3 Tips To Help You Sleep Better At Night

I Would Have A Hard Time Staying In Bed If I Had To Leave Eva Mendes There Every Morning ...

In case it’s not obvious, sleeping better is going to help you in MANY different ways:

• More Rest — you’ll feel better, more energetic when you wake up …
• More Recovery — from your workouts and daily life …
• More Fat Burning — the deeper you sleep the more Growth Hormone your body releases …
• More Trippin’ — you release DMT during your sleep, it’s what fuels your dreams … and … some people take it to get high …

Other than that, the benefits of sleeping are obvious. But first, a question …

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

Most of the time you hear that you need to sleep 8 hours to get a full night’s rest. But this may not actually be true. Here’s a recent excerpt from a Time’s article:

“Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hr. or more, or less than 6.5 hr., they don’t live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hr. Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.”

My own research into the best sleep patterns has produced the same results. The QUALITY of your sleep is much more important than the QUANTITY of your sleep.

“But I don’t Think 5-6 hours is enough time to recover?”

This is a question I knew I’d get, especially from people who work out and have always heard to get 8 hours of sleep.

First, there’s plenty of guys in the military who sleep 5 hours per night or less and they all do a TON MORE work capacity than any of us will ever have. Most people don’t know how hard you can push your body until you actually push it.

More importantly, and to ease your concerns, I think the optimal amount of sleep is probably 5-6 hours per night … hit the ground running early in the A.M. … and then to take advantage of your mid-day circadian rhythm cool down around noon or so for a quick 20-40 minute nap.

Never go more than 40 minutes because then you’ll just start going into another sleep cycle, be woken up in the middle of it, and you won’t feel rested at all. I think given our hunter gatherer background this is probably the sleep cycle/schedule that most of us function best under!

With all this in mind, here are just a couple quick tips to help you get more QUALITY sleep … that is … deeper, more restful sleep that actually helps you recover.

1. When You Decide To Sleep — SLEEP!

A lot of people try to lay in bed and watch TV … or maybe surf the internet … or do other stimulating things that will keep you up at night and not allow you to fall into a sleep.

It’s better if you treat your bed only as the spot where you sleep or have sex at. That’s it. And the sex thing you can do all over the house, so if you get into the habit of only going to sleep when your body hits the bed, then you’ll be better off.

2. Get Everything Darker and Cooler

Another thing that will make it easier to fall asleep is to get your room as dark as possible. And to get it a little bit cooler.

Why? Because our body’s are programmed from the old “cave man” days to start releasing the sleep hormone melatonin when it gets darker. So it’ll help you fall asleep.

What’s more: your circadian rhythm also determines when you’re ready to go to sleep, and the “down” pattern of getting sleepy is usually accompanied by a drop in body temperature. This is the same reason why if you get done with a hard day’s work and plop on the couch, you automatically get sleepy and tired … because your body rapidly cools … and sleep cues are produced by your body.

3. Practice Relaxation Techniques

The last thing to do is learn to control your mind … actually … it might be the most important thing you can do.

Many people complain that they can’t get their mind to stop racing … that they can’t calm down … and that they can’t stop thinking about the day.

You gotta be able to relax, it’s a skill that will serve you the rest of your life. And it all starts with your breathing.

In my post on deep breathing, I showed you the simple 7 step process to breathing deeply. If you do 5-10 breaths like this you will find you’re automatically more relaxed and more ready to fall asleep quickly and easily.

Try these 3 tips to help yourself get a better sleep tonight.