The best foundation for a productive day is a good night’s sleep. It’s the best way to feel refreshed and ready to tackle the day ahead. Of course, if you’re like us, sometimes falling asleep and getting that solid eight hours can be far from realistic. Work, stress, and other pressures of the day make it difficult for us to turn in early and fall fast asleep. Instead, we toss and turn. We lay awake, rehashing our days events, mulling over what someone said, finding that our bed is not as comfortable as we remembered. Since insomnia and anxiety has tightened its grip on us lately, we’ve decided to combat them through a night routine that calms us down and allows us to really rest before we fall asleep. Here are five tips for a good night’s sleep.
Turn your phone off
It’s far too easy to be on our phones throughout the night – as we’re eating dinner, getting ready for bed, laying in bed, etc. Our bright screens can make it difficult for us to relax and calm down. Not only are our phones straining on our eyes, but they also make it almost too easy to be distracted from what we really need – sleep. Since our phones have been designed to be entertainment hubs, we’ve found it extremely difficult to put them down and deal with the silence. However, there is nothing that has done more wonders for our sleep routine than this simple step – putting our phones away 30 minutes before sleep. Of course, you can leave your phone on if you use it as an alarm clock in the morning, but turn it off, turn off your text alert sounds, and face your phone down on your nightstand so you won’t see it when the screen lights up.
Make tea
That’s right- making a soothing herbal tea before bed time sounds extremely relaxing, and it is! Be sure to snag some herbal tea next time you’re at the grocery store. Heating up a cup of chamomile tea before bed has been a simple step that we’ve found ourselves really looking forward to. It’s our “tea time,” if you will. It’s so soothing to sit in bed, sip some tea, and reflect on our day.
Journal
We’ve talked about the power of having a journal before. In our digital age where we’re constantly looking at screens, it can be hard to slow down and pull out a journal – a handwritten journal. But there are few things more relaxing or dare we say – productive – when it comes to winding down to sleep. You can write about your day, write some Bible verses to meditate on, or even doodle. We wrote a blog post about creative journal prompts, you can find that here. It’s a small act of creativity before you’re sent off to dream land. Plus, in years to come you’ll have a journal filled with creative musings that you can look back on.
Listen to a playlist
Spotify lovers! This one’s for you. There are so many wonderful, peaceful playlists on Spotify, but we’ve found ourselves gravitating towards the sleeping playlists. The ones that are filled with white noise are perfect for us, because if we’re honest, we really don’t prefer silence. Listening to the same playlist before bed every night has really prepared our bodies for sleep. It’s like our bodies have remembered the same songs, and when we hear them we automatically feel tired. But seriously, you have to try this out! Pick a playlist that suits you, and try listening to it softly in the background everyday for a week.
Essential oil
Now, if we’re honest, we haven’t completely jumped on the essential oil bandwagon. At least, not completely. However, lately we’ve been trying out this lavender essential oil spray and it has been divine! It smells amazing. We like to spray a little bit on our pillow every night right as we turn off the light. Every night the scent fills our senses and we’re propelled even further into a deep, restful slumber.
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