Fix Your Sleep, Shyness & Pace Setting

Amigos y amigas!

The Big 3 newsletter is here.

• 1 mental health tip (or, for this week, "tips")
• 1 social skills tip
• 1 personal reflection

Let's begin with this week's mental health tip...

1.) How to turn your mind off before you sleep

A lot of you guys have asked me what my evening routine is, so here it is on a good and bad day.

Good day: no screens after 8pm, go for a walk, read in bed, try to fall asleep, fail miserably because my mind won’t shut up. Check time, oh no it’s 00:31am. Start panicking about the sleep I’m loosing.

Bad day: scroll on my phone right up until bed, lay in bed, stare at ceiling, try to sleep, can’t because mind won’t shut up. Check time, oh no it's 01:47am. Start panicking about the sleep I'm loosing.

I’m not an insomniac, but my mind seems to love going into overdrive right as I put my head on the pillow.

Perhaps yours does too.

So this week I’ve been researching how to turn your mind off before you sleep and once again, a clinical psychologist (Nick Wignall) has taught us everything we need to know.

The problem…

The main issue with trying to fall asleep is the trying. Otherwise known as the sleep-effort paradox.

When you're trying hard at something, your brain assumes there’s a problem to solve so it gives you a little dose of adrenaline. But this revs up your sympathetic nervous system (aka your fight or flight response) and, as you can guess, being in a state of arousal isn’t what you want when you go to bed, what you want is relaxation.

Worse yet, you’re probably pretty clued up on how important sleep is for you; you know that a poor night's sleep can worsen your health and ruin your performance in life. So as well as aroused, you become anxious when you can't sleep because you’re aware of all the sleep you’re not getting.

So how can we turn our mind's off before we go to sleep?

There are 4 tips and 4 protocols.

1.) Establish a sleep runaway

If you struggle to turn your mind off before bed it’s likely because you’re a high achiever. You spend most of your waking hours solving problems and trying to be productive.

But think about being a high achiever just like a jet airplane. An airplane can soar to great heights but what it doesn’t do is fly at 500 miles per hour at 30,000 feet until it hovers over the airport destination and then nose dives straight into the airport.

No.

An airplane needs a runway to slow it down.

(Pilots even start slowing the aircraft down 30 minutes before landing.)

But the issue is you likely approach your sleep like the nose diving airplane and keep yourself busy right up until the last minute and then expect to crash out asleep.

For example:

• You check email
• You check your social media
• You have important discussions before bed or catch up with people

So, to build your sleep confidence you need some dedicated time before bed that’s free of effortful or stressful activities so your mind can slow down and relax.

Protocol 1:

Dedicate 60-90 minutes before your ideal bedtime as a sleep runaway.

During this period:

• No calls
• No important decisions
• No checking of work related stuff (or anything that will spark anxiety or arousal)
• No decision making

Instead:

• Zone out
• Listen to calming music
• Watch tv (but no action thrillers - remember, no arousal)
• Go for a walk
• Journal

Final note…

Establish your sleep runaway as a routine. Do the same routine each night, because you don’t want to have to make the decision each night as to how you’re going to wind down.

My ideal sleep runaway:

• Screens off at 8pm (put phone in garage & turn laptop off)
• Turn red light on (yes my room looks like a brothel after 8pm)
• Walk and talk to myself out loud
• Journal
• Read a novel until I fall asleep

Remember: the sleep runaway is helpful only when you do it consistently.

2.) Develop a midnight plan

Even when I fall asleep I still randomly wake up every now and then.

Neuroscientifically this happens due to increased activity in your pre frontal cortex and anterior cingulate during slow wave sleep (when the brain should be relaxing).

But when you wake up, as mentioned earlier, you now start to freak out about all the sleep you’re losing which raises your arousal.

“Argh! Now I’ll be a mess tomorrow.”

Additionally, getting out of bed and waiting until you feel tired enough to sleep again only leads to more arousal as you keep checking the time.

So your midnight plan is a simple, relaxing routine you establish in case you randomly wake up when sleeping.

For example, if you randomly wake up at 3am and after 5 minutes you can’t fall back asleep…

1.) Validate your frustration

• “Ok, I’m feeling pretty frustrated that I can’t sleep.”

2.) Do something relaxing

• Read a novel
• Listen to calming music

Warning:

• Do not do breath work or meditation
• Both things will likely raise your arousal as you’re trying to fall asleep (remember, the more you try the more aroused you'll be)

Protocol 2:

Set and forget your midnight routine.

Treat your midnight routine like following a recipe; something that you don't have to think about too much and is always there to rely on.

Ideally you want your midnight routine to be relaxing enough so it calms you down but absorbing enough that it distracts you from your midnight worries.

Another tip is to do your midnight routine as soon as you get into bed to wind down.

3.) Make time to worry on purpose

Noticed what the main cause of your inability to fall asleep is yet?

Worry.

Here's the vicious cycle of worry...

Worse yet, by routinely worrying in bed you train your brain to associate your bed with worry.

But here’s the reason you worry in bed instead of during the day…

You’re likely pretty good at problem solving throughout the day and most of the time you suppress your emotions to get stuff done. So the only time your brain can communicate your worries to you is when your defences are down and there’s no screen for you to distract yourself with.

When you're distraction free, your brain says: “yes! I finally have your attention, here are all the things I was trying to tell you about earlier that we need to worry about…”

Protocol 3:

Schedule worry.

Here’s what you do…

1.) Pick a time to worry every evening

2.) Set a timer on your phone for 10 minutes (this will help you not go overtime)

3.) Write down as many worries as you can think of on a piece of paper

• List any worries that come up no matter how big or small (e.g. starting a family to buying milk)

4.) Set worry boundaries

• During worry time worry hard
• But outside of worry time, tell yourself that you’ll save any worries you have for worry time

The logic behind this is simple…

By scheduling a specific time to worry you’re rewarding your brain to worry at the right time.

Worrying then becomes a practice. Perhaps a very enjoyable one.

Finally…

4.) Try sleep compression

When you’re not sleeping well, usually you’ll try and spend more time in bed.

You’ll either:

• Go to bed earlier hoping you’ll fall asleep quicker
• Stay in bed longer trying to catch up on lost sleep

But in the long run this knocks your sleep routine out of whack and causes your brain to associate your bed with not sleeping.

So…

Do the opposite.

Protocol 4:

Temporarily trade sleep quantity for sleep quality.

To break your brain’s association with your bed for not sleeping, reduce the amount of time you spend in your bed to just 6 hours.

Say to yourself, you’ll only stay in bed for that duration of time, no matter how much sleep you get.

The logic here: by sleeping less, you’ll be sleepier (which is good), so you’ll eventually fall asleep easier meaning your brain will begin to only associate your bed with sleep.

Note: this protocol is temporary. I’d only suggest doing this for a week maximum.

So in summary:

• Establish a sleep runaway
• Develop a midnight plan
• Make time to worry on purpose
• Try sleep compression

Finally, if your sleep isn’t the best at the moment, start evaluating your days based on how you perform instead of how you feel. Because you’re likely able to still function decently without the best nights sleep. Realising this will lower your anxiety around sleep meaning you’ll fall asleep easier.

Here's a link to Nick's full article which the above was a summary of.

Now let’s cover this week’s social skills tip…

2.) How to overcome shyness

Shyness isn’t a biological problem, it’s a philosophical problem.

(Note: there will be a whole module dedicated to social anxiety and shyness in the upcoming social skills course I'm making, I’ll keep you updated when it’s launched).

Continuing...

Shyness stems from an error in thought and its primary belief is: there is an insurmountable gap between you and other people.

Shy people believe in an “otherness” which prevents them from connecting to other people.

Here are a few quotes from Alain De Botton on the topic:

"Shyness is a touching, yet ultimately excessive and unwarranted way of feeling special."

"It's essential assumption is that other people are self-sufficient, that they do not lack for company, that they are not alone with anything, that they understand all they need to know and that they do not share in any of our frailties, hesitations, secret longings or confusions."

So to overcome shyness you need to change your social philosophy.

Instead of approaching others as if they're completely “other” to you, that you belong to the group of anxious boys and she belongs to the clan of attractive girls or that they belong to the rich upper class and you to the average middle class, try to humanise this person and find the common ground between you both.

Personal story...

When I was a salesman in a gym, one of my managers taught me something I’ll never forget.

He said: “whenever you’re giving someone a tour around the gym, no matter who they are; a 17 year old kid wearing skateboard clothes or a 57 year old woman dressed for a dinner party, you can always find something about that person that you like and something you both have in common.”

So the next time you feel shy when talking to someone, that's your task. Find one thing you like about this person and one thing you both have in common.

Go deeper...

Shyness can also arise when you put other people on pedestals.

For example:

• You become increasingly shy when you meet your favourite celebrity because you’ve idealised them in your mind.
• You become tongue tied when an attractive stranger starts speaking to you because you believe they are way out of your league.

So destroy the pedestals.

Put no one and no thing on a level above the level at which you put yourself. Not in an egotistical way, but with the wholehearted understanding that we’re all human and no one deserves the title of being anything more than human.

After all, we all put our trousers through the same legs and feel the same emotions.

Consider this other perspective change…

You’re a buyer, not a seller.

Shyness can also stem from your belief that you have to prove yourself to others and always appear in a good way lest they discover your inner reprehensibility.

But just like you would adopt the mindset of a buyer if you were touring your first house and the estate agent would adopt the role of the seller trying to soften you up for the sale, adopt the same posture when socialising.

Stop creating the dynamic that you have to prove yourself to others and foster the inner dynamic that others have to prove themselves to you.

After all, your time is extremely limited and you will take your final breath one day. You could be doing anything else with your time yet you’re here spending it with this person.  

Your presence has purpose.

Finally, if you fear exposing yourself in social situations, keep this question close at hand…

How exposed can you be?

It's a weird question but if you ask it to yourself when you're out socialising and feeling shy, you'll begin to see it as a challenge.

Then you might begin to voice your opinions in a conversation despite that voice telling you not to, you'll hold eye contact with that stranger for longer than you usually would to see what happens or you'll embrace the opportunity to ask someone where they got their nice trainers from while standing in a queue at a cafe. And you'll realise; exposure doesn't kill you. And it's only by exposing yourself to the world that people can get the once in a lifetime opportunity to get to know you.

(And if worse comes to worse and you mess up what you were going to say or you spill milk over yourself, everyone will forget about it in a few days. Or best yet, they were too caught up in their own heads at the time to notice your social mishap).

Everyone is human.

Now let’s finalise with this week’s personal realisation.

3.) Never set a pace you can’t keep

This week I tweeted this...

“Anything you rush will turn out shit.

And when it turns out shit, you'll have to spend more time going back and correcting all of your mistakes.

Slow down.

To do anything good takes time.”

It was received well, so let me briefly elaborate.

I see no point in working at a pace you can’t sustain.

Every period of my life in which I felt most aligned and purposeful has come from me working at a sustainable pace and nothing more. Leaving myself with enough energy to continue the work tomorrow.

So:

• Don’t work out for 3 hours once a week, workout 30 minutes a day everyday.
• Don’t work for 14 hours on day and spend the rest of the week recovering, work for maximum 2 hours per day.
• Don't force yourself to read for 2 hours a day and learn a language straight after, read for 20 minutes a day and practice that language for 10 minutes.

It's a realisation I keep having, but I take that to mean it's worth repeating.

As the saying goes, the plan you consistently follow is better than the perfect plan you abandon.

Thank you for reading.

Until next week!

Lew

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