5 Tips on how to sleep better

5 Tips for a restful sleep

IMAGE: DetikHealth

Welcome back Blogsters! You must have stumbled on this page or are reading about sleep if you’re someone who finds it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep at night.

There may be different things that are coming into play on why you are experiencing difficulty sleeping, but I hope to impart a few tips on how to help you sleep better at night.

So, lets start!

Tip 1: Turn off all technology and devices

It has been widely documented in various literatures that when we look at light and especially the light emitting from our devices, that it can actually stop your body from releasing the sleeping hormone melatonin.

Melatonin is a hormone that helps regulate sleep.

Without this hormone prompting us to go to sleep, we can often find ourselves browsing non-stop in our social media and find that even after we finished reading all the posts and picture of our family and friends or whoever we are following that our mind will still continue to have unending thoughts.

It is therefore important that you switch off all your devices or put them in silent mode and just embrace the natural darkness in your room. Try to do some meditation or relaxation methods, until you eventually fall asleep. 

Tip 2: Taking a warm shower or bath

Taking a warm shower or a short-bath before you go to sleep can really help relax you, calm your nerves down and reduce your stress levels.

Relaxing with a warm shower or bath will also help reduce your blood pressure just before you head off to bed, ensuring that your body can prepare itself to go to bed.

When you take a shower it also feels nice to have a clean fresh body and invigorating sense of fulfilment before you head off to bed.

Tip 3: Meditate

I find that most of the times when I find it difficult to sleep, it is usually because my mind is running. Whether my mind is thinking about what I did today, what I will do tomorrow or forming new checklists and ideas of what I have not completed yet – I will often find myself thinking about so many things about life.

When this happens, stress can often take over and then I find my mind being really worked up with things that are often not really a priority but feel may need to be actioned.

What helps me relax my mind even further is usually meditating. Meditation can come in different forms, but what would usually work for me is praying. As a Christian believer, when I pray to God about my worries and concerns, I can feel rest assured that he has got it all planned out and that he holds the future in his hands.

I would often be reminded of different scriptures in the bible such as Jeremiah 29:11 

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

or Proverbs 3:5-6 

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

to remind me that God has plans for my life and that I just need to trust in Jesus alone.

Not intending to make this blog into a preaching, praying really helps me re-align my worries, guilt and fears to God’s vision and intentions in my life.

Another meditation method which really works for me and have been amazed of how well it worked is the ‘Rain Rain App’

IMAGE: TIME4Positivity

What this app does is actually create an audio white noise of various natural relaxing loop sounds and you can set a timer of how long you want for the sound to play for. The sound will then fade away subtly until you fall asleep. For me I find that the 15-minute timer is sufficient, then I just wake up the following day refreshed and realising that I had fallen asleep from the white noise.

For some this might not work, but for me I had to try different methods of meditation and this one really works for me.

In future I’m intending to share a post on just different various meditation methods that have worked for me.

Tip 4: Set a daily routine

Now that I have provided some practical tips above, it’s now time to put them into practice and make it into a habit or daily regular routine.

Some studies in relation to sleep have shown that our body has a natural circadian rhythm that we may not notice, but basically – it’s our internal body clock that tells us when to sleep or wake up.

Circadian Rhythm is a 24-hour internal clock that happens in the background of our brain that cycles our alertness and sleepiness at a regular interval, it is otherwise known as your sleep/wake cycle.

That is why if you’ve traveled flying to a different country, what you’ll find is that the time zone of that country will not conform with your sleep, as you have your own natural sleep/wake cycle.

This also means, that if you have an unregulated sleep pattern, that your body will find it hard to adjust, to know when you are needing to go to sleep, unless you feel really lethargic or tired. By this point you are probably also restless and will find it difficult to get to sleep, despite your feeling of tiredness.

I would recommend you aiming to get to bed and having a down time of at least before 10pm or 11pm to ensure that you are maximizing the amount of darkness outside without the natural sun to help you sleep longer.

Once you form a habit and discipline of sleeping more regularly, at regular periods as well, what you’ll find is that sleeping will now become more natural and less of a struggle that you will face.

One last word of advice in relation your daily routine, is to ensure that you open your curtains as early as possible when you wake up, to allow the natural sun to penetrate your eyes. Natural sun light is found to have good effects of waking you up during day time and also prompting you to sleep once the sun is down at night.

Tip 5: Consider seeking professional medical help

There are some instances where the advice I have provided above, is beyond the control of just adjusting your environment. For people who have actual sleep disorders or medical/ mental diagnosed issues such as insomnia, sleep apnoea, depression, anxiety or physical pain – it is worth seeking professional and medical advice to allow the health professionals or your doctor to give sound medical guidance.

They may be able to help prescribe medications to help you deal with sleep or provide you with alternative specialist advise as well. Please seek medical advice if sleep is really a big issue that you need help with.

Hope you enjoyed this blog If you like this post, please share it on your social media - be sure to subscribe to keep up to date with all future blogs that I will write. I will write a blog each week to give you Tips to help you be Inspired, Motivated and Encouraged to keep becoming the better person that you are.

5 Tips for improving your focus

5 Tips on How to be more Focused

IMAGE: Siimon Reynolds

Hi Blogsters welcome back to my blog!

If you’ve clicked on this blog – you are probably someone who is always distracted from accomplishing anything or you might actually be a self-confessed procrastinator as well?

If you’re looking for ways to improve your focus, so that you are able to finish that project you’ve been wanting to finish - here are 5 tips to help you improve your focus so that you can be more productive and achieve more things in life.

Tip 1: Prioritize what tasks you have to complete

Sometimes, it’s easy to lose track of what you are trying to achieve especially if you’ve got a bundle of things to do on your list. The best way to tackle these tasks on your to do list is to PRIORITIZE.

Here is what I learned about prioritizing things. Often the best way to complete tasks is by ensuring you complete:

     a.    What is most URGENT.

     b.    What is EASIEST to complete or less complex to get done.

     c.    Then the less urgent and longer tasks being in the last in your list.

To put it in a table of priority it could look like this:

Prioritizing	Non- Urgent	Semi- Urgent	Urgent
Easy  Tasks	7	4	1
Medium  Task	8	5	2
Harder  Tasks	9	6	3

This is just a sample of how you could prioritize – but perhaps something else could work better for you.

After you have done prioritizing your list. It is then helpful to put them down on a list and start having a go at attempting to finish those tasks.

Tip 2: Do not multitask

Although some people maybe gifted with the ability to EFFECTIVELY multi-task, in general it’s not a very good habit I find to practice.

Multi-tasking will not help you focus on what you have at hand and therefore not create a positive outcome for whatever you are working on. Here are some of the negative effects multitasking can do to you.

• You will lose concentration of what you are doing and therefore will affect your productivity.
• You can make frequent mistakes.
• You will be less attentive and therefore miss out on important details of what you are completing.
• You will have poor memory intake.
• You will have increased stress levels, as you may feel too overwhelmed with all the tasks that you have to complete.

If you start cutting back on doing multiple tasks all at once, what you’ll find is that you will achieve more.

In relation to the previous tip, work out your priority – then focus on them one by one and not all at once.

The only time I would probably recommend multi-tasking is when you are doing a mindless chore like hanging the clothes, whilst perhaps listening to a podcast of some sort.

Tip 3: Set yourself a timer

Work on your project as little amount of time possible. This may sound counterproductive however, this will increase your productivity.

What I find, is that the more time that we allocate ourselves to complete a task, the less time and focus we have on completing a task. Often, we will put off doing a task, if we know we have all the time in the world and therefore procrastinate.

Usually the most productive people, are the ones who are nearing the deadline of when they have to complete or submit their project. Whether that’s at work, school, Uni etc.

You don’t want to leave it to the last minute before you start cramming in time to do things. Therefore, set yourself some time to actually complete a task and aim to finish it by that time. I suggest allocating 30 minutes at a time to complete a task. If you’re still focused after 30 minutes keep going if you like – if not, you can take a break to rest your mind – then go at another time.

One of the apps that has really helped me to concentrate is ‘FLORA’ available in iOS Apple devices. It’s inspired by a pomodoro technique – which uses a timer to allow you to focus and not use your mobile handset for a set amount of time you decide. As above, I would recommend allocating 30 minutes for each task you plan to do.

If you do end up using your phone and switch out of the app – you run the risk of a seed planted from growing to it’s full maturity. The aim of the app is to be able to grow as many trees and plants possible, which represents how productive you have been. If you are not focused and are distracted with the other apps on your phone during your pomodoro timer, then your seed or plant may die.

Give it a go and let me know down the comments section below how it is for you. This app has certainly been a good tool to use to help me allocate some time for my blogging.

IMAGE: Designli

Tip 4: Find a suitable place

If you want to effectively study or work on a project without interruption from anything that you would usually have at home – go and look for a suitable place instead.

When you have an environment that is quiet and have less opportunity for you to get distracted, then you’ll be able to focus much better. There are several public places that you can consider, but these can vary depending on your location of where you are.

Here are some ideas to help guide you:

•      Library
•      Park
•      An office space in your workplace
•      A café
•      Study centres

Sometimes it’s easier to focus when you have personal space and in that condition -  your head can be much clearer to really zone in on what you are trying to accomplish.

Tip 5: Have time off from general distractions

Similar to the previous tip, this one is not more so in relation to the environment – but instead in relation to other distractions you may carry with you regardless of where you go.

Some of these distractions, which I’m personally guilty of also includes:

•    Using your phone for social media or games
•     Chores 
•    Errands

If we took into consideration tip number 3 and 4 then - perhaps we can avoid house chores and Social Media. However, some of the other things I mentioned above can be a stumbling block from being able concentrate on the task at hand if you let it.

We need to be able to train our mind to reduce or at least having time off from distractions – to allow us to be more creative, insightful and productive in the project that we are working on.

Allowing ourselves to implement all the things I’ve suggested above will hopefully help you focus and accomplish more in life.

Hope you enjoyed this blog If you like this post, please share it on your social media - be sure to subscribe to keep up to date with all future blogs that I will write. I will write a blog each week to give you Tips to help you be Inspired, Motivated and Encouraged to keep becoming the better person that you are.