Four Surprising Ways to Get a Better Night’s Sleep
Research suggests that practicing gratitude, forgiveness, mindfulness,
and self-compassion may improve our sleep during stressful times.
A lot of us are suffering from lack of sleep these days.
According the Centers for Disease Control, about
35% of adult Americans
regularly get less than seven hours of sleep per night, with African Americans
and other minority groups sleeping even less than that.
By Jill Suttie
Improving “sleep hygiene” is a good remedy—including going to bed at the same time every night, making sure your room is dark and quiet at bedtime, forgoing afternoon caffeine, and creating sleep-time rituals (like putting on cozy pajamas and reading a book before bed). But many people still suffer from sleep problems even after making these adjustments. And, though turning to sleeping pills can be effective, they can also be addictive, or they can disrupt our dreaming, which leads to lower-quality sleep.
Fortunately, there may be other things worth trying to help us sleep that have more to do with our minds than our bodies. Recent research suggests that many of the well-being practices we can do to be happier also have a positive effect on sleep. Here are some of those practices.
Mindfulness meditation
A recent analysis of several high-quality studies (randomized controlled trials) concluded that mindfulness meditation programs help people fall asleep more easily and experience better-quality sleep overall.
One study conducted in Wuhan, China, actually looked at how mindfulness might be useful for sleeping better during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the study, people spent 10 days using an app that either guided them through mindfulness meditation or induced mind-wandering (unfocused attention). They then reported how mindful they were and how much sleep they got the next day.
After taking into account other factors influencing sleep (like how much caffeine people drank, their age, or prior anxiety levels), the researchers analyzed how long people slept as the virus spread and deaths proliferated in their community. Those who practiced mindfulness and became more mindful didn’t lose as much sleep as those in the other group, likely because mindfulness protected them some from worry and rumination. Mindfulness helps people recognize and accept negative thoughts and feelings without fighting them, reducing their intensity and preventing them from spiraling out of control.
If you’ve not already tried mindfulness meditation, you can find many online resources to give it a go—including apps, which seem to be at least somewhat effective. You can also go to Greater Good in Action and try our practices—including a body scan, mindful breathing, or common humanity meditation. These exercises, besides potentially helping with sleep, have been found to reduce stress and depression and increase happiness and satisfaction with life, too.
Self-compassion
Self-compassion is something all of us could use right now,
especially as lockdowns drag on and we find ourselves feeling more tired,
unhappy, and unproductive than usual. Getting down on ourselves for perceived
mistakes and flaws could exacerbate low-grade depression, which many of us
already feel.
Self-compassion helps us to be kinder to ourselves as
we go through the ups and downs of life. According to
researcher Kristin Neff, self-compassion involves paying attention to our internal and external
experiences (mindfulness), recognizing when we are suffering and sending kind
messages to ourselves, and keeping in mind our common humanity—that we are not
alone in our imperfections or suffering.
Studies have found that
more self-compassionate people have better sleep, including less trouble
falling asleep after a stressful day. In that study, people who were more
self-compassionate were also in a better mood and felt more alert upon
awakening than those with little self-compassion.
Self-compassion
can be strengthened with practice, and that improves sleep, too.
In one study, participants were asked to think about personal mistakes they’d made before
going to bed and assigned to do a self-compassion meditation, a
self-compassion writing exercise, or neither of those (as a comparison). Based
on their reports the next morning, those who did a self-compassion exercise
slept significantly better and ruminated less than those who didn’t try
self-compassion. These practices even helped people who started out more
depressed, which is good to know, given how many of us are ruminating more
these days.
A
new paper analyzing the results of several studies
found there was “a significant association between self-compassion and
self-reported sleep quality.” Though more rigorous studies could be done to
confirm this, we can always benefit from practices like writing ourselves a
self-compassion letter or taking a self-compassion break.
Gratitude
Feeling grateful is a good way to feel happier and strengthen our
relationships. Now, it appears to help with sleep, too.
In one study, 119 young women were randomly selected to write about people and things
they were grateful for each day, things that happened each day, or nothing at
all. After two weeks, people’s sleep quality improved significantly in the
gratitude group, and this helped improve their well-being and optimism and
reduce blood pressure, too. In
a recent review of gratitude exercises
and their effects on physical health, researchers found that one of the
strongest impacts of gratitude was on sleep quality.
One reason
gratitude may affect sleep is that a grateful mindset seems to help us embrace
more positive thoughts and let go of more negative ones before we go to bed.
This means that it doesn’t take as long for us to fall asleep at night.
To
try gratitude practices yourself, you might consider keeping a gratitude
journal (or use the
GGSC’s Thnx4 online journal) or writing a gratitude letter. These are designed to increase your positive
thoughts and feelings, which may be key to better sleep.
Forgiveness
For some people, forgiving others is hard—especially if you
equate forgiveness with letting someone “off the hook” and condoning their
harmful actions. But those who study forgiveness consider it to be not
necessarily about healing relationships between people, but mostly important
for ourselves, helping us to let go of grudges that decrease our personal
well-being.
If what’s keeping you up at night is holding on to
grudges—pandemic-related or not—it could be worth considering practicing
forgiveness. Though there is little or no direct research on how forgiving
someone affects sleep directly, there is at least
one study that found
forgiving types were more likely to sleep better at night than others.
Additionally, those who were more self-forgiving in the study also
slept better because they were able to let go of mistakes they’d made more
easily.
Forgiving someone can make us feel happier, more hopeful,
less depressed and anxious, and less vulnerable to stress. And it can improve
our relationships with others, especially our closest ones, which is important
when so many of us have limited ability to interact with others right now.
Each of these benefits is also tied to better sleep, which is all the more
reason to try practicing forgiveness.
The nice thing about all of
these practices is that they can be used alone or in tandem, and they don’t
have undesirable side effects. Not only that, practicing these keys to
happiness can have the desirable side effect of helping you become a happier,
healthier person. That’s something we can all cheer about in these dark times.
Just don’t try cheering right before you want to fall asleep!