​Thoughts keeping you awake at night?

Thoughts that are keeping you awake clearly want some attention. Otherwise, they would not still be lurking around in the back of your head, keeping your mind and body from unwinding and relaxing into a good night’s sleep. Sleep helps process our emotions. I look at a good night’s sleep as comparable to an effective filing system – while sleeping, your mind files what needs to be kept. Your emotions process and discard anything unnecessary.

The emotions have time to settle, and your intuition has a chance to speak to you. A good night’s sleep allows for a fresh mind, the possibility of a new approach, to start the day feeling more balanced.
Thinking habits and problem-solving skills, no matter how good and effective they are, do not always allow for the mind to be at peace every night.

There is only so much you can do with your mind to help relax. Not being able to sleep usually happens when your thoughts are running away with you. These thoughts, more often than not, are from the immediate past or about the future – relating to something that may or may not happen tomorrow.
The best way to shift your thoughts away from worries is to focus on something else and engage your body in the process.

One proven method is to pay close attention to your breathing. Try this:

• Take a couple of breaths, first into your heart then down into your belly, even down to your toes, and then exhale through your entire body. Do this with emotion if you feel like it. Repeat this as many times as feels right. Then slowly begin to inhale in a more focused manner, down into your belly, and exhale, feeling the breath leave you again. Notice a calmness coming over you. Your mind might still be throwing the disturbing thoughts at you, but just acknowledge this and return your focus to your breathing. Keep repeating this for several minutes. Keep your mind focused on your breathing.
  
  
• When you are calmer, begin to focus on what is bothering you. Perhaps you are uncomfortable with an upcoming conversation or are wondering if you could have/should have handled a situation better/differently. Perhaps it is a situation about which you feel helpless. Whatever it is, give it some attention.
  
  
• Narrow it down to have clarity on exactly what is keeping you awake. Break the problem down into sections. Imagine placing the various sections into different boxes and label the boxes. Breaking down the issue will offer some clarity and make the problem more manageable. Tell yourself that in the morning you will start considering what action-oriented steps need to be taken.
  
  
• Depending on the situation, a good question to ask yourself might be: What action, if any, might I be able to take right now in the middle of the night that could help resolve this?
  
  
• If nothing comes to mind, accept that you are not avoiding dealing with the problem, but you are merely asking it to go away until you are rested and more capable of handling it.
  
  
• Knowing you will be dealing with the issue in the morning, take more breaths and with each exhalation let some of the feelings attached to the thoughts dissipate. Visualize putting the problem into a boat and pushing the boat out to sea or placing it onto a cloud that drifts away over your head. Maybe one of the sheep you are counting that jump over the fence could take this problem with him. Use an image that feels right to you so that this problem goes away for a couple of hours. Continue to breathe deeply while doing this.
  
  
• This is about being realistic as to what can and cannot be done in the moment. Worrying about something you can do nothing about in that moment will only make the problem seem bigger. Allow yourself to be realistic about what can and cannot be achieved by resting rather than worrying.
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• Keep your body as relaxed as possible from your toes to your head and hopefully you will drift off.
  
  
  
  (An excerpt from Balanace - A Practical Handbook for Life's Difficult Moments)
  By Suzie Doscher - Personal Development: Executive Coach focusing on Personal Devlepment, Self-help Author
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​Photo credit: Unsplash