It's 3.
07am.
Again.
You're up now.
Not because you set an alarm.
It's not because somebody woke you up.
It just happens.
And you're lying there.
Staring at the ceiling wide awake.
Your heart's doing that slightly too fast thing.
Your mind's already three worries deep into whatever it is tomorrow.
And if this happens to you a lot,
I want you to know.
.
.
Two things right away.
Nothing's wrong with you.
And also you're not alone.
As a meditation teacher,
This is one of the most common things people tell me about.
So let's actually talk about why this happens.
And what to do when it does.
Firstly let's talk about the physical side of things,
Because there's a real biological reason for this.
Around three to four in the morning,
Your body naturally starts raising cortisol.
Cortisol is the hormone that makes you feel alert and awake to get you ready to wake up early in the morning.
It's like a hormonal shift,
But because you already happen to be carrying that extra stress,
That cortisol rise spikes higher and earlier than it should.
It's enough to pull you out of your sleep completely.
At the same time,
Your sleep is getting lighter at this point of the night.
Most of your deep sleep happens in the first half of the night.
By 3 o'clock in the morning,
Your sleep is in a lighter stage,
Which means that it's a lot easier for anything to wake you up.
It could be a noise,
A dream,
It could be a drop in blood sugar,
Or even a full bladder.
So the honest answer is your body's doing something normal,
Completely normal in fact.
And it just happens to be that in that moment,
It's a lot harder to stay awake.
But there's something even more important to consider,
Especially if this keeps happening to you.
3am.
Is quiet.
Really quiet.
No emails,
No phone calls,
No distractions.
There's nothing pulling your attention outward.
And when there's nothing to distract you,
Whatever you've been pushing down all day finally has your attention.
That's why the thoughts that show up at 3 o'clock in the morning always feel bigger than they do at 3 p.
M.
It's because you're finally noticing them.
This is also why I try to think your way out of 3am waking.
Really works.
This is the one time you should not be solving problems you've been dismissing all day.
They can wait.
Now is not the time.
What do you do?
Well firstly,
Don't fight it.
That's the mistake most people make.
The moment you start stressing about being awake,
Your body reads that as a threat.
And then guess what?
Your cortisol climbs even higher and then fighting the wake up.
Is often what turns five minutes into 50.
Secondly,
Get out of the problem-solving mode that you're in.
This isn't the time to plan for tomorrow or even to make sense out of anything.
You see,
Your prefrontal cortex,
Which is a part of your brain that is in charge of logic and being rational,
Is pretty much offline now.
So anything you try to figure out at three o'clock in the morning will look very,
Very different by the time you wake up.
Thirdly,
Give your nervous system something simple to do instead.
Something slow,
Like exhales,
You know,
Put your hand on your chest,
Name five things you can hear.
It doesn't have to be anything profound.
Enough to tell your body,
Look,
We are safe.
I'm in this with you.
You can stand down.
You can also play one of the many sleep meditations on Insight Timer to bring you back into a place of calm.
I actually happen to have one in my profile designed specifically to help you get back to sleep at three o'clock in the morning.
So by all means,
Feel free to check that out.
And if sleep doesn't come straight away,
Then that's okay too.
This happens.
What I do when that happens to me is I just tell myself,
Look,
You've experienced many nights of little to no sleep.
And you've been just fine.
This time will be no different.
And you know what,
That just takes a lot of pressure off me.
So next time you wake up middle of the night,
Just try not to see it as a failure.
It's not insomnia.
It's not a sign something's wrong with you.
It's just your body being human.
The one hour of the day.
Finally has the time and the quiet to tell you so.
So if tonight's the night,
Come back to this video or just find one of my sleep tracks and let's meet at three o'clock in the morning together.
Peacefully.
Instead of fighting it.
I'll see you in the next one.
