If you want to kill the bugs that are destroying your lawn, you go to the hardware store and by insecticide. If you want to kill the insomnia bug that is destroying your good night of rest, you establish a routine that promotes sleep and kills the insomnia bug.

The insomnia bug thrives on upheaval and irregular habits, among other things. You don’t want to feed your insomnia bug refined sugar or caffeine. That will only make it grow stronger and stronger. But you do want to weaken it by establishing a bedtime routine that doesn’t let it stick around to eat up your rest time.

Actually, we all really do love routine. We say we hate routine, but when our routine is interrupted, we are all eager to “get things back to normal” or reestablish our normal routine.

Now think about the routine that you go through each morning as you prepare yourself to go to work. You get out of the bed at a certain time….this time is established by the time required to make all of the other routine preparations that you must make in order to get to work on time. You do things in the same order every morning. You take a shower, brush your teeth, comb your hair, shave or put on your makeup, and get dressed. You drink your coffee, or eat your breakfast. You get in your car and drive to work. That is your routine.

In order to establish a routine for sleep, you need to make your preparations in the same order every night. You need to brush your teeth, take a warm bath, put on your jammies, get into bed, and turn of the light. Whatever order you establish, stick with it night after night after night, and you will be training your brain to recognize that it is time to shut down and go to sleep.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Sleep. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.