Day 2696: Go back to your dreams.

If you go back to my previous blogs, you’ll find

• many posts about dreams (going back to here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) and
• that I have trouble going back to sleep when I wake up too early, which I almost always do.

Last night, I woke up too early (AGAIN!) and I was able to go back to sleep by reciting this phrase to myself, over and over:

Go back to your dreams.

Now, I shall go back to all the photos I took yesterday, to see if there are any dreams there.

Oscar could only dream about eating that flounder last night.

Go back to YouTube if you want to find the official music video of “Dreams” by The Cranberries:

 

Now I have to go back to another Zoom-y meeting — this one with my fellow behavioral health workers, in which we will discuss our dreams of going back to work in person.

My dream is that going back to gratitude will help us achieve our dreams.

Day 2170: How to get back to sleep in the middle of the night

If, like me, you often wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, try this before you go to bed:

1. Identify what might preoccupy your mind if you did wake up in the middle of the night (like challenging relationships, unfinished business, politics, heath issues, the holidays, ghosts of the past, the news, an upcoming event, money, food,  your inadequacies, ugliness, global warming, animals, conspiracy theories, etc.).
2. Write down one achievable action for each one.
3. If you can’t identify an achievable action, acknowledge that the situation is beyond your control.
4. Go to sleep.
5. When you wake up, remember that you’ve got plans that won’t work in the middle of the night, so there’s no need for your brain to engage.
6. If your awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night brain comes up another issue you didn’t anticipate, put it on the list of “Things to Do Tomorrow.”
7. Go back to sleep.

I hope none of my recent photos keep you up at night.

Here‘s something else you can try if you can’t get back to sleep at night:

 

You could also focus on gratitude. Sincerely, gratitude always helps.