Is lack of sleep having an effect on your life like the ripples that spread out on a pond after tossing a rock into the water?
I want you to take a moment and imagine this if you will.
Your spouse is in the kitchen preparing breakfast, the sun is rising over the horizon on yet what will be another beautiful day in your neighborhood. Perhaps the children are awake, all smiles; welcoming this beautiful day. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee lazily drifting through the house.
An ideal morning, yes?
What can change this perfect scene and have the potential for ruining not only the family pictured in the scene above, but possibly almost everyone you come in contact this particular day including yourself.
Have you guessed yet??
Lack of sleep.
Yes, lack of sleep can spin your life out of control as fast as a room full of domino’s starting to fall against one another. As one starts to fall, they all start to fall in secession.
Maybe this scenario sounds familiar.
My friend John was getting out of his bed after a dreadful night of attempting to sleep. As he turned from his bed getting out, he stubbed his toe against the dresser. (Domino one starting to fall.) As he let his discomfort be known through his screaming voice, his normally very cheery wife came in to see what possibly could be wrong so early in the day.
As he screamed at her, (Domino two started to fall) and her cheery attitude vanished, (Domino three started to fall) she turned towards the kitchen and bumped into the edge of the door. Yep, domino four falling.
Returning to the kitchen the kids started acting up; the bread in the toaster was in to long and started to burn.
Tempers flare, and not so kind words were uttered. The whole room full of domino on a crash course with each other. The clacking of the sounds filling the house. Attitudes changed in the course of an instant.
Why?
All because of my friend John and his lack of sleep.
In a perfect world we would all get the proper amount of sleep, and everything would be peachy keen in our lives, but we all know that only happens in fantasy land, or in our dreams.
Lack of sleep or sleep disorders like insomnia are real, and they affect millions of people worldwide from every walk of life.
How can we start to achieve a good night’s sleep we are so deserving of?
As a person who suffered sleep loss during a divorce my first bit of advice is to SLOW DOWN, breathe, and relax. To many times we try to fall asleep with to many things on our mind.
Pick a target time to fall asleep at night. Let’s say eleven pm. At ten pm finish any work, and also turn off your tv including the evening news. Sometimes the images from the news can trigger our unconscious and as we lay down, we are thinking of those images.
Put some relaxing music on, something that your brain can relate to that will say; “Hey, time to shut all this work off, because it’s time to relax.”
And when you crawl into bed; sleep. Do not spend this time worrying about the past days events, what may becoming up tomorrow, or even whether you have the money for the mortgage that may be due soon. As you lay in bed there is nothing you can do about those things, please let it go.
A good night’s sleep will do you much better than lack of sleep worrying about things and events beyond your control.
Besides, isn’t the thought of waking up in a cheery household better than upsetting the apple cart like my friend John?
Thomas “Trapper” Sherwood; CMH
Certified Master Hypnotist
http://trappersherwood.com
















