Here’s my weekly check-in. Week-2 is behind us. How was your second week of the resolution progress? I learned some interesting things about myself and didn’t fare as we’ll as I had hoped. I got to bed on time 2/7 nights; far from my goal. That wasn’t even intentional. I was simply exhausted. The side effect of those two nights was that I woke up earlier and it threw my schedule off … I was still tired. But with several months to go I have high hopes that I can do it.
Were you able to try the Key Experiment? It took me three days to redirect and remind myself. However, when applying those same principles to get to bed on time; Observing, being mindful of my time, reminding, and redirecting, I found myself arguing. Arguing with myself like a five-year-old who doesn’t want to go to bed. I made every excuse that I could think of to justify staying up… finish one more page, scroll one more minute, check email, add a reminder for this or that, write one more note, put away stuff in the kitchen, send another message.
By the end of the week I had to be honest with myself; I DIDN’T WANT TO! My will was in the way.
To address this “will” issue I decided that what I really wanted instead of staying up was to NOT be tired or fatigued. I decided to tell myself that what I want more is feeling rested the next day. So I thought, “well, I’ll try again next week”.
However, as my brain does, it always has something else to say… So a little quote popped in my head "do or do not, there is no try” - Yoda. You know, from Star Wars (smile). Well, doing wasn’t working so I had to try something.
So, I set an alarm in my phone to go off an hour before I needed to go to bed. I planned on using a “drop everything and run” strategy when it went off. It worked last night. However, I made the mistake of putting my phone on my nightstand. Guess who was up scrolling until nearly midnight? Yes, yours truly. What I had intended to do was put a reminder in my calendar then an hour later I found myself on social media, scrolling away my time... This means the phone must go as well.
So, phone out, will pending… Check in with you all next week…
In addition to the behavioral aspects of sleep here is a link to info for sleep hygiene: http://sleepeducation.org/