Don’t stress about falling asleep
For the past three years, there hasn’t been a single night when I couldn’t fall asleep or even struggled to do so. The secret? Simply enjoy the moment.
Three years ago, one night before our company’s Christmas party, I was sitting at a hotel bar in Berlin with a colleague for an evening drink. I had just started my new job at Gigs a few months earlier. We were still a small company, especially the engineering department, which was just a handful of engineers.
As we were chatting, he told me this trick that helped him get his daughter to fall asleep. It’s simple: just focus on how comfortable everything is, and enjoy the fact that you don’t have to do anything. Don’t set expectations to fall asleep. It’s fine. If you think about it, you don’t have to fall asleep. Everything will be fine in the end.
You could also be in a situation where sleep is not an option: It could be a boring lecture, where your eyes start to feel heavy and you have to fight the urge to close them. But you’re not in that situation. Instead, you’re in a bed. A comfy bed. You can snuggle under the blanket, enjoy the warmth, and the sensation of the pillow hugging your head.
And it’s fine to stay awake in bed for a bit longer. There won’t be any consequences just because you’re not falling asleep right now, or maybe at all. Nobody will sue you because you didn’t sleep for long enough. And tomorrow, when you have to get up, you can take it a bit slower. Maybe you’ll be a bit more tired and sluggish, but what gives? A hot drink the next morning will help you to start your day.
Ever since he told me about this, I’ve been able to always fall asleep without any trouble. Before that, I didn’t have any major problems falling asleep, but it sometimes happened. I think it’s something a lot of people experience from time to time. When you find yourself constantly checking the time: 6 hours become 5 hours. 5 hours become 4 hours, 3½, 3, … it’s really not a great feeling.
But not for me anymore. I don’t just do this when I think I’m going to have trouble falling asleep; it’s now my mindset when I go to bed all the time. I enjoy how comfortable it is and how I don’t have to do anything.
It was simple. But it was a life changing experience, just from meeting my new colleague during an evening drink at a hotel bar in Berlin.