How to get a good night sleep? (by Jim White)

Who does not know these nights when you are tossing and turning in your bed trying to get some sleep? And you don’t know how to get a good night’s sleep? Try to retrain your sleep my following this stage plan established by Jim White:

Stage 1 Don’t go to bed until you are sleepy

            You no longer have a “bedtime”. Only go to bed once you start to feel sleepy. Don’t go to bed because others go to bed, because you feel bored or because it is bedtime. You must stay up until you feel tired no matter how long this takes.

Stage 2 Remember that your bedroom is only for sleeping

            This step gets rid of the things that keep you from sleep. Reading a book in bed is fine if you don’t have a sleep problem. But you need to associate the bed with sleeping and nothing else. If you are reading, you are not sleeping. So you should not read, watch TV, listen to the radio, check emails, phone friends, etc. Sex is OK, however, as it can help relax you and may help you get to sleep afterwards.

            As soon as you get into bed, put the light out and try to sleep. Though you may know good sleepers who read in bed or watch TV, you must do these things outside the bedroom until you get on top of the problems.

Stage 3 If you don’t fall asleep in twenty minutes, get up

            If you are not asleep in twenty minutes, you may not be asleep in fifty. Think back to the idea of association. You don’t want to associate bed with you tossing and turning, feeling stressed and so on. So after twenty minutes, go back to the living room. Don’t watch TV, don’t eat or drink. You could read a magazine or listen to relaxing music. You must stay in the living room until you feel sleepy again no matter how long it takes. When you feel sleepy, go back to bed. At the start, you may be up a few times each night. It may be hard to get out of a warm bed, but you must do this.

Stage 4 Repeat (and repeat and repeat)

Repeat again and again if you have to. So you have twenty minutes in which to get to sleep each time you try. If you don’t – it’s back to the living room.

Stage 5 Get up early each morning

Get up no later than 08:30 a.m. Set the alarm, and as soon as it goes off get up and out of the bedroom.

Even if you feel that you have hardly slept a wink, you must follow this ti the letter. You should also try to do this seven days a week – no lie-ins at the weekend – until you get this problem sorted out.

Stage 6 Don’t try to catch up on sleep

You may try to nap during the day to catch up on lost sleep, e.g. after a meal. Don’t do it. Save the sleep for bedtime.

Work out when you most want to sleep during the day. Then work out a way of making sure that you don’t fall into the trap: go out for a walk, phone a friend, etc.

Keep at it!

This is a great skill but also a hard one to stick to. It makes great on you in the first few nights. It is very tempting to stay in bed after twenty minutes, to have a long lie-in or afternoon nap because you can hardly keep your eyes open. Fight these urges the whole way.

Don’t expect rapid change. Your poor sleep may have built up over a long time, so it will take time to get better. It will be well worth it in the long run.

Would you like to discuss this further? Contact me on 0493 37 25 25 or send me a message via the website: http://www.purelanguageandcoaching.be

Source: Stress Control – Jim White