For many of us, the hardest part of the day is when it's time to go to bed.

It's really strange what happens with sleep. When we should be sleeping we want to stay awake, and when we should be awake, we want to keep sleeping.

One could say that sleep is a true "torture": hard to find and hard to give up.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ), approximately 70 million Americans experience chronic sleep problems. Insomnia affects one-third of American adults in one way or another, while another research showed that 10% to 30% of the world's population suffers from insomnia disorders - some studies report that the percentage is 50% to 60%.

So behind this "torture" lies an opportunity to improve our quality of life. But to achieve this, we need to change our relationship with sleep.

How will we achieve this?

Instead of worrying about how to sleep effectively, we need to stop resisting sleep. And to do that, we need to stop seeing sleep as a physical necessity, and start considering its higher significance .

It's no secret that good sleep improves a person's quality of life. A recent research conducted on 30,000 British people showed that participants who increased their amount of sleep over a period of 4 years increased their level of happiness to the same extent as if they had undergone psychotherapy for 8 weeks or if they had won a €250,000 lottery.

Impressive, isn't it?

According to studies, people who sleep well and get enough rest are more social and have increased positive feelings, both for colleagues at work and for their partners.

Lack of sleep, on the other hand, reduces the level of happiness one feels, degrading emotional memory and encouraging a scarcity mentality towards life and people.

So if all this doesn't surprise us, then why don't we sleep more?

Do you have procrastination? sleep?

The most common obstacles that we face Things that prevent us from sleeping better include, for example, our physical condition, poor sleep hygiene, work stress, anxiety about the future, young children, and many other factors.

However, there are also some obstacles that come from within us, such as what scientists call " sleep procrastination ," which is when we postpone our sleep because we are doing other things that we consider more important that night (but regret the next morning).

Researchers have found that sleep procrastination is very common, with nearly a third of adults sleeping less than 6 hours each night. We've written before on this blog that 6 hours of sleep is just as bad as no sleep , you can read about it below.

A particularly pernicious variation of this behavior is called " revenge of the "revenge bedtime procrastination " in which some people postpone sleep as an act of rebellion against their own self-control.

Author Sylvia Path describes nice:

"I wonder why I don't go to sleep. But if I do, then tomorrow will come, so I decide that no matter how tired I am, no matter how incoherent my thinking is, I will skip an hour of sleep and live."

For some strange reason, we deprive ourselves of sleep in order to show that we are independent... to ourselves.

Revenge for the procrastination of sleep seems completely absurd, to the extent that the "perpetrator" and the "victim" are the same person.

However, the explanation is quite simple:

The person resists being told what to do on such a personal and fundamental issue, such as what time to go to bed, probably because they hate being told what to do in other aspects of their life. Therefore, the person fights back by exercising their own power by staying up at a time that is not right or appropriate .

Our control over our environment—or even the illusion of control—is deeply connected to our emotional balance. A study of 2019 that took place in the magazine Emotion showed that when we perceive a loss of control in an environment, our positive emotions decrease, while when we have control, the opposite happens and our negative emotions decrease.

Since sleep is something we can control immediately and at any time, the reason we violate sleep rules is because in doing so we unconsciously seek a better emotional state. Until the next morning, that is... when the alarm clock makes us regret our "rebellion" last night.

So, if you too resist sleeping at night, we will give you food for thought that may help you stop this procrastinating behavior and therefore be able to enjoy the benefits of good and restful sleep that we mentioned above.

What are these ways?

1. Suppress the inner voice of "rebellion"

The fact that we don't recognize and correct the irrationality of sleep procrastination suggests that the entire conflict is governed by what psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls "System 1": our automatic, reactive brain.

The trick to changing this is to move the decision of "when to go to bed" from System 1 to "System 2," the metacognitive part of our brain with which we can consciously process, analyze, and manage the decisions we have to make. In short, System 2 is "thinking about thinking."

So, thinking that there is a problem (i.e. that you are resisting sleep even though it is past time) and realizing that you may be sabotaging yourself is an excellent start, especially if you have never tried to explain this particular problem before.

Then come up with some solutions to deal with the problem. For example, set a bedtime that is realistic but not oppressive. Half an hour before that time comes, remind yourself that you are in control of your life and that you choose to sleep at this time.

Perhaps talking to ourselves may sound childish to you, but it is actually a way in which you can deal with this and other issues effectively, calming the inner and irrational voice that wants to rebel for no apparent reason.

After that, it's a good idea to do an overview and in other areas of your life in whom you can gain control and to take more conscious decisions.

Some examples are, for example, eating junk food vindictively, being late for appointments vindictively, or spending - again vindictively - your money unnecessarily.

This may be the opportunity for you to come to terms with yourself in a completely new context!

2. Stay open to the relationship between the physical and the metaphysical

Even if you recognize that 8 hours of good sleep every night will help you improve your well-being, be more productive at work, and more sociable in your relationships, you may continue to dismiss it because you see it as yet another necessary - but boring - process. Like many people view exercise or a healthy diet, for example.

Here is an opportunity to understand sleep as an inherent source of wisdom and happiness, which spiritual teachers across the planet have understood for thousands of years.

For example, a piece of ancient Hindu wisdom focuses on the unique clarity that sleep can bring to a person. The Hindu guru Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, taught in the early 20th century that sleep is a "pure state" in which there is complete awareness, as opposed to the "absolute ignorance" when we are awake.

In the Bible, God himself spoke to Joseph through his dreams, telling him to marry Mary and later flee to Egypt to save the baby Jesus.

It's no secret that Pope Francis is showing big loyalty to Saint Joseph and when he faces a problem, he writes it down on a piece of paper and places it under the statuette of Joseph that he has in his room. Then he goes to sleep himself.

Teachings like these are essentially the complete opposite of what we know so far about consciousness, namely that the conscious part of our brain functions when we are awake and not when we are asleep.

However, to improve any part of ourselves, we need to keep an open mind. Who knows, the solution to a problem may lie where you would never expect.

If you want to try this unusual idea, you can do the following:

1. Before you go to sleep at night, try to think for a few minutes about the puzzles of life that you want to solve.
2. Then sleep and see what happens to you. indicate the "pure state" we mentioned above.
3. After you wake up, spend the first few minutes writing down what you learned.
4. Keep a journal of your progress and notice how much you learn in your sleep.

Closing

It is tempting to consider these ideas in a purely practical way in an attempt to solve the sleep problems that concern most of us.

Furthermore, given all the studies demonstrating the cognitive and emotional benefits of good sleep, you might also be tempted to say that modern research is catching up with ancient philosophy, which is somewhat true.

But don't lose sight of the point: sleep is an opportunity to grow as a person, resolve issues that aren't related to sleep, and grow spiritually.

Starting tonight, treat sleep as a conscious function where you make the decision to engage in philosophical exploration and gain greater clarity about life itself.

And without realizing it, you may find yourself looking forward to these voluntary nighttime adventures and, as a result, start going to bed on time, without further procrastination.

Do you want to improve the quality of your sleep?

A gravity blanket could help drastically reduce stress and combat insomnia.

Harnessing the power of Deep Tactile Pressure , a scientifically proven stress relief treatment, the Prosleep Gravity Blanket It relaxes the nervous system and increases the levels of serotonin (the "happiness" hormone) and melatonin (the sleep hormone), while at the same time reducing cortisol, which is responsible for stress and anxiety.

After a few minutes in the embrace of the blanket, you feel safe, your body relaxes, your heart rate drops, your eyelids become heavy, and your mind calms down. You are now safe. Rest.