Loving yourself is an action. However you feel about yourself, you can learn to love yourself, and you can start today. As you show yourself you are worthy of love (yes, you ARE!), many of the problems that plague you may start simply disappearing. (This is a process, so be patient.)
Part of loving yourself is making sure you get enough sleep.
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Here are some things to think about:
- Go to bed at a decent hour. Don’t stay up to catch up. You won’t get ahead if you get sick and lose time that way. Start training yourself to go to bed at around the same time every night. You need to get about eight hours of sleep every night.
- Turn off those screens. The light from your phones, TV, computer, Kindle, etc. tells your body it’s time to be awake and impedes melatonin production, which is the sleep hormone.
- Create a bedtime ritual. This will let your body know that it’s time to start winding down. Perhaps you will take a bath or shower, and lay out your clothes for the next day.
- If you are having trouble sleeping, start training your brain to associate bed with sleep. If you’re tossing and turning, get out of bed, and go do something in another room until you start to feel sleepy. No screens! Read, listen to soft music, practice deep breathing, write in your journal, knit, color, etc.
- Increase your fiber intake! Apparently, eating more fiber results in more time spent in deep, or slow wave sleep. Decreasing saturated fat and sugar will also help you. (Sugar causes you to wake up more during sleep, and saturated fat decreases the amount of time spent in slow wave sleep.)
- Practice deep breathing. This will slow your heart rate down, and help lower your blood pressure.
- Practice 4-7-8 breathing. Recommended by Dr. Andrew Weil, this technique will help you fall asleep fast. 1) Place the tip of your tongue behind your front teeth and keep it there for the duration of this exercise. 2) Exhale through your mouth, making a whoosh sound. 3) Close your mouth and inhale through your nose to a count of 4. 4) Hold your breath for a count of 7. 5) Exhale through your mouth to a count of 8, making a whoosh sound. Repeat this exercise 3 more times.
- Exercise moderately.
- If you worry, write it down. This will get it out of your brain, and your mind will find it easier to let it go.
- Make sure your bedroom is conducive to sleep. Make sure it’s cool, peaceful, and comfortable.
- Practice tensing and relaxing. Sometimes we don’t know we are holding tension in our bodies. When you lie down, tense your body and then relax and exhale. When you exhale, imagine all the tension and stress getting blown out of your body with your breath.
Before you do anything else, you need to get enough sleep. You can do this.