 In this video, I'm going to share with you some tips about how to get better sleep, because knowing how to get great sleep is such an important part of maintaining good physical and mental health. And when you get good sleep, you have better mood, and that affects your work and your relationships and affects everything in your life, really. So the reason why I got so interested in this topic of sleep is because I've been a light sleeper all of my life, meaning I wake easily at night. In fact, on an average night, I'll usually find myself awake dozens of times a night. Now, when I find myself awake, sometimes I fall back asleep within, you know, a couple dozen seconds, but sometimes it takes minutes. So I'm consciously awake a lot, but I have learned how to fall back asleep pretty quickly, and I've learned to sleep pretty quickly at the start of the night. I have read several books about how to sleep while I've read many articles. So in this short video, I'm going to share with you some of my favorite tips. The key is for you to try out different things until you find out what works for you, okay, because your body is unique and your lifestyle is unique as well. The first tip that I found really helpful is to make sure your bedroom is as dark as possible. Have you ever noticed that when you go on a trip to a hotel, or I should say, a lot of people find that when they sleep in a hotel, they tend to sleep really well? Well, one of the key reasons is that hotel rooms all have blackout curtains that block light from the windows, and you can buy blackout curtains for your own bedroom. Just go online and search blackout curtains, and they come in different colors, but they have material that basically blocks out the light. So make your bedroom as dark as possible. Second tip is to have some kind of white noise throughout the night. White noise is basically soft, consistent noise that can sound like static throughout the whole night. And that tends to entrain the brain towards zoning out and therefore sleeping. And you can find white noise, well, one way we do it is that we have an air filter, and the air filter makes the consistent noise throughout the whole night. But you can also just use your computer, like your laptop or your mobile phone. If you go online and search white noise, there are many free websites that generate white noise. The alternative is to have some nature sounds. So some people sleep really well to the sounds of rain or the sounds of the ocean or the sounds of a forest, and you can find those all for free online. Using a laptop or using a mobile device, there's mobile apps for this as well. The next major tip is to have a consistent pre-bed ritual, something, a set of activities you do every night before you go to bed so that your brain and your body start to learn that, ah, this is what I do before sleeping. It's got to be a consistent ritual. For example, I shower at night. I grew up in a country, in fact, the whole region, most of East Asia showers at night. So I've kind of kept that habit, it relaxes me, and it signals to my brain and my body that it's time to relax and sleep. Other people have routines such as meditating before sleeping that can help some people as well, or stretching, you know, doing some stretches before bed that might help, so you might want to try that as well. Another practice is to do intellectual housekeeping, which this tip comes from a famous philosopher named Alain de Botton, he's a modern philosopher, and what he does is he has a notebook and he writes whatever thoughts, words, images, any ideas that are floating in his head, he writes them all down before he goes to sleep. And so he doesn't, he's not thinking about it while he's trying to sleep, so you might want to try that as well, whatever word, whatever, it doesn't have to be coherent, but it's just to download your brain before you sleep, okay, so you might try that as well. For me, I'll share with you what works best is once the lights are out and I am in bed, I have a couple of rules for myself, okay? I say to myself, okay, for the next seven to eight hours, seven to eight hours, I, my job is to, is to stay in this bed and enjoy the bed experience as much as I can. So this is what I do. Rule number one, I'm not allowed to be reflecting on what I did well or didn't do well the past day or in the past, and I'm also not allowed to be brainstorming ideas and I'm not allowed to be planning the next day or planning for the future, okay? So that's kind of a rule, no reflection on the past, no planning for the future, no brainstorming on any ideas, trying to solve any problems, because that's out of the picture. If I catch myself doing that, I say, oh, whoops, you know, and then I bring myself back to what I'm about to share with you. The second thing I do, and this sounds, this is going to sound a little strange, but like I said, everyone's going to try things out to find out what works for them. So this works for me. I have this internal visualization. I imagine that my heart is connected to the core of the earth, the heart of the earth, through an invisible long, very, very long thread, okay? And I imagine this thread is so long and I can, as I imagine myself in the core of the earth, it's such a far distance that I could be falling, right? I can imagine, sometimes I imagine myself, oh, that means I could be falling. And then I imagine my bed and the floor and the bed and the materials of the earth really supporting me, so I don't fall such a long distance, okay? So I'm being supported and I'm also connected to the earth. So that visualization really helps me for some reason. And the final, oh, before the final rule, I also sometimes, if I need additional support getting to sleep, I will think of a word, okay, especially if I find myself planning or something like that, if I need to keep myself from planning. I think of a mantra word, like peace or happiness or joy or love, some word that I think about as I breathe. Oh, and one more tip that I find really helpful is the breathing itself. I try to mimic my natural breathing as I sleep, okay? So instead of trying to take some conscious deep breaths, which keeps my mind conscious about taking breaths, I mimic what it feels like when I'm sleeping and I'm breathing. And you have to figure that out for yourself. What is your natural breathing when you're sleeping and you may need a sleeping partner to figure this out for you or just notice whenever you just wake up, what is your natural breath or when you're just about to fall asleep, what is your natural breath? So for example, or something, okay, whatever works for you that happens to be mine. So mimic your natural breathing. And if I need additional help with my thoughts, I will think of a word like I said, peace lover as I breathe naturally. The fourth and final rule is that I don't worry whether I'm asleep or I'm awake. Very important because like I said, I wake up dozens of times a night. When I worry whether, when I try to sleep, it makes me stay awake. But if I don't worry about it and I just say to myself, I am enjoying this experience. I mean, I'm, I'm feeling connected to the earth. I'm being, I feel like I'm being supported. I'm thinking these good thoughts like peace or love or happiness. It's a great experience. And the truth is, as long as you're relaxed, okay, as long as your body is relaxed and your eyes are closed, okay, and it's, you know, you are actually resting. You're resting your body and you're resting your mind. So know that you are resting regardless. So I don't worry about it. So that really helps me. And I find that as I, as I don't worry about it, I usually fall asleep pretty quickly after that. Okay. So a couple of other things before, before I close this video is one is that temperature can matter a lot for people. I'm going to include in the notes of this video a link to a, a product that I've heard that I heard on a podcast was recommended very highly. I haven't used it myself. I haven't needed it. But it's a product that helps your bed stay a certain temperature, not too cold, not too hot. It's, there's two products. Actually, one is called bed jet and the other one is called chili pad and, and that really has helped a lot of people because the temperature does matter a lot to some people, especially like people, women who are going through menopause, they have hot flashes that, so this kind of product can really help. Final thing is that there are long sleepers and there are short sleepers. Long sleepers are people who need a lot of sleep at night, but they don't typically need naps during the day. You know, my wife is a great example of that. She usually sleeps nine to 10 hours at night, nine hours usually, but on the weekends, like 10, sometimes 11 hours on weekends, but she doesn't need any naps during the day. I'm, I'm in the opposite. I only sleep seven to eight hours at night, but then during the day, I take three to four naps, 15, about 15 to 20 minutes each. And that helps me to stay energized throughout the day. If my wife takes, tries to take a nap in her day, she gets really groggy the rest of the day. So know that there are different sleep personalities, you might say, and know what yours is and be totally okay with that. Um, the last thing I'll say is that I'm going to include, um, some links in the notes of this video to give you some more tips that you might want to try for getting better sleep, but I really hope this video helps you. I would love to hear what helps you to sleep. If you found something that really helps you. And, uh, with that, I wish you a really good night's sleep. Knowing that sleep is such, so it's so important for us to figure out so that we can have a good mood throughout the day and do better work and have better relationships.