Take Control of Your Sleep

For many people, sleep is something that just happens. You go to bed, hope you sleep well, and get on with your day. When you're sleeping well, you probably don't give it much thought. But when you're not, it can start to affect almost everything.

You might feel tired when you wake up, struggle to concentrate during the day, rely on caffeine to get through the afternoon, or find yourself lying awake at night wondering why you can't sleep like you used to.

And that's when the search for answers begins. And usually with google.

There is certainly no shortage of sleep advice out there. Go to bed earlier. Get up at the same time every day. Stop drinking coffee. Don't drink alcohol. Don't look at your phone. Take magnesium. Try meditation. Use a sleep tracker.

Some of these things can be helpful. But the problem with generic sleep advice is that your sleep is individual to you.

What works for one person may make very little difference to another. That’s also why advice from a well-meaning friend or family member isn’t always going to help - their experience of sleep is their experience, not necessarily yours.

And sometimes, the things you think are causing your sleep problems aren't actually the things that need attention.

That's why I believe one of the most useful things you can do is take control of your sleep rather than simply hoping it will improve.

Start by understanding your sleep

Before you can make changes, you need to understand what is actually happening.

How long are you sleeping? How long does it take you to fall asleep? Are you waking during the night? If you wake, can you get back to sleep easily? Are you waking earlier than you want to? And perhaps most importantly, how do you feel during the day?

Sleep isn't just about the hours between going to bed and getting up. The quality and consistency of your sleep can affect your energy, concentration, mood, performance and how you feel throughout the day.

Looking at the whole picture gives you much more useful information than simply asking whether you got eight hours last night.

Look at the whole picture

Sleep doesn't exist in isolation. What happens during your day can influence what happens at night, and what happens at night can influence how you function the following day.

There are the things we commonly associate with sleep, such as caffeine, alcohol, food, exercise, screen time, light exposure, your bedroom environment and your evening routine. These can all have an impact, but they are only part of the picture.

Your overall health matters too. Changes in your health, medications, hormones, pain, breathing, mental health and other physical or psychological factors can all affect how you sleep. Your stage of life can matter as well. What your sleep looked like in your twenties may be very different from what you need or experience in your forties, fifties or beyond.

Then there is everything else going on in your life.

Your work and working hours, shift work or travel, family responsibilities, relationships, stress, workload and the amount of mental space you have at the end of the day can all influence your sleep. Sometimes the issue isn't what you're doing at bedtime at all. It may be something happening twelve hours earlier that is affecting how you feel and function when you finally get into bed.

This is why simply following a list of "10 things you should do for better sleep" doesn't always work. Those tips might be useful, but they don't take into account the person actually trying to implement them.

Your sleep needs to be considered in the context of you: your health, your lifestyle, your work, your routines, your environment, your circumstances and what has changed in your life.

And you don't necessarily need to change everything.

In fact, trying to completely overhaul your routine can make improving your sleep feel like another job. The goal is to understand which factors are actually relevant to you and where a change is most likely to make a difference.

Start by looking for patterns. What seems to affect your sleep? Has something changed recently? Are there certain nights when you sleep better? Has your health, work, routine or lifestyle changed? What happens when you make one particular adjustment?

The more you understand the bigger picture, the easier it becomes to work out which pieces of your individual sleep puzzle need attention...and which ones don't.

Stop looking for the magic fix

Once you start looking at the whole picture, it becomes pretty clear why there isn't one magic fix for sleep, for everyone.

There are just too many individual factors involved. What is affecting your sleep may be completely different from what is affecting someone else's, and the thing that needs attention may not be the thing you expected.

That's why I don't think improving your sleep is about finding the one perfect sleep tip and following it religiously.

It's about understanding your sleep and working out what is actually relevant to you.

There may be one obvious thing that needs to change. Or there may be several smaller pieces that, when put together, make a noticeable difference. And sometimes, what you thought was the problem turns out not to be the problem at all.

The goal isn't to find a magic fix. It's to understand what's going on, make informed changes and see what happens.

Your sleep is a puzzle

This is why I think of sleep as a puzzle.

There isn't usually one missing piece that suddenly makes everything fall into place. Your sleep is influenced by a combination of things, and those things can be different for everyone.

Your health, lifestyle, work, routines, environment, habits and circumstances all form part of the picture. Sometimes one piece is having a much bigger impact than the others. Sometimes it's a combination of smaller things. And sometimes a piece that was never a problem before becomes important because something else in your life has changed.

The challenge is working out which pieces matter for you.

That's where taking control of your sleep comes in. Rather than following a generic list of things you "should" be doing, you can start to understand your own sleep, look at what might be influencing it and work out where there is an opportunity to make a difference.

And that doesn't mean you need to become obsessed with your sleep or analyse every night.

It's about becoming more aware of what's happening and understanding what your sleep is telling you.

You don't need perfect sleep. You don't need to get every piece of the puzzle right every night.

You just need to understand your own puzzle well enough to know which pieces are worth paying attention to.

Because better sleep starts with understanding your sleep.

~ Nina

Sleep Consultant | CPAP Specialist

Sleepin' the Dream

Is poor sleep affecting your life?

If poor sleep is affecting more than just how you feel in the morning. If you’re struggling to concentrate, losing motivation, feeling constantly exhausted, becoming more irritable, withdrawing from the things you enjoy or simply not feeling like yourself anymore - it’s time to take it seriously.

You shouldn’t have to organise your life around being tired or just accept that this is how things are now.

If poor sleep is getting in the way of the life you want to live, I can help. Book your free call to discuss what’s happening with your sleep and whether I can help you get things moving in the right direction.