When you start your journey towards sleeping well, you will hit a speed bump. In fact you’ll most likely hit quite a few of them. It may seem little ones, far and few between, is the ideal way to reach your destination of peaceful slumber for the rest of your life. Nothing wrong with cruising there for sure. But, strange as it may seem, it is the bumpy road that takes you there the fastest and with most confidence.
A speed bump is what most refer to as a setback.
It is a night of sleeping little after several good ones. Or it is that stretch of sleepless nights after a few weeks of not struggling. To understand the benefits of the bumpy road, let’s start talking about the purpose of the journey.
Insomnia happens when you are trying to produce or control something that only happens when there’s no effort. The longer you’ve had trouble sleeping, the more things you have come to think are necessary for you to sleep. Your goal is to learn that sleep comes to you when you’re not trying, and that’s where speed bumps come in.
When things are going well, you’re sleeping well and you’re not feeling a need to do anything to make yourself sleep, you’re cruising.
You are building sleep confidence in a slow but steady pace. That’s great! If that is your path, good for you.
However, it is when you hit a speed bump you can truly make a leap forward and learn the most important of all sleep lessons. If you have a night or a stretch of nights where you sleep little, and go on to not respond, not change anything, resist the urge to DO SOMETHING, then when sleep returns, magic has happened.
You have seen that without trying, you sleep well even after some very bumpy nights. You have gotten a lesson in the art of letting go that you will never forget.
You may totally get it after the first speed bump. Or you may need a few more for this insight to sink in. But when it has, you’ll be cruising too.
The speed bumps will be smaller and less frequent. Not because you’re avoiding them but precisely the opposite – you’re willing to have speed bumps and you know you’ll get to the other side fine.
It’s not easy but try to look at a speed bump coming your way as an opportunity. Because when you do, magic will happen.
