What do you do to improve your sleep?
Sleep, perhaps more than any other part of life, depends on the development of routine. You can’t improve the quality and duration of your sleep without getting good habits into place first.
The first habit I developed many years ago was to avoid caffeine after my morning cups of tea. When I was travelling to work every day I used to have a large mug of caffeinated tea and then switch straight to Lemon and Ginger or similar. That was actually something I learnt in Japan. During my first term there I had a number of issues with my voice in the classes and one of my colleagues said that he noticed me having black tea with milk. He told me that the milk coated the vocal chords making them more prone to failing in the lessons. I was a little sceptical but I agreed to switch to green tea for the rest of the term as a trial. I never switched back.
My second habit, and one I came to as a result of lack of money was to avoid alcohol in the evening and particularly before bed. Prior to the family budget being squeezed I would often have a beer in the evening and the occasional, semi-regular if I was really stressed, nightcap. When it became clear that it was either my alcohol or sports and dance clubs, and the occasional day out, for the children there was no contest of course. I gave up alcohol for eight years entirely and have never gone back to it in any meaningful way. My quality of sleep gradually improved and the only time I have alcohol before bed is when I have a really sore throat and I have a hot toddy! My grandmother, who signed the pledge as a teenager, vowing to give up alcohol, only had the occasional brandy which she always described as ‘purely medicinal’, a phrase I have half humourously adopted.
My third habit, developed much more recently, has been to do a meditation on the Calm App. I listen to the Daily Jay with Jay Shetty nearly every night. Sometimes I listen to the whole thing but on many occasions I am asleep almost straight after the three deep breaths! Allied to this I try to avoid my phone in the last couple of hours before bed but that is very much a work in progress. Let’s just say that I am slowly getting better at it! I swear by the Calm App and I really encourage you to try it. If you are interested I can give you a link for a free trial so let me know in the comments if you want to take me up on that.
So, how is my sleep now? It’s a work in progress, sometimes very good, occasionally pretty bad, but overall there is a clear improvement and it comes from the approaches I have outlined above.
When I first read about the Booker Prize this year and looked at the shortlist, one book stood out. Time Shelter, the eventual winner, was instantly appealing in its central idea of whole countries having referenda to decide which decade of the 20th century they wanted to return to. As you will have noticed on […]
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (Translation by Angela Rodel)
I wrote this review three years ago and rereading it today reminds me that I really must read the book again. If you have never read Time Shelter, click the review above and find out why it’s a really special book. I really urge you to give it a go. Let me know if you do.
Hit 5,000 steps today and drop your achievement here — we’re cheering you on!
As I put today’s post together it’s 6.15am UK time. It is extremely rare for me to have got to 5,000 steps at this point and I am not sure when or if it will happen today. There are a couple of reasons, first of which is the fact that I am in front of a computer all morning in a meeting and most of the afternoon doing lesson preparation. Second, I am at present focusing on why I am doing something not on hitting a random target.
When I was focused on my steps rather than the purpose for those steps I often found myself very close to the arbitrary target of 11,000 steps I had set myself and I would, for example, walk from the bedroom to the kitchen three or four times to get the final hundred or so steps to reach my target 🤣. It gave me a dopamine hit but it was ultimately completely pointless. Since the turn of the year I have dropped the focus on any targets in favour of more effective habits. I have started exercising by doing yoga and gentle work with weights. These sessions have been fruitful and I can actually see the difference it’s made. When I was teaching full time year round there was barely a day when I didn’t reach 10,000 steps or more, walking from home to the station, walking from Cannon Street to work, walking constantly during my classes, walking every lunchtime so I could talk to Janet and then walking back to Cannon Street and then back home from the station. This kept me from getting fat but it didn’t really get me healthier or feeling better.
The idea of hitting an arbitrary target like 5,000 steps is superficially appealing but it will do nothing for you long term in terms of fitness, physical or mental. If you have a day when you don’t walk much but you do a session of yoga or weights then you will benefit far more than if you just plod on for the sake of it. Focus on you and what you need not an arbitrary figure that puts the purpose second to the target.
Every so often, a programme comes along that you want to tell other people about because you are convinced that they are missing out on something really good. Girl Meets World from the Disney stable is one such programme. I’ve been watching since Episode 1 with my daughter and we have seen it change and […]
Girl Meets World – An undiscovered gem
This came up on the On This Day which has started to appear on my feed. This is an article I wrote 10 years ago and I think it still holds up well. It first appeared on my occasional reviewer blog which is now mothballed but I think it’s worth a read having revisited it myself.
What’s the best way to deal with negative thoughts?
I have been prey to negative thoughts from childhood and I have always struggled to deal with them. There is significant evidence that people have a clear bias to positivity or negativity which is genetic. That doesn’t mean that it’s a fait accompli because there’s things you can do to combat, if not overcome, your basic nature.
First of all, balanced reflection can be very helpful to some people if done in the correct way. You can look at both sides of a situation and try to balance out your natural pessimism by using a pro and con approach but, of course, my own pessimism becomes a self fulfilling prophecy because I instinctively place more weight on the cons than the pros!
What has worked for me over the past few years has been meditating and trying to develop a stillness in my mind. This is very much a continuous work in progress though, albeit with peaks and troughs that are less pronounced than they used to be. Even after meditating I can be as thoroughly negative as I was when I started, but I feel as though the journey through that negativity is perhaps not as hard. Yoga has also been helping by giving me a focus and a flexibility that makes me feel better about myself.
Last year, as regular readers of my blog will know, I finished year round work and in doing so gave myself more of an opportunity to concentrate on my health both mental and physical. It’s not clear to me that it has had any affect on my basic nature at all. Yes, I have more time for self care but I also have more time for overthinking. On balance I think the day to day is a little easier but the overall medium and long term situation has not changed.
To start to combat a natural inclination towards negativity you need to recognise that you are prone to it in and of yourself. Outward influences can only have so much effect so the internal battle will continue.
