If you've been trying everything to improve your sleep and nothing has been making a lasting difference,
I want you to start with a completely different way of thinking about your sleep altogether.
Because the reason nothing has worked isn't so much about what you've been doing to fix it,
It's about how you've been thinking.
And once that shifts,
Your sleep shifts with it.
In this video,
I'm going to walk you through five sleep mindset shifts that will completely change your relationship with sleep.
These aren't sleep hygiene rules or strict bedtime routines.
These are gentle but profound reframes that get to the real root of why sleep has felt so hard.
My name is Meredith Loudon.
I'm a sleep coach and I used to have insomnia.
I struggled with my sleep for 16 years before finally finding my way through it.
And everything I share in this video is key to getting there.
So get comfortable and let's walk through it together.
Mindset shift number one is to give yourself a flexible bedtime window.
If you've ever found yourself rushing to get into bed by a certain time or feeling like the whole night is ruined,
Even if you got into bed 30 minutes late,
That's actually making it harder for your body to fall asleep quickly because rushing and putting pressure on your sleep signals to your brain to release cortisol,
Which is literally adrenaline,
And that ends up suppressing your brain's melatonin levels.
So the more pressure that you put on bedtime,
The more alert your body actually becomes,
And that delays how quickly you'll be able to fall asleep.
So instead of obsessing over your bedtime,
Instead,
It's way more effective to give yourself a flexible bedtime window.
So if normally you're like,
I have to be in bed by 10 p.
M.
Or else,
Instead,
Aim to be in bed between 9.
30 and 10.
30 or 9.
30 and 11,
Right?
And let's say it's already 10.
30 p.
M.
And normally you would feel like you're running late to get into bed.
This is going to be the most counterintuitive thing ever,
But I want you to actually go slower.
Rushing to get into bed is like an oxymoron.
It doesn't go over well because you can't rush to sleep.
Because rushing implies the exact opposite of sleep.
So if you feel like you're getting into bed too late,
It's not a big deal.
Just take your sweet time with it.
Go about your normal evening wind down routine.
You know,
Wash your face slowly,
Brush your teeth,
Read a book for a bit.
There's no rush.
And this will help you fall asleep faster than if you rushed and then got into bed and closed your eyes.
But then your body was now pumping with adrenaline because you were putting so much pressure on it and then you just end up tossing and turning for hours frustrated.
Okay,
So now that brings me to the next thing that I know you're thinking.
If I get into bed later,
That means I now only have six hours until my alarm goes off.
This is what happens next.
You start counting and calculating how many hours are left until you have to wake up in the morning.
So that's why mindset shift number two is to detach your emotions from the clock.
The spiral of stress starts the moment that you try to predict how you're gonna feel tomorrow based on what time it is tonight.
Because here's the thing,
You don't actually know.
Maybe you'll feel great.
Maybe it won't matter.
It's the stress thinking about the number that actually makes you feel worse,
Not the number of hours of sleep itself.
So as much as you can,
Don't pay attention to the clock at all around the time you're getting into bed.
But if you do see the time,
You need to practice detaching your emotions from whatever time the clock says.
I now have this relationship with time as something that's kind of arbitrary.
So,
For example,
If I'm traveling and I have a really early flight in the morning and I have to get up at 4 a.
M.
Or something,
It really does not phase me.
And I'm not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination.
I like to wake up at like 8.
30,
9 in the morning,
If I have the option.
But I'm not attached to it.
So if I'm up at five or six in the morning for something going on in my life,
I just do it.
It's not a big deal to me.
And the night before,
I'm also not worrying about getting up early either.
So detaching your emotions from what time you see on the clock can help you in so many ways,
Which is why mindset shift number three is to redefine what good sleep actually means to you.
Shift two was about what happens in the moment when you see the time on the clock.
And now shift three is about something that you're carrying into bed before you even look at the clock.
And that's the standard that you've set for what you think good sleep looks like.
Because most of us are walking around with this invisible rule book about sleep.
And the rules sound something like this.
They sound like,
I need eight hours.
I need to fall asleep quickly.
I can't wake up in the middle of the night.
I need to feel completely refreshed in the morning.
And if any one of those criteria isn't met,
Your brain just decides the whole night was a failure and that your day is going to be terrible.
So this one's really sneaky because it sounds responsible.
We've all heard that we're supposed to get eight hours a night.
But here's the thing,
Your definition of good sleep might actually be making it harder for you to sleep.
If you believe that anything less than 8 perfect,
Uninterrupted hours means your sleep didn't count or wasn't good enough,
That rigid expectation creates stress in your body.
And stress sucks away all the good vibes and it just makes you feel even worse for no reason.
So what ends up happening is this,
You fall short of your goal and then you immediately start thinking tomorrow or today is going to be a disaster.
And that mindset alone puts your nervous system in a stress state before your day even starts.
Some nights you'll get more sleep,
And some nights you'll get less sleep.
And that's okay.
You have to trust in your body's natural rhythm.
And there's going to be times where you slept plenty and you had a rough day.
And there's going to be times where you barely slept and you had a great day.
The number of hours that you sleep does not determine how your day is going to go.
And the more that you have an optimistic mindset on this,
The more you'll end up surprising yourself.
It's not just about the number of hours,
It's how you respond mentally that makes the biggest difference.
And that brings me perfectly into mindset shift number four,
Which is to stop trying to predict the future.
Because here's what I see happening all the time and I used to do this.
I'm guilty of this.
You have one bad night and then immediately your brain fast forwards to tomorrow and it thinks today is going to be awful.
I'm not going to be able to function.
This is going to keep happening.
But here's the thing,
You don't actually know that.
You're not a psychic,
And even if you were,
That's the fear voice in your mind,
That's not your intuition.
Your survival brain is catastrophizing and it's not accurate.
When you treat a bad night as evidence of what's coming in your future,
You're not just worrying about the future,
You're creating it.
And that's exactly how one bad night turns into a week of bad nights and a week turns into a month.
Not because your sleep is actually broken,
But because your brain has been collecting evidence and copy pasting it into the future.
That is all a mind game.
It's not real.
It is an illusion.
Your survival brain has what's called a negativity bias.
It's designed to notice and remember the bad stuff more than the good stuff because it wants to protect you.
So if you had three okay nights and you had one rough night,
Your brain is just going to zoom in on the rough one and use it as the most important data point.
But here's the truth.
One bad night means nothing.
Everyone has bad nights.
People who sleep great have bad nights.
They just don't make it mean anything.
They wake up,
Shrug it off,
And they move on.
And because they don't catch meaning to it,
It doesn't spiral and compound.
So the next time you have a rough night,
Catch yourself before your brain starts trying to make it a bigger deal than it is.
Remind yourself,
This is just one night.
It doesn't mean anything about tomorrow.
It doesn't mean anything about my sleep.
My body is resilient and it will catch up and then just let it go.
Because the moment that you stop treating bad nights as evidence for the future,
They stop having power over you.
And that is crucial for the pattern to start to break.
Next is mindset shift number five,
Which is to stop making sleep the most important thing in your life.
I genuinely believe that this mindset shift is the biggest game changer of them all.
When you're struggling with sleep,
It has this way of taking over everything.
It becomes the first thing that you think about when you get out of bed,
It's the last thing you think about when you close your eyes,
And your whole day revolves around it.
You are considering how you feel,
What are you gonna plan,
What are you willing to do,
All based off of how you slept last night.
And I really get this.
I lived this way for way too long.
When you're exhausted,
It feels like that's the most important thing.
But the irony is,
The more important sleep becomes to you,
The harder it is to sleep.
Because importance creates emotional pressure and emotional pressure creates stress.
And cortisol,
The stress hormone,
Stops your brain from producing melatonin,
So you end up staying awake.
Think about the people in your life who sleep well.
They don't think about their sleep that much at all.
They might prioritize it,
But they don't obsess over it.
Sleep is just something that their body does.
It's a complete afterthought.
And that indifference,
That genuine not really caring,
Is exactly the signal that your nervous system needs to finally feel safe enough to let go and drift off to sleep at night.
So start practicing redirecting your mind on your life instead.
When sleep thoughts come up,
Just redirect your attention to something that actually matters more to you,
Your relationships,
The people that you care about in your life and them doing well,
Your passions,
The things that make your life feel meaningful and alive.
The more you fill your life with things that genuinely make you happy and light you up,
The less real estate sleep has in your mind and the less mental real estate it has,
The more sleep you'll end up getting.
When my sleep finally transformed,
It wasn't because I followed some perfect routine.
It wasn't because I followed all the sleep hygiene rules.
I barely followed any of them.
And it definitely wasn't because I found some fancy sleep supplement blend.
It was really because I changed the way that I related to sleep.
And here's what I now know and what I teach my clients.
Sleep is not something you chase.
It's something that you allow.
You don't have sleep problems.
You've just been thinking that you have sleep problems.
These five mindset shifts are not things you have to get perfect every single day.
Think of them as invitations towards a different relationship with sleep.
One that's built on trust instead of control,
On ease instead of effort,
On allowing instead of forcing.
Come back to this video whenever the old pattern starts creeping back in to remind yourself.
Let these shifts become the voice that's louder than the worry.
They will become your new default.
Because here's what I most want you to take away from this.
Your sleep was never really broken.
Your relationship with sleep just needed some tending to,
And that process has already begun.
So be gentle with yourself tonight.
Rest is always available to you,
And you already have everything you need to return to it.
