You want to success in your life? Make sure you sleep enough. You want to stay healthy? Reserve enough of good quality sleep. You need your brain and memory to perform well? Create good sleeping habbits. But what if you can’t fully control your life?

I have got these useless advice about controlling my life and making good choices to benefit my life and healthy. It’s so easy to give advice instead of live up to those. I’ve been responsible for my family for last 25 years, and times when I have got any kind of help with daily routines can be counted with fingers. Having several children and being a single parent is not that simple, especially when there are health issues within the family. I have gained experiences I wish nobody else would gain. And I always find these “know-it-all” persons, who know only a part of my life, but they still feel qualified to judge and give advice.

Another thing concerning about sleeping is the idea, that morning persons are good, achieving persons while evening persons are just to party and never accomplish anything. I can tell right here that I’ve never been a morning person. My brain starts to work properly around midday and my creativity peaks in the evenings. Still, I’ve been told to go to sleep early and rise with the sun (which means in summer around 3 am!). Why, may I ask? Because I need to fit into your norms? Because I need to do more things in a day? Because I need to get up early to milk the cows? Yeah, not gonna happen. It’s good to have different types in a society.

Ever since I tried with taking some melatonin in pills, I realized why I’m not at strongest in the mornings. It seems that in my body the melatonin is used up so slowly. As it usually should be dissolved within about 8 hours, for me it seems to be closer to 10 hours or more. For that reason I’m sleepy in the morning, no matter how long I have slept. Now, that I know the physiological basis for my daily rhythm, I can ignore the advice that is not good for me.

What I have found useful for me, is the routine to calm my mind down in the evening. If I’m resting, with no input, my brain starts to run wild and I get stressed for all the things I should have done so far. But if I read a book and make notes, write down the important things for the next day and then draw a little, my system cools down and i’m able to fall asleep. In my son’s case it’s listening to informational podcasts, and in my friend’s case it’s to stick to clockwise routine. Another friend takes her mindfulness coloring book and settles with it for half an hour. Everybody needs to find their own specific system to calm down to sleep well, and I’m here to encourage you to find your own system. Sleeping is so important to brain and overall health. You’re worth good sleep!

With sleepy thoughts

Joana