Plentiful and regular sleep is essential to your ability to reach your health goals. Once you have more sleep, you’ll be more in control of your thoughts, emotions, and physical abilities. It should probably be the first set of systems implemented into your life on the pathway to reducing stress.

However, if you feel like the world is against you, you will also probably think that you can’t get sleep either.

You can. Here is how to do it.

A good night’s sleep is the foundation on which everything is built. It will make you more positive, energetic, less anxious, and provide you better judgement to make decisions. It will make you more efficient and effective. In order to get more sleep you must understand these things. Then, you must make sleep an unwavering priority.

Work emails need to get sent? You’ll do it tomorrow.

Your significant other wants to watch a movie at night when you have work early the next day? Sorry, you can’t.

You need to wind down before bed? Do it quicker.

I used to struggle with sleep. When I was in high school, I wouldn’t get to bed until 12 a.m.. I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep until 2-3 a.m.. I would fall asleep in class, lash out at friends, and forget my homework assignments. It turns out, that isn’t an effective strategy for life.

What did I do to fix that? I made sleep a priority. I built systems to make it so easy to get my 8 hours that I didn’t have to think about it.

How can getting 8 hours of sleep be easy when you have a job, kids, school assignments, friends, and a significant other that all need your attention?

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Build A Bedtime Routine

When it comes to getting enough sleep, how you get to sleep is essential. Your brain needs to be cooled off from the day. All the thoughts of the day need to be quieted down. You can’t get to sleep if your mind is still thinking about the girl you were just texting, your work presentation the next day, or the assignment that still needs polishing before you turn it in.

This concept of winding down should be addressed with efficient and effective systems. Your wind down should not last two hours. You should be able to calm your mind in thirty minutes or less. You should be able to put your head down on your pillow and be asleep within five minutes.

One thing that has been proven is that blue light from your phone, computer, tablet, and television keep you awake. Also, the media you consume on these devices is a stimulant. It could be an intense TV show, an attractive person, or some exciting news story. If you’re spending time with these activities before you go to bed, you’re limiting your chances of sleeping well.

The simple correction? Thirty minutes before you go to bed, turn off the TV, put your phone on its charger, and grab a book.

Reading a book is one of the best ways to calm your mind before you go to sleep. Even intense books late at night can still be calming. They don’t involve blue light (even if you use an e-reader). However, you don’t want to read in bed. More on this below.

Staring at a screen isn’t the only thing that will stimulate you. Being around bright, LED lights will have a similar neurological effect. That means, lights should be off within this same time frame. You want to give your brain enough time to settle. Light some candles so you can still see your book and not stub your toe. Or, if you hate candles, you can choose soft, incandescent bulbs and put them in select lamps that are used late at night.

Before you get comfortable in your favorite recliner with your book, some other things need to happen first.

Not many of us can just get into bed without going to the bathroom, brushing our teeth, washing our face, etc.. Unfortunately, going to the bathroom requires some of the brightest lights in the whole house. Schedule your teeth brushing and face washing session before all lights go out and you begin reading. That way, you go straight from reading your book to going to bed.

You can bring your book to bed; however, the more you associate your bed with sleep and sleep alone, the faster you build the habit of falling asleep quickly in it. Try to keep the nightly reading to the living room, walk your candle into your bedroom, and you should be snoring in no time.

Implementing a stretching routine before you go to sleep is also important. The slow movements will be calming. If you are reading an intense book, this is a good moment to get away from it as well. Also, choosing the right areas to stretch will improve your overall mobility and decrease joint and muscle pain. Pain is one of the largest limiting factors to living life fully.

Getting to bed so you fall asleep quickly is not complex. It just takes some intentionality. You are going to use the time you get home from work or school to do these things anyway. Just do them in the right order. The biggest change will be substituting your phone, TV, or tablet for a book.

There is another piece of the sleep routine, and that is waking. Your waking routine will dictate your sleep routine. It is essential that both are synchronized. If they are not, you’ll give up on one because you believe it has no benefit, not realizing that you haven’t solved the other half of the equation yet.

Build A Waking Routine

Your bed is a place for sleep and sleep alone. When you wake up in the morning, your first priority is to get out of your bed entirely, turn off your alarm, and make your bed.

If you usually hit the snooze, or grab your phone and scroll social media or your email in the morning, breaking that habit can be painful. I know. I did it.

I used to lay in bed and be on my phone for thirty to forty-five minutes. I would finally get up and have to rush to get ready for work. It created a ton of stress for me. I didn’t have enough time to eat a full breakfast. Some days, I didn’t have enough time to take a shower. It was chaos.

It also created an unhealthy relationship with my bed. I didn’t just see it as a place to sleep. I saw it as a place to relax. I saw it as a place to lay down and stay awake in. So, the next time I went to bed, it seemed completely reasonable for me to not go to sleep, but just lay there.

What we want to do to improve our ability to fall asleep is to use our bed as a trigger. If your bed is only for sleep, then you’ll fall asleep faster once you get in it. Don’t believe me? If you ring a bell before every time you feed your dog for a few weeks, and then ring it without feeding them, guess what will happen? They will start salivating, expecting their next meal to come. If dogs can get triggered to salivate by ringing a bell, you can be triggered to sleep by appropriately utilizing your bed.

How do you do it? It’s simple. Put your charger for your phone across the room or in another room (ideally). Then, when your alarm goes off, you have no choice but to get out of bed to get it. Then, make your bed. You’re now up, ready for the day, and did your first productive thing. At the end of the day, if you did nothing else, at least you can say you made your bed.
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When it comes to getting a full night sleep, you need to do two things. Prioritize your sleep as an unwavering necessity. Then, build habits to optimize your sleep and wake routines to get all the sleep you need. That means:

• Complete your nightly grooming before you start relaxing.
• Turn off the bright LEDs and light some candles.
• Put your phone away, turn off the TV, and grab a book.
• Go to bed at the exact time you need to. The book stays in the living room.
• Put your phone/alarm across the room so you have to get out of bed to get it.
• Make your bed immediately.
• Get yourself clean and dressed for the day.

It’s a short list of habits. Each of these habits might take months to acquire individually. Fortunately, the life waiting for you on the other side is completely worthwhile.