Counting sheep does not work, but this does. You likely learned to count before you went to kindergarten. So counting sheep is pretty simple. Your mind can easily flip between 45, 46, 47, and all of a sudden you're thinking about getting laundry detergent at the store tomorrow.
Cognitive switching, or sometimes called cognitive shuffling is a more effective tool to help you put your mind in neutral and drift into dreamland. The idea is to mentally shift gears and focus on something slightly harder than counting sheep, and there's more than one way to do it. But first, I have a story. Big surprise. I know. Recently I sat on the couch with my husband and planned a big trip for my birthday. Did you know that you can search Pinterest for trip itineraries?
But that's another story. Now I'm a master planner and give me some must see sites and I am all in. So I researched options, booked hotels, flights, a rental car, and several must see activities. The trip was booked and my mind was buzzing with excitement. The good kind. But then it was bedtime, and even though I went through my usual routine, slipped on my silky sleep mask to block out the light, I couldn't block out all those amazing adventures I had planned.
Essentially, my brain was still in high gear, and even though the plans were taken care of, the excitement was keeping me awake. I knew what to do to change mental gears. I used cognitive switching, and I'm going to tell you how to do it. Think of a word. Any word, it doesn't matter how long or how short, but I thought of vacation.
Then start with the first letter of the word you selected, and think of five other words. Begin with that letter. So I started with V and thought of victory vice voracious value and vapor, and then I moved on to A and thought of airplane administration armor askew. Acre and then C for castles and so on.
Now, I would caution you not to spend too much effort coming up with a word. You don't want to engage your brain at a high level, but positive words are always nice too. But just go with the first thing that comes to your mind and let the words flow. Now, it can take a little while to change directions when you're coming in mentally hot.
But I almost never get through a second word. So if you're still a wake and alert. When the first word is complete, repeat the process. Now, why does this work? Well, when you're drifting off to sleep, your brain starts a mental sorting process, throwing out random fragments of information. To make room for what will be stored overnight.
There's a lot of work that goes on while you're sleeping. Cognitive shuffling allows your brain to focus, but is boring enough to transition from alertness to relaxed and ready to rest. So when you can't turn off your mind, give this a try and let me know how it works for you. And if you find this technique helpful, then you will not want to miss my free live online masterclass that I have coming up.
It's called Everything you're Doing to Sleep Better is Keeping you Awake, and it is free. But registration is required and there are three available dates. There is Monday coming up this Monday on September 8th at noon, September 10th, which is Wednesday at 6:00 PM and Saturday September 13th at nine o'clock in the morning.
So you have three options to attend this free live masterclass, just go to my website, healthy looks great on you.com, and sign up for one of those three sessions and you will get a free workbook that contains all the tips I'm going to give, but it's not going to give you all the information you need.
You need to sign up and attend. If you can't attend live, go ahead and sign up anyway. You'll still get the workbook and you'll even get a replay. But what you won't get is the Food As Sleep Medicine Recipe Collection. You have to be there live to get that. And this is not just a recipe collection. This talks about the different foods and how they help you sleep.
Foods that are high in things like magnes
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