Difficulty falling asleep? Here’s a (researched) tip.

Many people experience difficulty falling asleep at night.
Research has been done on many things in regards to sleep, but to help you out with this specific issue, try this.
Journaling. Don’t run away just yet! It has shown that we can alleviate the stress we may be holding regarding tomorrow’s tasks if we write it out the night before.
Here’s what to do:
Use actual paper and pen/pencil. Refrain from using a digital device as the light from these devices (more studies show) will keep you awake!!
Take about 5 minutes and include the following things: you can write a list of the accomplishments of the day, but according to the study (see reference below), the most important thing to write out is your ‘to-do-list’ for the next day.

It’s important to not get caught up in the detail but to get these lists out of your head onto the page.
(What you do with the paper afterwards is not important either!)

“There’s something about the act of writing—physically writing something on paper—that tends to offload it a little bit, or help us hit the pause button on it. The outcome seems to be that you decrease cognitive arousal, and that you decrease rumination and worry. If you decrease those two things, it makes sense that you’re going to fall asleep faster, because having stuff on your mind is one of the main barriers to falling asleep at night.” So says one of the authors of the study, Michael Scullin. January 2018

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29058942/

~ Lucia DaPos