 One of the most important habits to cultivate for a sustainable and thriving life, including and maybe especially for self-employed people is to learn how to sleep well. Yes, such a basic habit, but sadly, many of us actually don't know how to sleep well. And so I'd like to share with you my favorite tips in this video, what has helped me. And I also welcome you to comment below and share what has helped you as well. All right, so let me go ahead and share with you. There are some one-time preparations. There are some nightly preparations, and then I will talk about what I do to fall asleep and stay asleep each night. So some of the one-time preparations that have really helped me is to make my bedroom as dark as possible by getting blackout curtains. So research has shown that even a little bit of light into the bedroom at night when you're trying to sleep will affect your sleep. So street lamp, light, traffic, driving by, or whatever it may be. So I recommend that you go and buy blackout curtains. They're not that expensive. And in the article link below, I've given a link to find them on Amazon.com if you want to buy it from there. And the other part that's helpful is your bedroom door may have a gap at the bottom that lets in some light or noise. And so it's nice to have a door draft stopper. You can even make it really easy by rolling up a towel that you don't need anymore. Just roll it up and then put it by the door. And that's what we've done. And it really has helped to block out light as well as noise. And then in terms of noise, we also use a white noise machine, which is not expensive. And you could just find it online. And yeah, that really helps to equalize the audio environment for you to sleep because what wakes us up is actually changes in the audio environment, right? Sudden noises or things like that wake us up. So if the noise environment can be mostly quiet and even, that's the key, even, then we tend to sleep easier. Last thing is for a one-time preparation is to equalize your body temperature as you sleep. I am what's called a hot sleeper. There are cold sleepers and hot sleepers. Cold sleepers tend to find themselves being too cold most nights. And so they need more blankets and they may even need a heating pad. For me, I tend to find myself being too warm at night. So what I did a couple of years ago was to buy something called a chili pad cube, which again, I have the link in the article, chili pad cube. It's not cheap. I think it's several hundred bucks, but it has helped tremendously. I use it every single night and a $400 investment to sleep better for years is probably worth it. Now, by the way, I'm also assuming that you enjoy your mattress and your pillow. I didn't write about that in the article. I probably should have. But mattress and pillow and blanket, those are obviously basics for the materials, the tools for sleeping well. So those are some one-time preparations. All right. So what about nightly preparations every night as we get ready for bed? By the way, if you have anything that really helps you, go ahead and comment below the video because it might really help somebody else also. What helps me for nightly prep is to be really clear about how many minutes it takes me for each of my evening tasks. And I know it sounds maybe too detail-oriented, but try it out. Just that's all I ask of you. Give this a try and see if it helps you. What I mean is this. Literally write down the tasks you do that you need to do before you can sleep soundly. So for me, I grew up taking a shower at night. So that takes time. And I write down how much time that takes. I also obviously need to use the bathroom, do evening hygiene, like brushing teeth and things like that. So I and I need to make sure that the cat is fed. I might need to do a bit of dishes, floss and things like that. So I've written down specifically, okay, for me to get up from the television, get up from the laptop, finish dinner, and then do these things before I can feel like I can sleep soundly, like I didn't leave anything undone, I have to do a series of tasks you probably do as well. Have you written down how much time each of these things take you? Because if you don't write down, if you don't calculate carefully how much time these things take you, there could be a range. But generally speaking, how much time does these things do these things take you? You write that down, you calculate the times. Oh, wow, I need two hours or whatever it is. I need an hour and a half. I need two and a half hours from the time I get up from dinner to the time I'm in bed, lights out and start to fall asleep, plan that time. So what happens is I now set an alarm at night, well, I've done this for many years, I set an evening alarm, not just a morning alarm, of course, I actually don't even use a morning alarm anymore, I'll talk about that briefly. But the evening alarm is more important, because evening alarm starts your evening tasks, your evening routine, to be able to sleep soundly. So that's what I recommend to you, an evening alarm. Now, one other thing that has really helped me is to move my sleeping time. I used to not be able to sleep until at least midnight, and yeah, I try to go to bed at midnight and it still took time for me to fall asleep, so, and that wasn't helpful for my business, because my business required, you know, I want to be able to, for example, talk to people in Europe, and people in Europe by the time I wake up in Pacific Time, it's already afternoon for them, so I needed to do some of my calls in the morning, my time, and so that's why I had to move my sleep time from midnight to earlier. Now, I sleep every night at about 10.30pm, 10.45pm easily, it used to be hard even to sleep at 12.30am, so how did I move my sleep time? I do it gradually. Our bodies are a finely tuned instrument of equilibrium, body clock. You can't just say, you know, I'm going to start sleeping earlier and that doesn't happen. Your body clock is going to be confused and it's going to, it's a little bit too forceful, so here's what I did. Remember I said, I said an evening alarm time to start my evening routine? Well, I, you know, my evening routine used to start at maybe 10.30pm, right? So I said an alarm and then I moved that 10.30pm to 10.25pm a few nights later, just starting my evening routine just a little bit earlier, and after I got used to that, I moved it to 10.20pm, you know, maybe after a week or whatever it is. And so gradually, my evening routine now starts at 8.45pm, okay? So, but that took time, weeks to move it gradually so that my body clock, you know, was gently moved towards earlier sleeping and therefore earlier waking. So now I naturally wake, I give myself, by the way, in the morning I give myself a waking buffer between 6 and 7pm, so I don't use a morning alarm anymore. I just naturally wake, if I'm waking and it's still 5.30am, it's like, okay, I'll just sleep a little bit more and then I wake up and maybe sometimes it's 7.00am already. I'm like, oh, 7.00am, I get to wake up. And even at 7.00am, I still have a bit of buffer. I don't have to like, oh my God, I have 20 minutes before my meeting. I still give myself a bit of a buffer. So morning buffer, I think it's really helpful, you kind of gently, like, oh, sometimes I wake up at 6.15am and I'm feeling rested, I'm really ready to wake up and get going and that's great. Sometimes I'm asleep until 7. So giving myself that early, that morning buffer is really helpful. Okay, so finally, I want to share with you, once I am in bed, horizontal, the lights are out, how do I fall asleep and stay asleep? I developed this method I call the spa method, because the steps of the method spell out the acronym spa, S-P-A. So, and this usually helps me fall asleep within 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Anyway, let me explain it to you. So S, so I'm in bed, the lights are out and I start this method as soon as possible. S stands for 60 seconds to stillness, 60 seconds to stillness or simply stillness. And the idea is this, it's such a simple idea, but so many of us don't even realize this. In order to become sleepy and to fall asleep, you need to stop moving your body. So that's something that I've always been a light sleeper all my life, I've always had trouble falling asleep all my life. So this really helps me because I used to, like, adjust my blankets, adjust my position, adjust my pillow for like an hour in bed. And that's not helpful and it's frustrating. Some of you probably know that and some of you are probably doing that without even realizing you're doing that. You spend like half an hour just adjusting yourself and like, oh, here's an itch here, scratch there and just, right, you know what, some of you know what I'm talking about. So I've learned that, okay, 60, you know, I kind of make it a game for myself. Okay, I'm going to start the spa method, I'm in bed, 60 seconds to stillness. So I start counting from zero, knowing that once I count to about 60, I have 60 seconds to fully adjust myself, scratch any itches, get my pillow just right, get my blink. Some of you don't need this, but some of us do. So it's like, okay, adjust everything. And the key is not to get into the most perfect position ever that has no itches, no nothing. The key is I have 60 seconds to get to good enough stillness. Good enough doesn't have to be the perfectly scratched itches or anything. Just good enough where I'm like, okay, 60 seconds, it's good enough for now. It's not going to be perfect temperature, maybe my shoulders slightly cold or whatever. You know, it's nothing, it's not has just good enough, good enough. And then I just stay still as long as I can. And I know that if I stay still, I will feel sleepy soon enough. And once I start feeling tired and sleepy, then I can adjust my shoulder blanket a little bit more to cover my shoulder at this, by this point, I know that my shoulder tends to get cold. So I already adjust within the first 60 seconds. But whatever I can adjust in six seconds, I wait until I'm still enough to be sleepy before I adjust. So that's the first step, 60 seconds to stillness for the S. The next step is P, which stands for peaceful healing breath, peaceful healing breath. And so after the 60 seconds to stillness, I start breathing in, I start, you know, relaxing my body, breathing in peace and breathing out healing. Yes, breathing in peace and breathing out healing. So when I breathe out healing, I'm imagining that my body is being healed. Now there is a interesting story, it gets a little bit strange, but stay with me here. There's a near-death experience story about a woman who was actually, was a veteran in the U.S. military, who she was in, I think it was Afghanistan or somewhere in some war zone, where her convoy got blown up by an IED, a landmine, and she was, she had a near-death experience. Her body was badly damaged, but in her near-death experience, she entered what she called a healing environment, like her spirit. She saw that her spirit or her body apparently, since some dimension was entering a healing environment, there were spirits preparing her body. It was the weirdest thing. Anyway, I linked it in the article where you can watch her interview about this. And basically the spirits were stitching up her body, like spirit doctors. And her recovery was miraculous. She recovered much faster than people who had that kind of body damage, and she attributes it to spirit healing. Anyway, so that story always stuck with me. So I imagine myself also, when I breathe out healing, I'm imagining the spirits are repairing the molecules of my body, my organs, and things like that. So just kind of, so peaceful healing breath is what I do. I just breathe in peace. I breathe out healing. I feel the healings, whatever works for you, whatever internal imagery works for you to imagine yourself being healed, I recommend that as the second step. The peaceful healing breath. And usually just 60 seconds to stillness and then peaceful healing breath for a few minutes usually makes me fall asleep. I'm asleep. I don't even remember the next step. But if I'm still awake after like 15 minutes, if I just notice that I'm still awake after a while, then I move to the next step, which is A. Remember the spa method, S, P, A, 60 seconds to stillness, peaceful healing breath for the P, and then A stands for appreciation. So here is where I enter a state of appreciation. If I'm still awake, I start appreciating various things in my life. And I start with my faith. I start appreciating my spirit support team that is with me, I believe. I really do believe it. It's not just, oh, wouldn't it be nice if that were true? I literally, I have read so much about the spirit world and mediumship and afterlife studies and all that stuff that I literally believe 110%. I believe that there are spirits around us at all times supporting us. But most of us are not, are close to it. So we don't open ourselves to the healing and the support and the love that's available. So I literally, so, so you know, I appreciate, I think them in my mind. You know, thank you spirit support team being around me even now. You guys work so hard all the time and I'm so grateful for you. You know, and so, yeah, so that's what I do. I appreciate my spirit support team. And then if I'm still awake, I move on to appreciating something physical. So I would appreciate, you know, my blankets or whatever happens to be comfortable that night, I will appreciate it. So that's the spa method, 60 seconds to stillness, peaceful healing breath, and then appreciation. And that usually makes me fall asleep. And at the middle of the night, I've always been a light sleeper. And so I usually am only unconscious each night for about four or five hours. I'm unconscious each night. And then after four or five hours, I usually need to, you know, use, use the restroom and then I come back to bed and I'm usually just awake for the rest of the night, for the rest of the eight hours or so. But even, even though I'm kind of lightly conscious for the rest of the hours, I still practice the spa method. I think of it as my nightly meditation. So, so sometimes I usually fall in and out of sleep during that light sleep period before, you know, after the five hours. But I still, when I find myself awake and want to fall asleep again, I do the spa method, spa meditation. And it's just like meditating. And if I find myself awake, I just come back to my meditation. Gently come back to my meditation. And so it's like, it's sort of being awake, thinking about different things, planning the future, worrying about the past, worrying about the present. I'm like, I get to meditate for several hours a night. If, if that happens, sometimes, like I said, sometimes I'm asleep. Sometimes I'm awake. But regardless, here's the secret that I found. As long as I stay horizontal, eyes closed and just trying to relax for about eight hours, seven to eight hours, I wake up the next day. I feel fine. It's the most, but if I find my, if I, if I, I've tested this. If I get up in the middle of the night because I'm awake and mainstream science says you're supposed to get up in the middle of the night. If you're awake, you shouldn't stay in bed being awake and frustrated. That's true. You shouldn't be frustrated in bed. That's not good for your sleep hygiene, but I've shifted that. I'm not frustrated in bed when I'm awake. I am practicing my spa meditation. And so it feels good. I get to appreciate all the different things in my life. I get to experience healing and all that stuff. I tried getting up several, many years. I've tested this over many years. I tried getting up, you know, doing some reading before I go back to bed. And I feel terrible the next day. I always feel badly the next day, like something was really off. But if I just stay in bed and just do my meditation, I feel fine the next day as if I've slept for eight hours. So anyway, I hope this is helpful. This video is going a little bit long. The last thing I'll say is this, every body is different. Every human body is different. So your body may be different than mine. You need to experiment with what works for you to feel fine each day, having slept enough. Some of us sleep for six hours. Some of us sleep for 10 hours. Some of us sleep for two segments at night. Some of us take multiple naps during the day. Whatever works for you to feel energized, you should practice that and practice that faithfully and trust that just because your body is different from what mainstream science says is normal for sleep. I noticed that basically I read many sleep books and try to like force myself to sleep like the sleep books are telling me and over time. And I even bought like technology to monitor my sleep and all. And after a while, I just realized I just have to stop worrying about it. If I stopped worrying that I'm not getting the scientifically proven hours of REM sleep or whatever, after I stopped worrying about it, my quality of life got better. Yeah. So I stopped trying to mold myself to whatever the articles are saying and the books are saying. I just trusted that, hey, if I'm fine during the day, then I'm getting enough sleep. And if I'm not, I'm not fine during the day. That means I need to probably get my evening routine better so that I can have more time in bed. So just trust that you're getting enough sleep once you are working on it and doing some of the preparations and things. So I hope this is helpful. Sleep is, I think the first habit to get well. If you get skillful at sleep, everything else in your life and in your business tends to be a little bit better because you have more energy for setting good boundaries. You have more energy for creativity. You have more energy for just improvisation and relationships and better mood and all that stuff. So I hope you really will work sincerely on your sleep as long as you do the preparations, as long as you have some method that helps you to fall asleep and then just trust after that. So I hope this helps. And if you have anything that helps you to sleep better, I hope you'll add a comment below, not because I need comments on my videos, but I really do hope that if you've discovered something that really helps you just consistently, maybe even for years, let people know. And so, you know, whether you comment below or just tell your friends about it, if everybody could sleep better, I think the world would be a better place. So all right, I hope this helps. I'm George Cow. I usually talk about business development from a more authentic and heart based perspective. So I will see you in the next video and I hope you will sleep better tonight. Take care.