After completely healing the insomnia that I struggled with for 16 years,
I learned that the reason it took me so long to sleep normally again wasn't because the solution was that hard to find.
It was because I kept looking in the wrong places.
In this video,
I want to offer you a completely different way of looking at insomnia,
Including the three main ways that you've been accidentally giving your power away to it and the three shifts to take that power back.
Everything I share in this video was key to fixing my own sleep and has also transformed the sleep of hundreds of my clients.
So get comfortable and let's walk through this together.
Actually addressing the real problem.
The real solution has always been inside of you,
Not in a pill bottle,
Not in a sleep gadget,
Not in a supplement.
And in my opinion,
This is the best news that you could ever receive because if the solution lies within you,
That means you already have everything that you need to fix this.
That's exactly what this video is about.
So let's dive into the first way that you've been unknowingly perpetuating insomnia,
Which is that you've built an identity around it.
This is an important distinction that's very easy to miss.
Whatever that initial trigger was,
A stressful event in your life,
A big life change,
Maybe traveling,
Anxiety,
Trauma,
Any difficult period in your life,
Really,
That can absolutely cause a few nights of poor sleep,
Which is completely normal and expected.
I'd say that's called being human.
It happens to everyone from time to time.
But that's not insomnia,
Right?
Insomnia is the part that happens next.
It's your response to those bad nights that creates the pain.
Pattern,
The worrying,
The dread,
The obsessing,
The trying to fix it.
That's what actually takes a few rough nights and turns them into weeks,
Months,
Or even years of struggling with your sleep.
Which means that insomnia wasn't something that happened to you.
It's something that first developed because of how your brain responded to a difficult experience.
But then it was perpetuated long-term because of where you kept placing your attention after the fact.
At some point after a few bad nights,
After enough failed attempts at fixing your sleep,
Something shifted in the way that you've been viewing yourself.
You stopped thinking,
Oh,
I'm just going through a rough patch or,
You know,
I had a bad night last night.
And you started thinking,
I don't know how to sleep anymore.
I've lost the ability to sleep.
What if this keeps happening again?
And that is exactly what keeps you stuck in that same pattern.
Whatever you believe to be true about yourself,
Your brain works around the clock to confirm it for you.
It then filters your life experience through that lens,
And it produces the thoughts,
Emotions,
And even physical responses in your body that match the identity that you are placing your attention on.
Your thoughts and self-perception actually command your brain to move in that direction.
So when your identity becomes,
I am someone who can't sleep,
Brain just goes,
Got it.
And it starts doing everything in its power to prove you right.
Not because your brain's broken or because your sleep is broken,
But because it's responding to the instructions that you are giving it.
There are two versions of yourself at play here.
I like to divide it into two categories.
First is there is your true self,
The real you,
The version of you who was born sleeping naturally,
Effortlessly.
That ability never went away.
You still have that ability.
It's still within you.
And then there's your survival self.
That's the version of you that got caught up in the worrying that started trying to fix your sleep,
Control your sleep,
Force yourself to sleep,
And that learn to see nighttime as something to stress out about.
And whatever version of you that you identify with becomes your experience.
If you've been living as the survival self,
The more anxious one,
The one who believes their sleep is doomed forever,
Your brain will keep producing everything to match that identity.
But the real you,
Your true self,
Does not have insomnia.
The real you sleeps easily,
Naturally,
Without thinking about it,
Without worrying about it.
And what we're gonna do is reconnect with that version of you today.
And here's the first shift to start doing that.
Remember the real you.
Start by catching yourself any time that you say or think things like,
I have insomnia,
Or I can't sleep,
And replace them with,
I am returning to my natural ability to sleep.
My natural ability to sleep is returning to me.
That's actually the better way to say it,
Because sleep isn't forced.
You can't chase it.
It's gonna come to you when you're not looking for it,
Right?
The next way that you've likely accidentally been perpetuating insomnia is because you've been treating sleep like a problem to solve.
Your survival brain is a problem solver.
That's what it does.
So when sleep became an issue,
It jumped into action.
It started researching,
Googling,
Watching videos,
Tracking how many hours you're sleeping,
Optimizing your bedtime routine,
Trying supplement after supplement.
And all of that felt really productive.
It felt like you were doing something about it.
It felt like you were making progress towards finding answers.
But here is what was actually happening underneath the surface.
Every single one of those behaviors was keeping your survival brain activated in problem-solving mode.
And your survival brain cannot be activated and allow you to sleep at the same time.
They're mutually exclusive.
If your survival brain thinks that there is something really important to fix.
Do you think that that helps your brain relax so that you can sleep?
No,
Right?
That just keeps your brain on high alert,
Which blocks sleep.
A lot of people are now tracking their sleep obsessively with Aura Rings,
Apple Watches,
Fitbits,
The Whoop,
You know.
And sleep trackers,
I would say,
Are pretty great if you don't identify as having a sleep problem.
But when you're already anxious about your sleep and you're checking the sleep data every morning,
It's kind of like pouring fuel on the fire.
You wake up,
You check the app,
And it tells you your sleep score wasn't very good,
And now you have data kind of confirming your worst fear.
So your anxiety spikes,
Your survival brain locks in even harder,
And the cycle just gets worse.
So for most people,
The data doesn't help.
It just feeds the obsession.
So sleep is not a problem to solve.
It is a state that your body naturally drops into when it feels safe enough to let go.
So here is the second shift to make.
Stop trying and start allowing.
Instead of placing your energy and intention on fixing your sleep,
Start shifting it towards what actually matters more in your life.
Your relationships,
Your career,
Your passions,
The things that bring you joy,
The things that you love to do,
Something maybe that you love to do as a kid that you haven't done in a while,
You know,
Add that back into your life because the more that you focus on living,
The less power sleep has over you.
And then when you get into bed at night,
Your only job isn't actually to sleep.
No,
No,
No,
No.
Your job is not to sleep.
Your job is to rest.
Your job is to not monitor what time it is.
Your job is to not calculate how many hours until you have to get up in the morning.
No,
You get into bed.
You relax,
You maybe hang out for a little bit,
You treat it as me time.
That's what I do.
I don't go into bed thinking this is,
I'm going to go to sleep,
But it's like not even on my mind.
It's more like I'm a little tired right now,
So I'm going to go relax in bed.
I'm going to listen to a podcast,
Read a book,
Chill out,
And then I'm asleep.
Like it's just,
It just happens,
Right?
So you've got to take the pressure off of it.
And once you take the pressure off,
Your nervous system finally gets a signal that nothing to solve,
Nothing to protect you against,
Nothing to stay awake for.
And then the survival brain stands down,
And sleep happens all on its own.
Sleep really does not like to be chased.
So when you genuinely stop caring or looking for it,
That's when it shows up every single time.
It's not a trick.
It's just how sleep works.
Next is the third way that you've been perpetuating this insomnia pattern,
Which is that you've accidentally been rehearsing it.
Every night without even realizing it,
You've been running the same rehearsal.
You start to dread the night before it even starts.
Then you get into bed bracing for what might happen.
You lie there and you notice what time it is and you calculate until you have to get up in the morning.
And you're also kind of monitoring your body or you're kind of hyper-aware of whether you're still awake or you're asleep yet.
And then in the morning when you get up,
You immediately assess how bad the night was.
You assess how bad you slept.
That's a rehearsal.
And your subconscious has been taking notes every single time that you do that.
Because it's learned that nighttime means something important is happening.
Night time means that there's something to worry about.
And going to bed has sort of become entangled with worrying itself.
And then waking up in the morning now means hyper fixate on the past and worry about it some more.
And this has happened enough times that then that pattern started running on autopilot without you even noticing it.
So shift three is to start rehearsing how your true self would approach sleep.
Because here's the thing about rehearsal,
It works both ways.
If you've been accidentally rehearsing the insomnia pattern,
You can start deliberately rehearsing something different.
And your subconscious will take notes on that as well.
So I want you to try this right now.
Close your eyes for just a moment if you can.
And I want you to imagine tonight,
You get into bed,
You lay down,
Your body feels so heavy.
You feel yourself just really sinking in to the mattress.
Your mind is silent,
Absolutely silent.
No thoughts at all.
You're like,
Wow,
My mind feels so clear.
Your breathing slows down.
You just take a few deep breaths.
And then you wake up in the morning.
Now it's morning.
Sleep just came to you naturally.
There was no forcing,
No effort,
No strategy.
Just your body doing what it already knows how to do.
So if you think about what you would feel like waking up in the morning,
You know,
You maybe stretch,
Your mind feels clear,
Your body feels rested,
You have energy.
Let me know what emotion comes with that,
Right?
Is it relief?
Is it calm?
Is it lightness,
Peace?
Is it just like excitement for life,
Excited to get out of bed,
To go,
You know,
Just enjoy your day,
To spend your time with the people that you love,
To do the things that you love to do?
Think about that.
What do you want to feel like in the morning?
Decide.
Because if you don't decide ahead of time,
There's a less likely chance that your brain will start giving you that experience.
Because that feeling is not imaginary.
It already exists inside of you.
Your nervous system knows how to generate it.
You just haven't been activating it with intention.
And so now your job is really simple.
To rehearse that feeling.
Invite it into your body a few times throughout the day.
Just ask yourself,
What would it feel like to feel calm today?
What would it feel like to feel unbothered today?
What would it feel like to be at ease today?
Because your subconscious responds to what you rehearse.
And when you mentally rehearse going about your day and about your evening with just total ease and peace of mind,
Your nervous system settles down.
And from there,
Sleep just happens all on its own.
These three shifts come down to one simple truth.
Insomnia is a temporary part of the human experience.
The moment you stop identifying with it,
Stop treating sleep like a problem to solve,
And start deliberately rehearsing the version of you who sleeps easily,
Everything can shift so fast.
Your true self still knows how to sleep.
It always has.
And the more consistently that you rehearse that version of you,
The faster your brain makes sleeping easily your new reality.
