Smarter Sleeping 101

These sleep tips are brought to you by Ellen Michaud from AllIndians.com. It’s pretty long, but definitely worth the read if stress is your primary cause of insomnia. Check out the excerpt below:

“Target the Enemy!
When stress interrupts your sleep on a nightly basis, it sets you up for a chronic insomnia that can send you sliding down the rabbit’s hole toward sleeping pills, alcohol, and chocolate cake at night and a zillion cups of coffee during the day. Here’s how to step back from that precipice.

Target the enemy. “Every night a couple of hours before bed, sit down and make a list of all the issues, problems, and things you have to deal with,” says Donna Arand, Ph.D., clinical director of Kettering Hospital Sleep Disorders Center in Dayton, Ohio. “Next to each item, write a solution or plan.” If you’re mad at your mother-in-law, for example, the solution could be to call her and talk it out.

Even if it’s not something you want to do, write down your ideas for dealing with each stressor you’ve listed, urges Dr. Arand. Then mull the solutions over.

When you’re ready for bed, put the list by the bedroom door. That way, if thoughts of your problems arise as you’re trying to sleep, you can tell yourself, “I’ve got a plan and I’ll work on it tomorrow,” says Dr. Arand. The reassuring presence of your plan by the door will give it a concrete reality that will allow you to shift your mind to more peaceful things.

Put your work in perspective. A Canadian health agency that tracks health-related statistics reported recently that on-the-job stress has reached alarming levels. They point to the fact that the workplace no longer has any boundaries and that work has spread into every corner of your life. It’s gotten to the point that 52 percent of employees take work home — almost double the number who did in 1990. What’s more, 69 percent of employees check their work e-mail from home, 59 percent check voice mail after hours, 30 percent accept work-related faxes at home, and 29 percent keep their cell phones on at all times.

Not surprisingly, 46 percent feel this work-related intrusion is a stressor, and 44 percent report “negative spillover” onto their families. A poll conducted by the American Psychological Association found that 52 percent of American workers said that work interfered with their responsibilities to their families. The problem, however, is not just that work is intruding into familial life, it’s that it’s actually interfering with the most effective buffers to workplace stress available.

A joint study of 314 workers conducted by the University of South Australia and the University of Rotterdam found that workers with higher levels of active leisurely activities, such as exercise, hobbies, and social activity, were able not only to bounce back from workplace stress better than their always-on-the-job coworkers but also sleep significantly better than others.

Money, Mobile Phones, and the Miracle Nap
Take charge of your gadgets. Although each new, more multifaceted electronic device that appears in the marketplace promises to make the logistics of our lives a snap, they may actually tie us into too many never-ending webs.

First we have to pay for them. Then we have to master how to use them. Next we have to show them off by contacting our network of business associates and friends. They will, of course, respond in kind. Being able to keep in touch with the kids is a boon to working parents. Allowing the office to track you down after hours is not. We need to keep the two things separate, save discrete times in the day to receive and answer business e-mails, and learn to screen the after 6:00 P.M. cell phone calls. That goes for the whole rest of the evening as well. It also wouldn’t hurt if everyone in the family turned off their devices for a stress-free dinner. And under no circumstances should you check your e-mail right before bed.

Do with less. According to a poll by the American Psychological Association, 4 of the top 10 stressors we experience are related to money — how we get it and how we spend it. Given that, doesn’t it make sense that if we want less and are content with less — smaller houses, fewer gadgets, and simpler forms of transportation — our stress levels will go down?

Perhaps that applies to our career choices as well. Do you really want to work yourself to death to be the woman in charge of the world? Or will just being in charge of a small portion of it make you happy and let you sleep? A recent poll of nearly 2,000 Americans reveals that 22 percent declined a promotion or refused to seek one because they thought the job would be too stressful.”

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