Want to get a good night’s sleep? First of all, stop trying

People who have tried everything to get more sleep are the ones I meet frequently. They adjusted their routines based on the advice they got from the internet after reading every article on the topic. Even though they are doing all the right things, they still struggle. When it comes to sleep, effort is not rewarded. It is punished. You are more likely to fail if you try more.

The problem is that when it comes to sleep, effort is not rewarded. In fact it is actively punished

Sleep is a passive process. Nothing can be done to make it happen. Sleep will follow if we stop trying. It's hard to not try to sleep when you're exhausted. Lack of sleep drive and hyperarousal are the main causes of insomnia. The right conditions can be created to allow sleep to happen on its own, if the two factors are tackled.

The more scientifically sound advice addresses these factors too, but it also unintentionally gives the false impression that you are able to make yourself sleep by doing certain things. Insomnia is similar to a Chinese finger trap, where you pull your finger away from it. Push is the only way out of the trap. You have to do things differently if you want a different result. If you don't try too hard, there are seven ways to improve your sleep.

There is nothing you can do to make sure you sleep tonight. There are a lot of things you can do to improve your chances of sleeping well. It takes time to get a good night's sleep, and there are no quick fixes, so if you want to sleep well, make it a long-term goal and expect to see progress in a few weeks.

According to James Nestor, author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, modern humans tend to over-breathe, which can raise blood pressure and make us sleepy. The parasympathetic nervous system counteracts the arousal of your breathing when you slow it down. If you want to get a better night's sleep, slow your breathing down for 10 minutes a day. If you do it during regular activities like hanging out the washing or working at your desk, it will work. When you want them to send you to sleep, don't relax just before bed. If you want to tackle hyperarousal, you should do it in the middle of the day rather than before you go to sleep. A breathing exercise every morning will help you to feel calmer during the day and will also help you to sleep better at night.

In the same way that hunger is not generating sleep-drive, so is sleep-drive. Adults need to be awake for at least 16 hours to get the sleep they need. Having an early night can mean you won't be sleepy enough to fall asleep quickly and easily, which can cause frustration and anxiety about sleeping. If you've been having trouble falling asleep, get up at the same time every day, including weekends, and make your earliest sleep around 16 hours later. Don't worry about the exact times or hours of sleep, they don't matter. Naps take the edge off your appetite for sleep, like having a snack just before you go to sleep.

Maybe it's time to try something different if you have an elaborate wind-down routine that doesn't lead to a good night's sleep. If you want to sleep better, ask yourself which elements of your routine you enjoy and which ones you put yourself through. If you want to have a nice bath at the end of the day, then have a hot bath. If you don't like having a bath but are worried you won't sleep if you don't have one, then stop. If you want to spend time relaxing, you should watch TV in bed or scroll through social media. It isn't the blue light from the screen that keeps you awake, it's the anxiety about whether you'll sleep or not The best way to overrule this anxiety is to enjoy yourself and look forward to bed.

Insomnia is caused by a fear of being awake. This causes the body to respond to stress with hormones. You need to make friends with being awake to reprogram your brain. Hard as this sounds, try to accept it as part of your night and instead of spending the time worrying and getting more anxious, do something that will give you pleasure like listening to a comedy or audiobook, watching old family videos or doing Wordle. If you don't want to stay in bed, get up and find a warm place to sleep. If this seems too gentle and slow, try to face the fear of being awake head on by keeping your eyes open. Doing the opposite of what you want to do reduces the amount of effort you have to put into it. According to the Austrian neuroscientist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, sleep is like a dove which lands near one's hand and stays there as long as one doesn't pay any attention to it. It's possible to stay awake at night.

It is possible to counteract stress hormones by smiling. Smiling reduces hyperarousal and promotes relaxation. Imagine someone you love and smile to yourself in the dark as you turn the light out. It's the same when you wake up at night. A fake smile is enough to convey a message to the brain that reduces stress and lowers your heart rate. It may seem like the last thing you want to do when you wake up again, but it can be an incredibly powerful way to change your mood and retrain the brain to be comfortable with being awake. When stress wakes me up in the early hours and it works well, I can usually fall back to sleep quickly and easily. It helps my clients feel less alone in the night, more positive about their sleep, and less likely to let their thoughts get the better of them.

Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at Oxford university, says that insomnia is a preoccupation with sleep and that it is very easy to become obsessed with it. There is no research, monitoring or analyzing that will lead to better sleep. Constantly trying to find a solution is making things worse. Give sleep less of your focus. You should make this the last article you read on the topic, then look for something else to think about.