Physical Goal: Focusing on Sleep

I am a terrible sleeper. I struggle falling asleep. My head hits the pillow and my mind starts running a hundred miles an hour. It doesn't matter what time I go to sleep, it takes me at least 20 minutes to get my mind to stop thinking about... well, anything. And sometimes I just can't get it to stop at all. Generally to get it to stop thinking I have to work on getting my mind in a state to sleep. My best trick for this is visualizing a huge open field where you can see nothing but a tree at the top of a small hill. I climb to the top of that hill and lay under the tree to rest. This usually gets me relaxed enough that I can start to go to sleep. Sometimes, like at 4:30 this morning, this does  not work and I end up not going to sleep at all. This is frustrating. Especially when it's the middle of the night and the baby is sleeping but I'm not. My very talented cousin posted about an online interview about wellness. Click here to listen to it. Can I just say this was the best thing I've listened to in a long time. Seriously, take an hour and listen to it. I learned some amazing things and was reminded of some important things. And I will be blogging about various things they talked about for probably years to come. It was that good.

Anyway...

One of the helpful things they discussed was about rest and getting prepared for restful sleep. They noted how they create "dusk" in their home as bedtime comes closer by shutting off the overhead lights and just having on lamps. It tells the brain and body, just like the sun does, that it's getting time to go to bed. This is important in relaxing. I know I need things like this in my life to help me be prepared to go to sleep. I think another thing I need is to not being running physically a hundred miles an hour right before bedtime, putting things away, doing dishes, etc. etc. No wonder my brain starts going when I finally lie down.

So my goal this week is to find things that will help me get to sleep better. So I'll start by asking you... What do you do to be prepared for sleep?