The 12 Rules That Liberated From Insomnia

These twelve rules come from a book that has cured my insomnia. I am not the inventor of this method and I don't want to pass it off as my own, no copyright infringement is intended. The book is called "The effortless sleep method" by Sacha Stephens.
In this article I have made a few changes which I find were important for me to overcome my insomnia. I highly recommend this book, one of the best around in my opinion!

First rule:

- Spend less time in bed:

Most people sleep too much! They feel tired so they think that it is because they don’t spend enough time in bed when in fact it is exactly the opposite they spend too much time in bed.
You should get into bed when you are sleepy. Not just tired but sleepy, there is a slight difference.

Second rule:

- Don’t take naps.

If you take a nap you will confuse your body as to when it is actually time to go to sleep. You will also be less tired at night.

Third rule:

- Get up and do something when you can’t sleep

If you are awake in your bed in the middle of the night instead of staying there and trying to sleep get up and do something.
You have to associate the bed with sleeping, if you stay in bed you will associate the bed with having trouble to sleep.
So do something like clean or anything that occupies your mind

Fourth rule:

- Get up every day at the same time during a week
- Determine hours of sleep needed
- Focus on sleeping the amount of hours best for you
- Never sleep more than needed

The first week I put my alarm clock at 8am because I wanted to be someone who gets up at that time not just out of obligation but because one likes it.What this does is that your body will adapt to this treatment by making you sleepy at a particular time.
So with that in mind, I noticed I started getting sleepy a lot later at night. With a bit of experimenting I figured that going to bed at 2am thus sleeping 6 hours was the ideal amount of hours of sleep for me.

I based this on how rested I felt when I woke up and how great I felt throughout the day. If there is a little resistance when you get up, it's normal.

The next thing was to keep in mind that the most important thing was to sleep 6 hours if possible. If you have a rich and full life you just won't sleep your ideal amount of hours every time. You have to go out and do stuff without thinking of that horrible insomnia.
If you can't sleep your ideal amount of hours, sleep less but never more under any circumstance.
In my experience sleeping too much is much more devastating on the long-term than sleeping less.

So if for one reason you got sleepy a little earlier, lets say at 1am, I wouldn't wake up at 8 o'clock I would put my alarm at 7 o'clock because my ideal amount of hours of good night sleep is 6 hours.

Suggestion: Getting up at the same time everyday can be tough especially if you have no obligation to do so. Here are a few tricks I used to force myself to get out of bed:
1. Put on an "annoying" sound to your alarm clock (not music)
2. Put your alarm clock very far from your bed
3. Before going to bed have a pee and then drink a big glass of water. You will stay hydrated thus will get out of bed easier in the morning.
4. Prepare a cup of coffee before going to bed so you can drink it first thing in the morning
5. Sleep with your clothes on so you won't be cold when you get out of bed in effect making it easier to get out of bed

6. Put the lights on, open the curtains and open the windows

Fifth rule:

- Do nothing in bed but sleep or make love

Again this is to only associate the bed with sleeping and nothing else. Sex is an exception because it is a relaxing activity. You won’t sleep WORSE after sex.

Sixth rule:

- Reduce or eliminate the pills

Pills don’t induce sleep they knock you out unconscious and even if they did help you sleep, the goal here is to be really able to sleep on your own naturally.

Anyone on pills will tell you that they don’t even feel great in the morning. The reason is it doesn’t do what you think it does, it’s not meant for actually sleeping, it’s meant to shut you up. It won’t induce recuperative, deep sleep.

The more you take them the more you will convince yourself that you can’t sleep without this artificial help and thus make it EVEN LESS likely that you will be able to attain quality sleep.

Seventh rule:

- Stop clock watching

Don’t think at what time you have to go to bed. Just go when you feel like it. What that means is that you should go when you are sleepy. Set the wake up time so that you sleep your ideal amount of hours.

If you wake up in the middle of the night don't look at your clock under any circumstance. You should go to bed and forget about time.

Eighth rule:

- Emergency thought

This is a promise I use when I feel the negative thoughts overwhelm me and positive affirmations don't work.

What I do is ask myself a hard question, something that takes a while to answer. A question you ask yourself that you have a hard time answering which will force you to think of something else. I like to give myself a hard mathematical division (ex: 317/7).

Suggestions: A hard mathematical division, the name of someone you can't remember, What you ate a week ago for breakfast etc...

Ninth rule:

- Let go of the search for a miracle cure

This will just raise your anxiety and make you hope for things that won't happen. The aim is not only the result, it is also that YOU be able to make that result happen.
You want to be dependent on a pill, a miracle cure or do you want to be free and empowered?

Tenth rule:

- Meditate 2 times a day
- Workout 30 minutes everyday

I recommend Roy Master's meditation! I like the improvements of Dr. Wilson. It will ground you, help you stay in the present as well as not torture yourself so much with intruding thoughts.
This meditation is fantastic because it helps you drive the energy downward as you will soon discover and makes you conscious of your own tiredness. A lot of the times we don't even notice if we are tired or not.

So meditate once in the morning and once in the evening for 30 minutes. In total that would be 1 hour each day.
Working out is really important to actually be tired when you go to bed, you have to drain the body a bit.

Eleventh rule:

- Decide on your own safety thought

When you start having negative thoughts about your insomnia you can use a safety thought, positive affirmations to stop them on their tracks.

I find that the best ones are the ones you actually believe, I have a hard time lying to myself with outlandish positive claims so an example would be to find the positive side to a bad night.
Write them down if you want and fill an entire A4 sheet of paper with your positive affirmation.
Try to really feel it until a smile appears on your face.

Suggestions of safety thoughts: “On one occasion I slept badly and I still had a great day” or "I didn't sleep great but I'm way better off than when I started with the program".

Twelfth rule:

- Put your life before insomnia.

The objective is to stop putting your insomnia at the forefront of your life, so you should enjoy your life. People who sleep great ironically don't care about their sleep and they do many things.

Follow the promises maybe more rigidly at the beginning but then start to do things you wouldn't, like go out at night and get back home late, reclaim your freedom gradually.

-- Thu Apr 30, 2015 4:34 pm --

I've made another similar post but this one has the more detailed and comprehensive description of the method.

Anyone with insomnia should at least experience massive improvements in the quality of their sleep.

Here is a clean version of this post: *mod edit*

Anyone on pills will tell you that they don’t even feel great in the morning.[quote][/quote]

I'm not a fan of sleeping pills either and would rather not have to use them but I can definitely say that, at least currently, I feel better in the morning after I've taken a pill and slept the night before compared to NOT taking the pill and having a brief, fitful sleep.