This is never particularily easy for me but the past few days, my heart has been beaing even faster than usual, my mind overflowing with a whole mess of entangled thoughts, hopes and worries.
If I said I didn't know what was gling on, I'd be lying. While there weren't a lot of stressful activities scheduled, some unexpected things happened and it felt as though I didn't havethe time to sit down for a moment to make sense of the chaos in my mind. Reading the book "The Highly Sensitive Person" has made me conscious of the effects that changes of any kind and the all too common go-go-go way of living have on my physical and mental well-being.
Hell, I get stressed out by not knowing what I'll be having for breakfast the next day, so saying that I'm a lover of fixed routines whould be quite an understatement.
And I've realised that on those days where I follow a grounding morning ritual, incorporating warm lemom-ginger water, yoga, meditation and a long breakfast, my mind simply feels more clear. A calm, quiet mind makes all the difference but is something i cannot always achieve. Though I have found certain things that help clear my head, there ar e days where I'm just running around like a frightened chicken - followed by nights during which I toss and turn in my bed, fall asleep only to wake up again after 30 minutes, mornings where I am wide awake by 5 am, excited and nervous about the day ahead without feeling rested.
I can distinctively remember the last good, long night of aleep I got, the last morming where I woke up only once, at a reasonable time and got up immediatly because I felt ready to start my day. There are few nights like that but as long as they exist, I can hold onto them.They give me hope when I'm lying in bed at 2 am on a weeknight, unable to turn of my thoughts and steady my racing heartbeat.
Yesterday, I read a blogpost on how your affirmations, the things you tell yourself over and over again, ultimately create your reality , how nothing will ever actually change unless you change your thought. It got me thinking, could I really unconsciously be causing my own sleep issues? Was the reason why I often can't sleep that, at the very core of my being, I believe that that's just the way it is and is supposed to be?
My first impulse was to be angry and annoyed at the blogger, how could he suggest that I was the cause for my own struggles? How on earth was I supposed to think and truly believe that I would get a good night of sleep when there where literally hundreds of nights in my past to prove otherwise?
But then, as I continued to reflect on it, I realised that maybe, he was right and that this could potentially turn out to be quite amazing. After years of believing that my bad sleep patterns where just as unchangeable a part of me as the colour of my eyes, something I simply had to cope with, there was this new possibility that the tool to end my struggles was somewhere inside of me, I just had to learn how tu use it.
Of cours it sounds incredibly simple to "just change your thoughts", when it's most definitely everything but easy. But still, I'll try. If there is even the slightest chance that through this, I'll be able to sleep soundly for days, maybe weeks at a time sometime in the future, then it is worth it. It may seem easier, more comfortable, to remain in this state of constant fear of the next sleepless night, after all it's what I've known for more years than I dare to count. But I am done with letting fear rule my life, I want to take control instead of letting my circumstances control me.
Please do read the article in question (Habit#5) , I would love to hear your thoughts!
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