How can you turn your head off and find peace of mind without meditating in a cave for a week or having a few drinks each night? Use the approaches below to help you be present and relaxed.
1. Mind follows breath
The fastest way to calm your mind is to calm your breath. Breathing in stimulates your energy systems, breathing out calms your energy. So if you breathe out for longer than you breathe in, you will start to relax. Try it for a minute: breathe in for the count of 3, and out for the count of 6! Any form of meditation you have learned is helpful to slow and deepen your breathe, thus relaxing you.
2. Make peace with the day
Start a ritual that helps you feel at peace before you go to sleep at night. Think back over the day and make a list of the things that went well. Or make a list of 3 or more things that you are grateful for. Requiring yourself to focus on that should bring a smile to your face and positive emotion in your body.
3. “To Do before To Sleep”
Empty your head with a ‘to do’ list of what you will accomplish the next day so you don’t have to keep the details in your mind. Also, remember that refraining from electronics for a least an hour before bed makes it easier to get to sleep and wake up feeling rested, not stressed.
4. Transition with intention
As a human being you have about 2500 thoughts an hour! They are usually in many directions and make you feel ‘all over the place’. When you are on your way home from work you are usually still on overload with these thoughts.
What if you could arrive home each day and be the person you want to be?
- Try to develop a ritual to decompress from work and enter into the state you want to be in when you arrive at home. Write down the qualities and attributes of who you want to be (or when you arrive at work).
- I call this idea your Horizon Point, it’s the intersection of who you want to be and how others want you to be. It’s where you set your sights as if you are the captain of your ship.
- As you are transitioning from work to home, visualize who you want to be as you walk in the door, and as you make the first connect with whoever you come home to. What can you do to show up as that person consistently?
- Be intentional and act in the service of the person you want to be. Make your 2500 thoughts an hour help you show up as that person you want to be.
5. Be impeccable for your 50%
Your mind gets stressed when you focus on what you can’t control, and is always calmer when you focus on what you can control. So control what you can control. In fact, be impeccable for your 50% in every situation. Put your time, energy, and attention into being really good at what you can control. You can always have peace of mind when you feel you have done the best you can do.
– Sharon Melnick
You can download your copy of my free report Sleep Under Stress: 19 ways to Get to Sleep and Wake up Rested at http://www.sharonmelnick.com/sleep
