couch, then this exercise will not work. And make sure not to do things in bed during the day, like reading, working, or scrolling on your phone. Let your bed be for sleep only.

 It will be perfectly natural for you to feel some frustration when you have to leave your bed, so here is a list of self-compassion exercises you can also try during the time you spend awake to ease those frustrations. After all, self-compassion is associated with better sleep (Brown et al., 2021).

• Think of a person or figure in your life who has great love and care for you. This can be a family member, friend, spiritual figure/deity, or anyone who really shows how much they care for you. Write down or meditate on your answers to the following questions: How do they feel about you? How do they act toward you? Most importantly, how do they treat you when you are struggling or hurting? What would they say or do in that instance? Now, try and take the perspective of this person. With compassion, write or say the things to yourself that they would say to you. How would you feel if you always treated yourself this way, even when you have trouble sleeping? Doing this exercise may help with your feelings of frustration or negative self-talk. 

• Meditate. You can choose any of the meditations from our pre-sleep mental status activity, or you can simply do a focused attention meditation where you try and focus on your breath. Whenever thoughts come up, especially thoughts of frustration about not being able to sleep, try to notice that thought and hold it with acceptance. You may let go of this thought by repeating short, self-compassionate phrases back to yourself whenever they come up. You may say, “May I be happy, may I be at peace, may I live with ease, may I be free from suffering,” or “may I accept what I cannot change,” or “may I give myself the same love I give to others.” You can choose or create whatever phrase you’d like, but try to avoid phrases that are unaccepting of your current situation, such as “may I get back to sleep as soon as possible.”

• While you do your activity, practice labeling your emotions as they come up. Let’s say, for example, that as you’re folding your laundry, you feel upset that you’re awake at 4 am doing household chores. What word accurately captures what you’re feeling? Repeat that word back to yourself a few times. Acknowledge the emotion without judgment, recognizing it as a passing mental event rather than a defining aspect of yourself and your situation. Simply recognizing and labeling it can put enough distance between you and the feeling for it to no longer trouble you. Remember that the goal is not to eliminate the emotion but to cultivate a more open and accepting relationship with your thoughts and feelings. Once you feel fatigued enough to sleep, return to bed.

• For more self-compassion exercises to try when you can’t fall asleep, check out the strategies from our self-compassion module here. Again, make sure that if you begin to feel sleepy again, get back to bed and avoid falling asleep elsewhere. It may be frustrating, but it’s important to be consistent in this practice.

Doing these things will help you to save sleepiness for the bedroom and alertness for the outside world. Don’t be afraid if this limits your time in bed and leaves you feeling sleepy the rest of the day. Even if you wake up at 5:00 a.m. and don’t return to bed again, it will be worth it in the long run to be consistent, even if you suffer from lack of sleep for a few days. Remember that the only thing worse than time spent awake outside of your bedroom is time spent awake in your bed. Consistently following this practice has been shown to improve sleep quality gradually, so be patient!

A person’s thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes about sleep have a large impact on their ability to sleep. There’s a popular metaphor that may resonate with you if you have ever struggled with thoughts and beliefs about sleep (Kyoung deok Baik, 2016). Imagine you’re in a tug-of-war with a great, big, fearsome monster. Between you and the monster is a bottomless pit, and the loser of the tug-of-war is going to fall in. The problem with this monster is that, no matter how hard you pull, it can always pull back just a bit harder. You try with all your might to pull the monster into the pit, but to no avail. It is tempting to keep fighting because it seems like the only other option is to let it pull you into the pit. However, there is a third option. The answer is to let go. In this case, control is the problem and acceptance is the solution.

Maintaining stress, fear, control, and overanalysis surrounding your sleep struggles is like getting into a tug of war with a monster that will always pull back harder. As tempting as it is to just fight harder and harder, these thoughts and beliefs about sleep will ultimately continue to harm your sleep. It is much better to relinquish stress and control over sleep, even if it’s hard. In this activity, we hope to teach you how to do this. But first, what are some of these harmful thoughts and beliefs about sleep? Read the list of thoughts below to see if you have experienced any of them. If you have, this may be a great activity for you.

Bolded beliefs and thoughts were found to be particularly harmful to sleep (i.e., causal attributions of insomnia, beliefs about the consequences of insomnia, and attitudes of maintaining control over sleep problems) (Morin et al., 1993).

Since it’s impossible to list every potentially harmful thought about sleep, think of it this way: if you’re thinking of your sleep in any stressful, self-defeating, or otherwise negative way, it’s probably doing you no good! There are some key things you should know about sleep thoughts, sleep beliefs, and your relationship with them.

1. There’s no shame in having these thoughts and beliefs--sleep struggles are hard!

2. These thoughts are maladaptive, meaning that, whether or not they have a degree of truth, they do not help solve a problem or provide any real benefit.

3. Being aware of these thoughts and recognizing them merely as thoughts will be helpful to you in the long run.

4. It is possible for you to build a healthy, accepting, and balanced relationship with these thoughts and beliefs without needing to change the thoughts and beliefs right when they happen. Doing so will likely lessen the frequency and impact of these thoughts.

Remember that thoughts are just thoughts, and it’s what you do with them that is likely to determine whether they introduce the unnecessary stress and anxiety that ultimately harm your sleep. Below are some things you can try when you run into difficult sleep-related thoughts.

Present moment awareness: Remember that the mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master, so if you’re constantly preoccupied with negative thoughts about the sleep you got or the sleep you’re going to get, you may have let your mind become the master. The first step toward relief from what feel like intrusive thoughts or repetitive ruminations is to become aware of them. Consistently try to notice when a worry, doubt, negativity, or otherwise troublesome thought arises. When you’re just starting, it may help to wear an elastic band around your wrist that you can give a gentle snap whenever this happens. The point is to simply pay attention to your mental experience rather than letting any thought or feeling grab the wheel and take control.

• Acceptance: Once you are aware of the difficult thought that you’re experiencing, the next step is to accept it without judgment. As sleep scientist Aric Prather said, “[Sleep] is not something you do. It’s something that comes to you.” So, if you struggle with sleep, one of the first things that you may need to do is learn how to let go. It may seem counterintuitive, but this is how you let go of the tug of war in our monster metaphor. Here are some ways of letting go of your difficult sleep-related thoughts and feelings.

• Cognitive defusion: When you become so tangled up in your thoughts and worries that you believe that everything your mind is telling you is true, you are experiencing cognitive fusion. You can experience cognitive defusion, on the other hand, by simply stepping back and recognizing that thoughts don’t necessarily represent reality. You may label the thought as “just a thought,” or categorize it as helpful or unhelpful. You may even say “thank you, mind” for trying to help, even though the thought wasn’t actually helpful. You may envision your thoughts as clouds floating by that are real in the moment but will soon fade away. It may seem simple, but if you accept your thoughts and consistently remind yourself that they don’t represent reality, you can begin finding relief from the worries and anxieties that may be worsening your sleep. This can lessen their effect on you, even if they don’t immediately go away. 

• Self-as-context: This idea is just as it sounds: instead of becoming actively involved in producing good thoughts and getting rid of bad thoughts, you become a passive observer of your thoughts, whatever they may be. With this perspective, thoughts and feelings aren’t “good or bad.” They simply become external things to be perceived with neutrality, curiosity, and acceptance rather than apprehension and reactivity. This way, you don’t have to worry about trying to change your thoughts because you’re not invested in having certain thoughts in the first place. When difficult sleep-related thoughts show up, try to notice them rather than push them away. Label the thought gently: instead of saying, “I’ll never sleep well,” you might reframe it as, “I’m having the thought that I’ll never sleep well.” This small shift helps you see the thought for what it is — just a thought, not a fact. Allow it to be there without fighting it, and bring your attention back to the present moment, whether that’s your breathing, the feeling of your body against the bed, or a calming task. Remember, all thoughts — even scary or disruptive ones — eventually fade, just like countless others have before.

• Optimism: There’s a common misconception about being optimistic. Some think that to be an optimist, you have to ignore reality and pretend that the best possible outcome will happen. Optimism, however, is more of a choice to focus your mental spotlight on what is helpful for you. Coincidentally, what is helpful usually turns out to be the “bright side” of things. For example, if you wake up after a night of poor sleep, you may feel anxious about how the rest of the day is going to go. In reality, you don’t know at that point whether you’ll be drowsy and irritable all day because of your rough night. With an optimistic attitude, however, you can choose to focus on what will be most helpful for you to believe. Tell yourself that it won’t be so bad, and even if it is, that you will still be able to put your best foot forward and to try and have a good day. This kind of positive thinking will limit the power of your negative thoughts and will create a healthier relationship between you and your sleep, thus improving your sleep over time. Don’t knock it til you try it!

• Paradoxical intention: If you struggle particularly with making unnecessary effort to fall asleep or if you feel anxious about your sleeping abilities as you try to fall asleep, then a strategy called paradoxical intention might help you (Broomfield & Espie, 2003). Paradoxical intention is a deliberate mental effort on your part to do and think the complete opposite of what you’re trying to do. For example, if you’re lying in bed awake, unable to stop thinking about falling asleep, then you would change your thoughts to trying to stay awake. Although counterintuitive, this practice has been found to soothe any sleep-incompatible thoughts and feelings you’re having to reduce the anxiety and pressure to sleep. This helps improve sleep naturally. If this seems confusing, check out this video on how to implement paradoxical intention. It may take some creativity to learn how to use paradoxical intention for different thoughts and beliefs, so take your time and be consistent!

Before moving on, we want to remind you that these strategies are not only key for responding to difficult thoughts and beliefs that occur throughout the day, but will likely be useful for responding to difficult thoughts and beliefs that occur while trying to fall asleep as well. For additional guidance on addressing pre-sleep thoughts, make sure to check out the pre-sleep mental status activity later on.

We know that many using this module have struggled for years with great anxiety and maladaptive beliefs about sleep that have kept them in a frustrating cycle of never feeling well rested. If you feel like you would benefit from a more in-depth discussion of these things, check out our modules on mindfulness and optimism. Many will find the greatest success by working with a qualified mental healthcare professional. The good news is that addressing these attitudes and beliefs is possible and it may be a great solution for improving your sleep. The bad news is that these new ways of thinking are not one-and-done checklist items that can be done once and then forgotten. Rather, cultivating any of those mindsets will take time and persistence. Remember, you didn’t develop sleep difficulties in a day, so you won’t be able to resolve them in a day either. Be specific and realistic with the changes you would like to make. Write down a specific plan in your goal tracker if you think that would be helpful. Just make sure to give it time and patience! We believe in you!

This exercise is for those who struggle to calm their racing minds when trying to fall asleep and helps to address the core issues of pre-sleep mental status and conditioned arousal. Many people struggle with feeling stressed and worried at times when it’s not helpful to feel that way. Feeling uncontrollably worried can be especially inconvenient if these feelings follow you into bed when you’re trying to fall asleep. If you sometimes find it difficult to relax at night because there’s just too much to worry and stress about, you may want to try scheduling a time during the day just for worrying. Although it may sound counterintuitive, temporarily focusing your thoughts and energy on the things that worry you may help you to routinely find solutions for life’s struggles and ultimately concentrate your net amount of daily worrying into a specific time of day and away from bedtime. 

The amount of worry time should be predetermined (15-30 minutes) and scheduled for a specific time of day, preferably in the early evening but no later than 2 hours before bedtime. You’ll want to worry in the same place every day, preferably where you don’t already spend large amounts of time doing other things. Especially avoid your bedroom! During your scheduled worry time, you won’t want to just sit there and think about life’s challenges. Rather, bring your phone or a notebook where you can organize and conceptualize your worries. It may help to sort them into two lists: a list of things you can control and a list of things you can’t. During your worry time, try to create a plan for the things that you can control and try your best to put that plan into action. What can you do to address the issues? What solutions are already in motion? In what ways do you need to be patient? For the things you can’t control, try your best to accept them without judgment or resistance. Try to recognize your worries as things that don’t define you, but rather thoughts, feelings, experiences, and life circumstances that are temporary and transient elements of your situation, not your self. Most importantly, when time is up, get out of there! 

Don’t fret when thoughts and worries come up throughout the day. Just try and accept them with the assurance that you’ll have time later in the day to sort them out. It may even be helpful to take a moment and write down your worries as they come so that you know you won’t forget them during worry time. The hope is that when worries and anxieties come up throughout the day, you’ll be able to remind yourself that you’ll have time to sort those things out later. Doing this consistently can be a helpful way to prevent yourself from feeling worried when you need to be feeling sleepy, thus allowing you to fall asleep faster and sleep better.

A great deal of research has shown that what you think about and how much you think about it while trying to fall asleep can either make or break your sleep for the rest of the night. That is to say that racing, self-critical, or otherwise negative thoughts just before bed can get your night off to a rough start and interfere with your sleep quality even after you do fall asleep (Wicklow & Espie, 2000; Gross & Borkovek, 1982; Ansfield et al., 1996). Conversely, positive, calming, and constructive thoughts show benefits to your sleep (Nelson & Harvey, 2003 a/b). In order to redirect harmful bedtime thinking toward patterns of thought that will be better for your sleep, try using these guided meditations as you fall asleep. 

Using these meditations may give your mind a safer, more relaxing target to focus on when trying to fall asleep, thus helping you fall asleep faster and sleep better. Make sure to set your volume to an appropriate, relatively low level. Although we encourage you to try each meditation at least once to see which ones you like the best, don’t be afraid of using the same meditations multiple times if you find them particularly helpful. Most importantly, don’t resist falling asleep as you listen to the tracks. Sweet dreams!

• If you are reading this, it is because we have not yet finished recording our sleep meditations. Until then, explore some of our other listed options for sleep meditations below.

If you want to explore other meditations, there are helpful resources that you can use to find more. Useful services include Insight Timer, Headspace, Calm (all mobile apps), or simply YouTube. When using these apps, you can search for nearly any kind of meditation. For example, let’s say you really enjoyed our acceptance meditation. Using any of the above services (Insight Timer is most recommended), you can search “acceptance meditation for sleep.” Use sleep meditations when they’re most helpful, especially on nights when your mind feels busy or restless. Pay attention to how your mind feels when you fall asleep calmly, and use that awareness to decide when a meditation might help you prepare for rest. Last of all, if you feel like thoughts and feelings that you have throughout the day (as opposed to just before sleep) cause you undue stress and worry about sleep, make sure to check out the previous activity, Sleep Beliefs.

Special thanks to Chade Gonter, who did the research for these meditations and authored them.

Special thanks to Zaya Amarsaikhan, who recorded these meditations.

In your life, have you ever gotten so accustomed to waking up at a specific time that you would occasionally wake up moments before your alarm went off, feeling completely alert and ready to start your day? During this time, chances are that you generally felt energized and awake throughout the day and ready to fall asleep again the following night. This is due to the numerous benefits of falling asleep and waking up around the same time every day (give or take 30 minutes). The benefits of following a consistent sleep schedule and the drawbacks of not doing so are numerous and well-documented. For example, there’s a strong connection between having an inconsistent sleep schedule and poor academic performance among college students (Phillips et al., 2017). One experiment even found that people who maintain consistent sleep schedules actually experience greater and longer-lasting improvements to their daytime sleepiness despite sleeping 30 minutes less each night than their peers who did not keep sleep schedules (Manber et al., 1996). Another study found that compared to those who maintained consistent sleep schedules, people who fell asleep more than an hour later on the weekends performed worse on cognitive tests and had decreased brain activity (Zhang et al., 2020). 

But why does following a consistent sleep schedule work? One reason is that your body is genetically predisposed to fall asleep and wake up on a predictable schedule, as regulated by your circadian rhythm. In the 1960s, sleep researcher Jürgen Aschoff and others conducted cave experiments where volunteers lived underground without clocks, sunlight, or external time cues. They discovered that sleep drive is so strong/consistent that participants still maintained a roughly 24-hour sleep–wake cycle, even in complete darkness. 

Another way to illustrate the strength and importance of your circadian rhythm is by looking at what happens when people go against the body’s natural sleep schedule, such as night shift workers, who experience circadian misalignment. This is when--for whatever reason, such as consistently working a night shift--a person falls asleep and wakes up at times that are different from their genetic/circadian preference. People who live under conditions of circadian misalignment for extended periods of time are at an increased risk for heart disease, cancer, obesity, mental health issues, and other problems (Sletten et al., 2020). Those who have an inconsistent sleep schedule may experience the negative consequences of a lighter form of circadian misalignment, even if they don’t work a night shift (Lemola et al., 2013). Evidently, your body is designed to fall asleep and wake up at specific times, and not following that schedule brings dire consequences. 

Another reason why following a consistent sleep schedule is important is that (as mentioned earlier in this module) a key to healthy sleep is making sleep predictable. It should be easy for your body to tell when it’s time to sleep each night, which can be influenced by your bedtime routine, your sleep hygiene, your management of conditioned arousal, etc. How can sleep be a predictable event in your daily routine if you fall asleep at 10:00 pm one night and 1:00 am the next? Doing so is going against your circadian rhythm, which can negatively affect your levels of sleep-related brain chemicals such as melatonin, serotonin, adenosine, GABA, and so on. This imbalance can contribute to feeling sleepy during the day and not feeling sleepy enough when you want to go to sleep.

We cannot emphasize the importance of a nightly sleep schedule enough. In reality, it may be the most helpful yet least followed sleep hygiene advice in existence, especially for those with non-disordered sleep. Obviously, the only way to solve the problems caused by not keeping a sleep schedule is to start keeping a sleep schedule! Although this behavior change ultimately comes down to you making a choice and sticking with that choice, we do have some advice that may help:

• When deciding when your sleep schedule will be, recall that your body has a natural, genetically-determined preference for when it will fall asleep. This is called Morningness-Eveningness Chronotype. Knowing your chronotype will help you to know when your body and mind naturally prefer to go to sleep. Here is a link to a website that helps you calculate your personal chronotype. It has further divided the categories of morning type and evening type into five sub-categories. The quiz takes no longer than five to seven minutes. Enjoy! 

• What if you’re a night owl living in a morning lark’s world? Unfortunately, this is a common problem. Many people’s lives demand that they wake up earlier than they want to. If your natural, genetically-determined sleep schedule (chronotype) is incompatible with your work or school schedule, there is still hope. This only means that whatever sleep schedule you’re on, you’ll need to stay on, and you’ll need to do so rigorously. Adapting a sleep schedule that goes against your chronotype is called Circadian Reprogramming, and it won’t affect the quality of your sleep as long as you a). sleep mostly during nighttime hours and b). Go to sleep and wake up at the same times each day, give or take 30 minutes. Generally, it takes 2 weeks (plus or minus a few days) to successfully reprogram your sleep schedule. However, it only takes 1-3 nights spent on a different sleep schedule to lose your progress. This is why sleeping poorly during the week and sleeping in on the weekends is a bad idea: any progress you made on reprogramming your sleep schedule gets reset over the weekend, leading to a circadian rhythm in constant disarray. Banking sleep in this way is not enough to somehow cure your sleep deprivation during the remaining 5 days of the week.

• When you have to change your sleep schedule, it’s more important to wake up at the same time than it is to fall asleep at the same time. If this means you lose an hour or two of sleep, feel free to nap during the morning or early afternoon. Just try your best to always wake up at the same time.

• Some find it helpful to set sleep alarms on their phone that remind them when it’s time to start going to sleep. For example, if you plan to retire at 10:30, you may consider setting your alarm at 9:30 so that you can finish what you’re doing and start winding down. Additionally, most phones have sleep schedule features that further motivate you to peel away from your phone and focus on getting some sleep. These systems can inhibit your access to certain apps or can even turn your phone’s display to grayscale to decrease your enjoyment of whatever you’re doing and to consistently remind you that now is not the time to be on your phone. Watch the following tutorials to see how to activate this feature:

• How to set up a sleep alarm for Apple devices

• How to set up a sleep alarm for Android devices

• If you find yourself procrastinating bedtime, it may be because you are worried or fretting about what you have to do the next day. After all, the later you fall asleep, the later you have to deal with tomorrow’s problems, right? Avoiding sleep may provide relief from your stress in the short run, but this is ultimately an unhelpful behavior. If this sounds like you, you may want to incorporate our bedtime routine activity and/or our scheduled worry activity.

• Do you try to keep a consistent sleep schedule, but find it hard to peel yourself out of bed or feel energized throughout the morning? You may want to try our Morning Time Routine activity below, which is a helpful set of practices for reinforcing your circadian rhythm and feeling energized in the early hours.

• Many people understand the importance of a consistent sleep schedule and feel the desire to keep one, but struggle to be consistent or stay motivated to do it. The author feels particular sympathy with those who fall in this category. For issues with motivation, we recommend doing our values clarification exercise below.

• Last of all, remember that nothing you do to improve your sleep will really matter unless you’re able to get 7-9 hours of sleep each night (we highly encourage aiming for 8). Keep that in mind when deciding your sleep schedule. You may have to sacrifice or limit other things in your daily routine in order to reap the benefits of following a consistent sleep schedule.

Before moving on, we want to take a moment to empathize with you. Following a consistent sleep schedule is hard. But we make this recommendation because it is ultimately worth it. Still, don’t hold yourself to a perfect standard. Sometimes, sleeping in after a busy week is simply the right thing to do. Everyone deserves that hard-earned 10-hour night of sleep on occasion. What we encourage is simply that you strive for regularity, that you plan ahead to ensure said regularity, and that you don’t beat yourself up when you fall short. Good luck!

Research suggests that a majority of Americans are not satisfied with their sleep, and a staggering 30-35% of them get less than 6 hours each night (Grandner, 2022; Mandelkorn et al., 2021). As mentioned earlier, those who suffer from sleep disorders that physically disable them from sleeping normally are the minority (Altevogt & Colten, 2006). So, if most people can get good sleep on their own, why don’t they? We propose three possible reasons:

First, people may be unaware of what makes for good sleep. We aim to provide that information in this module, especially in the coming sections where we explain evidence-based practices for improving sleep. However, knowing how to improve sleep may not be enough on its own. The second reason why inadequate sleep is so prevalent is that people may not understand the importance of improving their sleep, or they lack "sleep value." Sleep value is “the relative worth that people place on sleep” (Kay et al. 2023). We hope that your sleep value has increased after learning about the mental, physical, social, and cognitive benefits of good sleep and the negative impacts of neglecting sleep. 

Lastly, some know how to improve their sleep and understand the reasons why they should, yet they still don’t. Unfortunately, many who read this module may ultimately fall into this category. It’s because they lack the motivation to make consistent changes to their sleep. This is the third, and possibly the most difficult-to-overcome reason why people may not get the sleep they need. They don’t manage to adjust their behavior, tweak their lifestyles, or make the sacrifices needed to sleep better. Essentially, they value their sleep, but they don’t prioritize it. Does that sound at all like you?

We know that everyone is at different stages of change when it comes to adjusting their sleep behavior. You may still be undecided on whether changing certain aspects of your lifestyle for the sake of better sleep would be worth it to you. Maybe you would like more quality sleep, but you don’t have time. Or perhaps you find it hard to motivate yourself to keep better sleep habits, even though you know they’d be good for you. Wherever you’re at, this exercise in values clarification and committed action is designed to help you come to a committed decision on what you’re going to do in case you don’t already value or prioritize sleep. Don’t worry, we’re not trying to persuade you with this exercise. It is only to help you see if what matters most to you in your life can be improved by better sleep.

Instructions: Before proceeding, it may be helpful to reread our section on the benefits of good sleep and the risks of poor sleep. After going through that material, fill out this worksheet where you’ll be asked to consider what matters to you and how it may be impacted by your sleep. Remember that it may take time for you to settle on your values and your reasons for changing or not changing your sleep behavior. As such, take as much time as you need, even multiple days if necessary. At the end, you’ll be able to decide on what you’d like to do and set plans accordingly.

Being grateful appears to have a special connection to how well we sleep. In a recent study, researchers found that feeling thankful is linked to various aspects of sleep quality, like how restful our sleep feels, how long it takes us to fall asleep, how long we sleep, and how we function during the day. They also discovered that the thoughts we have before going to bed can help explain why gratitude is linked to better sleep (Wood et al., 2009; Mitchell, 2010; Jackowska et al., 2016). Another experiment found that people who journaled about three things that they were grateful for just before bed for three weeks saw significant improvement in sleep duration and sense of refreshment upon waking up compared to a control group (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). Another more recent study found that writing down three good things that happened during the day increased participants’ time spent asleep and reduced their symptoms of insomnia (Sato et al., 2022). 

So, if you’d like to reap the overall benefits of leading a grateful life in addition to boosting your sleep quality and duration, then this may be the exercise for you. Keep in mind that this exercise is more likely to be helpful to you if you have mild problems with running thoughts and stress before sleep. If you feel that your sleep struggles may be more serious, we would refer you to other exercises. 

Instructions: Write down three good things that happened to you earlier throughout your day, just before you go to sleep.

Finally, research has shown that gratitude journaling can have immediate benefits to your overall well-being, but those benefits don’t last in the long term if you keep a gratitude journal every single day. This finding is consistent with sleep benefits. In one experiment, the benefits lasted for four weeks, and then sleep quality began to return to baseline (Sato et al., 2022). After 3-4 weeks of doing this exercise every night, it would probably be better to transition into writing more detailed and meaningful entries into your gratitude journal on a less frequent basis, say, once a week. For more ways to reap the benefits of gratitude for your sleep and for your general well-being, check out our module on gratitude here.

The mind and body crave physical exercise. Even moderate but consistent exercise has been shown to have innumerable benefits to overall wellbeing, including heart health, immune system functioning, cancer prevention, cognitive functioning, the aging process, social connection, mental/emotional health, and so much more. It has been said that if there was a miracle pill available that could magically confer all the known benefits of physical exercise on the person taking it, then that pill would sell for millions. Ironically, these benefits are accessible to you and me for free, we just don’t always accept them!

Many researchers have asked if physical exercise has a positive effect on sleep. Not surprisingly, exercise confers an array of positive outcomes on sleep. One meta-analysis (a study of multiple other studies) found that daily exercise has a slightly positive impact on how fast you fall asleep and how long you sleep, and a strong impact on the quality of your sleep, both how it feels as well as the physical structure of your sleep (Kredlow et al., 2015; Banno et al., 2018). Even exercise in the evening quickens the onset of REM sleep as well as deep-wave non-rem sleep, and decreases your amount of light sleep, as long you you don’t exercise within an hour of falling asleep (Stutz et al., 2019). Basically, that’s a very jargon-y way of saying that exercise during the morning, afternoon, or evening can cause you to fall asleep faster, sleep longer, and sleep better. This is probably due to the fact that physical exercise increases fatigue, therefore increasing your body’s sleep drive. 

Keep in mind that regular exercise (exercising 5-6 times per week) may have a greater positive effect on your sleep than exercising sporadically, especially when it comes to how long it takes to fall asleep and sleep quality (Kredlow et al., 2015). Still, try your best not to be intimidated by the prospect of regular exercise. Not only is it unnecessary that your exercise be extreme or vigorous, but it may actually be slightly better for your sleep efficiency and night time awakenings if you exercise moderately (Stutz et al., 2019). Experiment with what works best for you, but most people will experience the sleep benefits that we have mentioned by merely walking at a brisk pace for 30 minutes every day. As a side note, it may be particularly important that you sleep in a cooler-than-normal room if you do exercise in order to preserve sleep efficiency (Stutz et al., 2019).

Engaging with this sleep strategy is as simple as making an exercise or fitness goal, putting it in your goal tracker, and committing to it. Here are some additional guidelines that we’ve adapted from our Exercise Module that may be helpful:

• Do what you enjoy - many people experience quick burnout from their fitness goals when they force themselves to do something they don’t like. If you feel like one activity isn’t right for you, say, running or lifting heavy weights, for example, then don’t worry about it! Experiment until you find what works for you, even if it’s as simple as taking an afternoon walk, playing catch with your kids, or mowing the lawn.

• Body appreciation - It’s easy to think of several things that we would like to change about our physical appearance, and even when we are motivated to exercise for the right reasons--i.e., to sleep better--it’s still easy to run into these negative feelings. Remember that it’s ok to pursue your fitness-related goals, but it’s important to remember that accomplishing your goals won’t increase your worth and value. To borrow from our exercise module, “if you start from a place of deep appreciation for your body and what it can do for you, you are more likely to take good care of it.”

• Combine your motivations - Of all the competing interests in your life, it may be extremely easy for exercise to be kicked to the curb. So, try to think of other things that you value and incorporate them into your exercise so that you can accomplish more when you exercise. This brand of multitasking will increase motivation, therefore increasing your chances of exercising. For example, if you value quality time with your partner, invite them to go on nightly walks. If you value social interaction, join a community yoga club. If you value your favorite Netflix series, put it on while on the treadmill. Get creative in order to apply exercise to things that you already love doing. 

• Be consistent - If you are able to maintain a positive relationship with exercise, then as time goes by, it will become easier and easier to exercise.  Remember that the more consistent but manageable your exercise is, the greater effect it will have on your sleep (Stutz et al., 2019) and the more likely it will be that you adhere to it (Rodger et al., 2002). Many people even get to the point where exercise has been such a regular part of their daily routine for so long that it feels unnatural and difficult for them not to get their exercise. Just remember that it matters far less what you do and how hard you do it than how consistently you do it.

• Social support - Don’t be afraid to tell loved ones about your goals! Tell them what you want to do and how they can help. Social support is one of the greatest predictors of how well you’ll adhere to your exercise goals (Carron et al., 1991).

• Here we’ve given you a small taste of some of the ideas that will hopefully guide and motivate you if you choose to improve your sleep through physical exercise. For a much more comprehensive discussion of these ideas, visit our separate module on exercise here.

Do you struggle with feeling alert in the morning? Does it take a Herculean effort to peel yourself out of bed? Do you constantly hit your snooze button, languishing in bed, wishing you could sleep longer? Does it take hours to finally feel like you’ve woken up in the morning? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be struggling with sleep inertia, which is your body’s natural sleep drive that persists after waking. 

Often, sleep inertia can be the simple consequence of poor sleep. Recall that adenosine, your brain’s go-to neurotransmitter for signaling sleepiness, is built up throughout the day and is cleared out during sleep, taking approximately 8 hours. Therefore, feeling sleepy in the morning may simply be due to one or more nights of sleep that were insufficient in quantity and/or quality. In short, you just didn’t give your brain enough time to clear its adenosine stores. Additionally, if you’re not getting enough sleep, your brain will prioritize deep-wave, non-REM sleep to promote physical recovery and immune strengthening. Waking up from these stages of sleep causes much more grogginess and restlessness than waking up from normal REM sleep, which is more likely to happen if you’re getting enough sleep.

Still, there are cases where people get good sleep and still feel groggy upon waking and throughout the morning. In other cases, people may get one night of bad sleep and simply need something--other than a morning cup of coffee, perhaps--to get them up and moving. One evidence-based practice for clearing the sleep away from your eyes in the morning is called the RISE-UP routine. This practice was found to reduce the experience of sleep inertia and increase morning activity in a sample of individuals with insomnia and bipolar disorder (Kaplan et al., 2018). It consists of the following behavioral changes:

• R: Refrain from snoozing. It turns out that hitting the snooze button on your alarm to catch some last-minute Z’s is a much more nuanced topic than was originally thought. On one hand, time spent snoozing is ultimately time that you don’t spend in deep sleep. On the other hand, snoozing may increase morningtime alertness by gently waking you up instead of jarring you awake. If you choose to snooze, experiment with a balanced approach. Perhaps set your alarm to go off every 5 minutes instead of every 10 and snooze for no longer than 20 minutes total. For more info, refer to our FAQ entry on the subject.

• I: Increase activity. By engaging in light exercise or simply by getting up and moving around in your home, grogginess fades at a much faster rate. This will bring regularity to your circadian rhythm, making it so your body can clearly delineate between waking times and resting times. Try to avoid waking up and doing inactive things like watching TV. 

• S: Shower. A cool or warm shower can serve as an additional cue, furthering the effect of starting your day with an increase in activity. Even splashing water in your face can make you much more alert.

• E: Expose yourself to sunlight. This step is key. The main external cue that our ancestors had for waking up and going to sleep was the rising and setting sun. This means that for generations we have been hard-wired to be active during sunny hours and sleepy during the dark nighttime. But why is this the case?

• As mentioned earlier in the module, light-sensitive cells in your eyes tell your brain when it is dark in your environment. This part of your brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, signals to your pineal gland that it is beginning to be time for sleep. In turn, your pineal gland begins to produce melatonin. Melatonin slows your heart rate, drops your body temperature, and aids in the transition from alertness to rest. 

• Whereas the absence of light is crucial for falling asleep, the reintroduction of light is essential for your brain to stop producing melatonin in the morning and wake up again. Exposing yourself to sunlight when you wake in the morning can be one of the best things to promote wakefulness throughout our day and promote consistency in sleep at night. By getting sunlight in your eyes within the first hour of waking, you hit the reset button on your internal clock, aligning yourself with the 24-hour day.

• Consistently managing the light in your environment may be the most important thing for establishing a regular, clearly-delineated circadian rhythm, which will allow you to start your day with energy and alertness. Unfortunately, artificial light is rarely bright enough to accomplish this task. So getting on your phone first thing in the morning simply won’t be enough, even if you have the brightness all the way up. The best thing you can do is get direct sunlight in your eyes, even if it is cloudy outside. (Of course, do not stare directly at the sun.) If you’d like more information, feel free to watch this video here.

• Upbeat music: If you find that certain music motivates or excites you, then listening to that kind of music upon waking may engage your mind and help you to feel more excited for your day and less sleepy.

• Phone a friend: As mentioned earlier, social interaction serves as a cue for wakefulness. Interacting with friends or family upon waking is a good way to get your mind working and to free it from grogginess. 

Of all these options, exposure to sunlight and increasing activity will be the most important for your morning routine, so make sure to include at least those three. Experiment with the other options to find what works best for you.

Remember that this routine, although useful for eliminating sleep inertia and regulating your circadian rhythm, will only be marginally useful if you’re not getting enough sleep in the first place or if the sleep you do get is low quality. So, it may be useful to start with the basics and use other activities in this module to address sleep quality issues before turning your attention to the RISE-UP routine. And, as always, there is very little you can do to reap the physical and mental benefits of healthy sleep without consistently getting 7-9 hours of sleep.

As we explained earlier in the module, sleep hygiene refers to habits and behaviors that lead to sleep that is healthy, restorative, and satisfying on a regular basis. These habits are everyday actions you can take to manage your body’s sleep pressure, making it so that you feel sleepy when it’s time to sleep and alert when it’s time to be awake. We’ve gone over these habits once before, but here they are again for you to incorporate into your sleep goals. Sleep hygiene includes doing two things:

• Adding behaviors that help facilitate your body’s innate ability to get the sleep it needs

• Removing behaviors that interfere with your body’s innate ability to get the sleep it needs. 

Recall that the main idea concerning sleep hygiene is that sleep is necessary for you to live, and since your body cares a lot about staying alive, it is innately capable of meeting that need as long as you don’t get in the way. These are habits that every human would benefit from practicing to not get in the way. Even those diagnosed with clinical sleep disorders benefit from practicing good sleep hygiene. Here, we have them sorted into two lists: First, a list of top-priority sleep hygiene practices that will likely be foundational for improving your sleep. Second: an additional list of evidence-based sleep hygiene practices that would likely be helpful but less essential. Some of these practices are so important that they have their own activities. The practices that don’t have their own separate activities are explained in more detail below. 

1st Priority Practices

• Consistent Sleep Schedule: Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, within a 30-minute window. (Refer to the Sleep Schedule Activity)

• Only Use Bed for Sleep: Stay out of bed during the day and get out of bed at night if you can’t sleep or if you wake up for 30 minutes or more. (Refer to the Conditioned Arousal Activity)

• Avoid Naps Close to Bedtime: Do not sleep within 8-9 hours of going to bed at night. 

• Avoid Caffeine Before Bed: Refrain from caffeinated beverages like coffee, energy drinks, or caffeinated soda 8 hours before bed. It may be wise to avoid it 6-11 hours before bed, depending on your sensitivity to caffeine and the amount you’re consuming. Generally, 8 hours is a safe rule.

• Sleep Routine: Maintain a calming and consistent routine that makes sleep predictable using internal and external sleep cues. (Refer to the Sleep Routine Activity)

• Light Exposure: Try and be exposed to bright, natural light shortly after waking up while avoiding bright lights for an hour before bed. (Refer to the Morning Time Routine Activity)

2nd Priority Practices

• Physical Exercise: Engage in 30 minutes of mild, moderate, or strenuous daily exercise no later than an hour before sleep. (Refer to the Exercise Activity)

• Avoid Eating Before Bedtime: Refrain from eating food, especially heavy meals, an hour before bedtime, and avoid going to bed thirsty. 

• Bedroom Environment: Manage where you sleep by making your bedroom dark, clean, quiet, cool, and safe from outside threats. If you find yourself constantly checking the time, remove all clocks from the room. (Refer to Sleep Environment Activity) 

Sleep is complicated, and some of the sleep hygiene practices will be harder for some people than others. If one of the following recommendations feels particularly challenging, refer to its accompanying activity from the Personal Growth Experiment section for further instructions on how to make the change.

Contributor: Bryce Klingonsmith