One of the most common questions I get from people is what to do after having started to use the “sleep tight” technique or bedtime restriction and still not getting more ZZZs – what do I do now?
This could be someone that did better initially but then had a night of sleeping almost nothing. It can be someone that has limited time in bed for 3 weeks and hasn’t noticed any changes. Or someone that feels they’ve hit a plateau after some improvement.
Here’s the thing – people with trouble sleeping want to solve that problem. But the attempts at trying to solve it ends up being what keeps sleeplessness going. The instinct when nothing is happening or you’ve had a setback is to tweak things , change direction or try something different. But the best thing do to is the opposite – stay the path.
A really good way to think about this is to imagine yourself hiking up to a mountain top. At the summit is a place of really good sleep.
As you are making your way up, you are very likely to stumble on a root or a rock. That’s expected. If you stop and examine the root that made you trip, if you wonder why it happened, why it is sitting there and how you can avoid this happening again, you’ll never reach the top.
Not reacting, just keep moving forward is the best thing to do.
The less you react when you have a setback or when it feels like progress is slow, the sooner you’ll reach that place of amazing sleep.
