How Gratitude Could Be The Best Sleep Potion There Is
Float yourself to sleep with this neglected ingredient
“Your dreams reflect your thoughts and feelings, but your thoughts and feelings send you to sleep.”
It’s deeply nested in human nature to be attracted to negative signals.
The threat of suffering always lures around the corner, either from society or environmental relationships.
You’re pulled into a negative feedback loop soo rapidly. All you need is a spark of negativity that ignites a destructive cycle of thoughts and stressy feelings, flowing into actions that become bad habits….
By the end of the day, you’ll find it even hard to get sleep.
Hence, it’s better to start your day off with positive thoughts. However, that’s easier said than done.
I don’t have to tell you this isn’t a great base point. In addition, 95% of those thoughts are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.
Given that your brain generates between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts a day.
“You keep cycling through roughly 48,000 to 64,000 negative thoughts daily.”
Not a healthy ratio, isn’t it?
However, you are consciously in control of whether you let this happen or not. You are the boss of your mind. You can choose whether your thoughts will continue on that negative pad or not.
80% in the negative direction is easy. We are largely influenced by negativity throughout media, weather seasons, social happenings, financial regulation shifts, or perhaps our (Work)environment.
But that’s not why you’ve started to read this, “you are someone who wants the other piece of the pie,” someone who wants to know how to control this.
Taking control of your mind isn’t always that easy to do, especially when you don’t know the tricks and the levers to pull. It takes a certain amount of practice.
Luckily for you, this mental switch is easy to apply, although you might want to know how the game is played. It’s about:
“The act of gratitude”
Gratitude rewires your brain to be happier. You’ll become happier and healthier when you say thank you, for instance, “and you mean what you say.” Although, further, you’ll find out this doesn’t come as easily as you would think. Gratitude seems to offer the greatest value for those who deserve it.
Your thoughts are super important when it boils down to sleep and more aspect of life. An act of gratitude can boost your state of being in great ways. Many people don’t pay attention to gratitude. Most are too self-centered, making them vulnerable to absorbing negative impulses.
“The accumulation of their thoughts can easily inhibit their sleep ability.”
This is where gratitude can come in handy. Gratitude can be your ingredient to trigger your thought 80% in the positive direction.
The Practice Of Gratitude
Getting and rehearsing small acts of kindness activates the hypothalamus, thereby regulating all mechanisms controlled by your hypothalamus. All of these are tremendously important for your sleep.
Hypothalamic regulation triggered by gratitude assists in acquiring deeper and healthier sleep naturally. Gratitude and act of kindness are likely to induce your sleep and have you wake up feeling refreshed and energetic every morning.
When you express gratitude often, it will increase your level of happiness. Enjoy the little things in life and extract energy from those little things. Once you know that energy always flows back, this is very simple. Meaning that free natural energy could unpack into something truly great further down the road.
When we dissect why gratitude works well, one has to admit that gratitude enables you to look at life through the present experience.
It requires you to reflect at a certain point in time, “the present time.”
Paying gratitude requires you to stop, take a breath, and avoid arousal, distraction, and other stress-inducing triggers.
Finding enjoyment at that moment is where the power of gratitude hides.
The One Question which Can Set You On The Gratitude Track:
For some people, expressing gratitude comes as second nature.
For others (like me), it takes more effort to express their feelings. Here’s something that helped me, which can help you as well.
One thing worth trying is asking yourself this question early morning:
“Who express my gratitude toward?”
Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, cherish good experiences, and think more deeply about what they have rather than what they lack.
Do it, and make sure it’s meant.
How does this have anything to do with improving sleep quality? I’ll explain it later. Perhaps, if you want to find a faster way to sleep, here’s a way. Although, reading this will provide more value.
Morning thoughts most likely predict the rest of your day. So, I’d like you to start on a positive note. Paying gratitude results in positive effects on a person’s life.
A day of pursuing a passion, enjoyment, and getting things done? Or a day full of hurdles, downturns, and unfinished projects?
The choice is yours.
Here are some old-fashion gratitude practices :
1. Seeking a way to find gratitude, like making a list of things.
It’s not about the writing down, which is a good thing; it’s not about the list making… It’s the fact that you need to search for it.
I also started to make a list once, but when you are honest with yourself, the fact that you need to make a list says enough. You don’t need a list if you are truly grateful for something. You can tell by heart.
2. Look for good things, and learn to appreciate them.
The more effort it takes to find it, the lesser it will lean toward honest gratitude thrust me.
3. Express gratitude to yourself. Scribble it down.
A positive path that will induce a great habit.
4. Thank someone.
Here you hold a tremendous power to energize someone. This is what you would like to point your attention at.
Writing about what you’re grateful for, or thinking about what you’re thankful for, are the most common methods people use.
This is a well-known route, and it might be more effective sometimes. Nevertheless, expressing your gratitude in this way will help you with positive pulses throughout the day.
But know this:
Your Medial Prefrontal Cortex sets the context for everything in your life.
-Andrew Huberman-
What appears to matter a lot when practicing gratitude?
First, it matters whether you are on the transmitting or receiving end! Don’t get me wrong, when you pay gratitude toward whoever, in whatever way, it’s already a great gift to share. Still, one method might be less effective than the other.
Secondly, the honesty of your feelings matters dramatically.
Thirdly, Repetition of gratitude can shift your prosocial circuits. And by doing so, you shift your state by default. Become happier on average.
Willing enables the MPC to have a positive effect instead of having to do something against your will. You want to be motivated; it needs to feel real and inviting. The magnetism of your true feelings will attract the reward you deserve.
You can see this as picking the fruits of a well-established habit, a spiritual belief, or a self-hypnozising act, but there’s no hiding that it also has positive effects on restructuring neural pathways.
What is the most effective way gratitude can induce sleep?
Purely from the neurological approach, the most effective way is receiving gratitude. Nevertheless, I’ll tell you a secret: “rehearsing gratitude just for sleep already works fine for me.”
“Gratitude is a mindset that sets your mind differently.”
-Andrew Huberman-
I want you to know that expressing gratitude rewires your context. It’s an overwrite or upgrade on an existing value.
Could you remember that question to ask yourself at the beginning of the day?
“Who can I express my gratitude toward today?”
By asking yourself this question, you’re opening an opportunity gap. You allow yourself the chance to find someone and a moment or opportunity to offer help. Once you’ve established this, only this will feed your subconscious mind with the ingredients it needs to sleep well.
But there is more,
Additionally, you’ve created a feedback opportunity, a chance for yourself to be at the receiving end somewhere in time… The more you do this, the more votes you create for yourself to receive the energy you’ve put in the back.
One extremely important thing is:
Never do it for the wrong reasons.
Otherwise, you won’t sleep any better. Especially knowing that sleep is an entire subconscious mind act.
You can’t bullshit a bullshitter!
You can’t fake your true intentions for yourself. It would be best if you believed it. It would be best if you were willing to feel that way to enable yourself to rewire your neural circuits. Especially if that means rewiring deeply nested defensive circuits.
A shift in autonomic arousal is slightly more effective. When gratitude is expressed with slightly more alertness or higher intensity of emotions enhances the effects, assumingly both for those sending out this emotion or being at the receiving end.
“Receiving induces slightly better effects than telling gratitude.”
-Andrew Huberman-
You have been empowered to improve someone’s physiology.
However, there is one thing you could do to induce gratitude without waiting ever to receive something back. If you wait to get something back, you’re in for the wrong reasons. Stories trigger a shift in physiology. We are social beings. There is just so much at play subconsciously that there is no avoiding the positive effects of storytelling.
Something that resonated. The power of gratitude is hidden and embedded in how a story is told or how we experience something, in a nutshell, how your vital senses respond emotionally.
That’s how our brain is orientated. It’s how we are real.
Here’s a hack to tap into the receiving end:
Assuming you were once in the past at the receiving end, but I think we all were at least once,
Think back at stories where you were thankful for something. Or better, something where you received gratitude. Think back and re-experience that feeling before sleep.
Outcome perspective
Positive psychology improves your mental health good health, and gratitude can be your magic sleep potion blend. When we express gratitude and receive the same, our brain releases dopamine and serotonin, the two crucial neurotransmitters responsible for our emotions.
- Keeping a gratitude journal causes less stress, improves the quality of sleep, and builds emotional awareness
- A repetitive expression of something positive, like gratitude or kindness, compounds toward positive life transformation. Same as negative expressions leading to self-disrupting transformation
- Gratitude has a tremendous effect on your mood, and being thankful before sleep will positively serve you to fall asleep
- People who regularly express gratitude for the positive things in their life are happier overall, leading to lower rates of stress and depression.
- Showing gratitude consistently will transform you into a super optimistic person.
This magical blend will bring you back into your element, feeling fantastic. Gratitude improves your mood instantly, making you feel happy from the inside.
My bundle of gratitude
Now, I want to express my gratitude to you as a reader!
To all people close to me who supported me, especially my wife Joyce, for listening to my crazy ideas since I started to write online. Most of you will know how crazy this can get.
Moreover, I would like to express gratitude toward my “mentors without them knowing me” within the field of sleep and dreams. I learned a lot from them, and perhaps they can help you.
Some of those magnificent scientists and mentors spread valuable knowledge reachable to ordinary people like you and me:
Andrew Huberman, Matthew Walker, Michael Breus, Tim Ferris, and many books. But also all people involved in chronobiology and all the effort they have put into studies and quality information spread around the net.
Gratitude, integrate this habit. I did not do this enough in the past. Since I have paid more attention to it, we address it to our kids at home when they forget to act.
Gratitude is one of the most underestimated values, which makes you easily resilient against Depression, anxiety, and stress,….
And “it serves as a subliminal sleep booster!”
How do I integrate Gratitude?
- I have it blended into my morning journaling. (The old-fashion way, but it works to point my arrows in the good direction during my day)
- Often, we refer to our kids by asking them: “What were you grateful for today?” (This helps them and keeps you in that good flow as well.)
- Make sure to close your day with similar thoughts, reflecting on positive things from your daily life. (This should help you sleep in)
- Throughout the day, I try to tap into a field of enjoyment that makes me happy that day, and see who is involved. There I always find someone to reflect my gratitude.
- Hack the receiving end before sleep. (This is a real gem)
Gratitude is an honest but simple act that makes everyone happy instantly, and therefore perhaps the best natural sleep potion there is.
What’s your best tip to integrate the power habit of gratitude?
Absorb, Read, Write, Sleep, Exercise, Thrive!
Thanks for reading this post!
P.S.:
I’m a firm believer in building a resilient mind. I like to inspire by writing.
Some of my writings are about: Sleep & Dreams/Writing tips/Life lessons/Mental Health/Circadian Rhythm/Submarine Power Cables.
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