Today we’re going to talk about
how you can sleep better.
Rule number one is my personal favorite
and I’d love to know which one you guys like the best.
And also as you’re watching,
if you hear something that really resonates with you,
please leave it in the comments below
and put it in quotes
so other people can be inspired as well.
And when you write something down yourself
it’s much more likely to stick for you as well.
Enjoy!
(bright pop music)
– We’ve known for a very long time
only about 50 years of real research
that if you’re not getting enough sleep
your cognitive abilities throughout the day go down,
your creativity goes down, your stress goes up,
your bad decision-making goes up
and your ability to handle conflict or life challenges
and be resilient and happy and positive
all goes to shh.
So what do you do?
How do you get more sleep?
How do you finally manage this part of your life
because look, we all have a lot of expectations,
a lot of demands on our lives,
and so at some point we start believing the hype out there
that, oh, hey you can get by on three, four hours of sleep.
Don’t worry about it.
Just sleep a little less,
get up a little earlier.
And we start telling ourselves this big lie
that we can get away with less sleep
even though we have 50 years of science saying we can’t,
especially today there’s this popular myth
that you can take, sleep for two hours,
rest, take a nap for 30 minutes here and there
or sleep for four hours and nap
and meditate throughout the day to catch up
and the reality is we know that’s not possible
for the vast majority of people.
People say, “But Brendon, the Navy SEALs can do it.”
I’m like yes, but you’re not a Navy SEAL and they hate it
and they call it hell week when they do that, okay?
Most normal, average, must perform, must be awesome,
care about your high performance,
and have to be smart people throughout the day
really must sleep seven to eight hours a night.
So if you’re not getting that on a consistent basis,
what can you do?
(dramatic music)
– So I’ll give you my routine,
I’ll give you my nightly ritual
but what I recommend for everybody watching
is to create your own ritual.
I mean it’s almost like I give you a menu
and you need to experiment
and see what is it that does it for you.
– Sure. – For me it’s like
30 minutes before I’m going to go to sleep,
turning off all my devices
and gently escorting them out of the bedroom.
– Escorting them on a chariot?
– They’ll be there in the morning.
– Put them on a horse?
– You put them in their little homes outside the bedroom.
Turning off the lights, the bright lights
making it sort of,
I just have one nightstand light
and one light in the bathroom.
Then having a really really hot wonderful bath.
– [Interviewer] Really, a warm bath?
– Yeah, with epsom salts which are very relaxing
and flickering candles.
But if you guys don’t like baths, have a shower.
– [Interviewer] I don’t like baths.
– Okay. – I’ve got one.
I’ve never used it, yeah.
– You can have a shower.
– Yeah, and hot is better than cold?
– Oh, yeah!
You basically want to slow down your brain
and soothe your muscles
and everything is like powering it down.
– Mhmm, I guess when you go on a hot tub late at night,
I always feel ready to sleep.
– Exactly, you feel exactly.
The hot tub it’s a perfect–
– [Interviewer] So do a hot tub dip if you have a hot tub.
– If you have a hot tub go to a hot tub.
I don’t have a hot tub so I do the bath.
And then put on,
if you sleep naked, you sleep naked.
But if you wear PJs and night dress or whatever,
make sure that you wear clothes for bed.
I used to sleep in my gym clothes
and then your brain gets this confusing messages.
– Supposed to work out. – I’m going to the gym
or are we powering down?
So even if you wear a t-shirt,
make sure it’s not a t-shirt you wear to the gym.
And then in bed I only read physical books.
I don’t read anything– – No devices.
– On screens.
And anybody who is reading The Sleep Revolution in bed
I will consider it a personal victory
if you actually fall asleep while reading it.
– Read 20, 20 pages a night, fall asleep.
– Whatever, 10 pages, you get drowsy,
you let the book drop, you turn off the light,
you’re asleep.
So that is incredibly important,
for those who have children,
you know that that’s how you put your child to bed.
You don’t just drop your child in bed,
you– – Read to them.
– You read to, you give them a bath,
you put them in their PJs, you read to them,
you kind of transition,
it’s like the Goodnight Moon,
it’s a goodnight for everything
which is really a demarcation line
between your day with all its stresses,
however blessed our lives may be,
every day has stresses, challenges,
difficult things and incompletions.
There’s nobody who has any interesting job
or is a busy mom
who finishes the day and says,
“I did absolutely everything.”
– [Interviewer] Yeah, there’s always something that–
– That was on my list, I should have done.
Never.
So you need to somehow tell your brain and your body,
we did what we did this day
and now the day has come to a close
and we need to fully–
– Cross the line. – Recharge.
We cross the line.
We need to cross that line.
– [Interviewer] Not be in bed, on the screen,
thinking about work– – Yeah.
– [Interviewer] And then try to sleep at the same time.
Couldn’t cut off– – I just really,
I wish I could sort of convey that feeling
that I absolutely totally believe now
to everybody watching
because I promise
that if you do this
every aspect of your life will improve.
If you have any lingering doubt
that you’re not going to be as productive,
just try it. – Yeah.
– Because it’s like getting in the Tesla.
You’re going to get to your destination faster.
– Mhmm. – Right?
– Smoother. – Smoother!
– [Interviewer] Cleaner.
– With the kind of, consuming less energy.
– In that hour to 90 minutes prior to sleep,
dim the lights in your house,
don’t look at any screens anymore,
that means no TV and no handhelds.
You’re not Twittering and Facebooking
and doing all the other things on your phone,
and I really mean, no texting either.
Just stop in that last hour.
That means if you want to read a book,
go ahead, read a book.
Don’t read magazines with dozens and dozens of pictures
to start dropping dopamine in the back of your brain stem.
Just read one thing, read one article or one book
or journal and plan your day,
with no noise, no TV.
I mean I know you got, you might have the kids,
and they might be loud and everything else
but then turn the TV out for yourself.
And you’re like, “But Brendon,
“I got to fall asleep with the TV.”
No you don’t, you just taught yourself to.
Trust me, thousands and thousands of years
of human history passed with no television.
They slept just fine.
I’m sure if you ever gone camping
or been in the great outdoors,
you’re like wow I sleep amazing!
It’s because you’re not watching television I hope.
Now people, they’re in the campgrounds,
watch in their iPads.
It’s like, you got to turn it off,
dim the lights, no screens, no sounds.
Just chill the last hour
and allow you to kind of glide yourself into bed.
Calm, cool, you’ll sleep like a champ.
– Tip number three is cool it down.
I sleep in as cold an environment as possible.
I sleep with less blankets.
I don’t wear any clothes
and I turn on the air-conditioning down
to around 69, 70 max
and I generally will have a fan blowing on me.
The cooler my environment, the better sleep I actually get.
Research has shown that this is an incredibly powerful
and effective way to enhance yours.
When you’re hot, when you’re sweating,
when you’re sleeping with all those comfy cozy blankets.
When you’re snuggling with your sweetie, do it.
But when you want solid sleep, get rid of it.
– How to increase the quality of sleep?
Don’t try to increase the quality of sleep.
The ideal way to live is
there is no sleep in my life.
But that’s not possible.
Right now, still body has some inertia
so it sleeps minimum,
rest at the time it is at ease.
If you keep this at ease
then sleep does not occur to the body
unless it comes to a certain point of exhaustion.
So body is never ever asking for sleep
but it is definitely asking for rest.
If you do not know how to sit here in a restful manner,
it’ll try to rest like this.
If you can sit here totally at ease,
it’ll sit here for hours without falling asleep.
Otherwise this is the only way it knows how to rest.
So do not try to increase the quality of sleep.
There’s no such thing.
Just learn to keep your body restful
and at ease consciously.
If you sit here now,
one simple thing you can do is
you sit down, you come and sit down here,
just move your attention from the top of your head
down to your toes and see if everything is
loose and breezy and relaxed and at ease
unless you’re like this.
Just bring this to ease as much as you can.
Not everything is in your conscious level.
As much as you can consciously bring it to ease.
You will see, suddenly if you are the kind
who’ll fall asleep at 10 o’clock,
if you simply, one hour you sit here at ease,
you will see your sleep will get postponed by half an hour.
You won’t feel sleepy at 10.
Naturally you’re awake.
So instead of trying to increase the sleep quality,
no, you increase the quality of life.
If you increase the quality of life,
when I say increasing the quality of life,
nothing in your life, whatever you may be doing,
from simple breathing to any complex activity
that you do in your life,
the quality of that will not improve
if you cannot do it with ease.
Is that so?
Hmm?
Only when you can do something with total ease,
let’s say you’re riding a bicycle.
If you’re riding like this, like this,
you can’t say you’re enjoying your cycling.
If you can ride it with ease,
it’s so much easeier
that even if you take off your hands,
it will go only straight the way you want it to go.
You’re at ease,
because you are at ease
the quality of your cycling has improved, isn’t it?
So these two things are connected.
So if you enhance the quality of your life,
naturally sleep quota will go down.
If your quality of your life goes bad,
you can’t do anything with these
then also you cannot sleep
but stressfully you cannot sleep,
not because you’re well rested, you cannot sleep.
You cannot sleep because you’re stressed out,
if you do this you will not live long.
If your body does not get enough rest,
it will die, it will break, something will go.
If you are not at ease that means you are in dis-ease,
getting there.
You are in dis-ease means
you’re in a certain state of ill health
but if we say you’re deceased
that means you’re dead.
(laughing)
So don’t move and stay into the direction of dis-ease.
Move into the direction of ease.
If you become totally ease,
sleep quality, sleep quota will come down.
Quality of sleep will be good
because quality of life is good.
– The last thing we have to talk about
is improving your sleep environment
and that’ll involves your bed itself,
the amount of light in your room,
the sounds, the odors, the temperature,
a lot of different factors.
So we’re going to briefly go through
a few of them here and while we do that
for each one ask yourself
if you could be making any improvements.
So first off, let’s talk about your pillow.
A couple of things about pillows,
number one, you want to replace yours every couple of years,
both because it breaks down over time
and gets less supportive
but also because every night you’re sleeping on it
you’re kind of injecting that pillow
with lots of dirt and germs and body odor
and stuff that makes it gross
which can make it hard to fall asleep.
Secondly, and this was news to me until just recently,
there are different kinds of pillows
for different kinds of sleepers.
For example, I am a side sleeper
and for years
I was just using the most non-supportive awful pillows
until I learned that a side sleeper probably
is going to need a firmer pillow
that has these gussets on the side of it
instead of just the two pieces of fabric
that are stapled directly together.
And after sleeping on this thing for about a week now
I can tell you, it is a lot better
than the stuff I was using before.
When it comes to the temperature in your room,
cooler is better.
And according to the National Sleep Foundation,
the optimal temperature range for sleeping
is somewhere between 60 degrees Fahrenheit
and 67 degrees Fahrenheit.
The amount of light in your room
or should I say lack of light
plays a big role as well
because pitch darkness
actually plays a big role in melatonin secretion.
So if you have a lot of ambient light coming into your room
from like a streetlight outside your apartment
you can pick up a blackout curtain
which will basically eliminate that light altogether.
I actually got one right there
that I use for filming.
Also if you happen to fall asleep with the TV on
you should probably try to break that habit
because well blue light.
Now if you’re one of those people
who thinks that the TV is soothing
and they just can’t fall asleep without it,
there are some sound based alternatives.
And actually silence really isn’t the optimal solution
for all people
because silence is so often inconsistent.
There’s a bump in the night
or there’s a voice in the other room
or there’s somebody snoring in the same room as you.
So having some sound
that can block out those inconsistencies
can really help you fall asleep.
One option you can check out
is ambient noise generators
which can generate both white noise
which is basically just consistent noise
that sounds a little bit like an air conditioner
and ambient noises like rain and thunder.
And for me, my favorite one is Noisli
because you can add as many as you want.
You can change the volume of each one
and basically create the perfect mix for you.
There’s also lots of music out there
that’s great for falling asleep too.
I’ve made a playlist of my own
and found several on Spotify
and I’ll link to those down below.
But my favorite way to fall asleep is with audiobooks.
For me at least, there is nothing better
to fall asleep to than spoken word
and in fact ever since I discovered audiobooks
back when I was probably 12 or 13,
all the way up until I graduated high school
and got a roommate in college,
I would fall asleep every single night
to either Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
And as a result, I have huge swathes of both of those books
basically memorized.
– For me the most effective strategy
that I found for sleeping better
is having a night time routine.
I think we all have
some kind of daily routine in the morning
what you do when you first wake up
but we don’t necessarily
have a great night time routine
to help you unwind.
And so it changes as my life changes
but just like when a child is getting ready for bed
you’ll have them get into their pajamas
and brush their teeth,
maybe read them a story and they lie bed
and they fall asleep,
that kind of regular nighttime routine
at least for me starts to signal that okay
it’s time to wind down,
it’s time to stop thinking about YouTube
and entrepreneurs and all the stuff
that can easily keep me awake all night long
’cause I’m excited.
And so my nightly routine looks like this,
usually around 10 o’clock now,
well me and my wife will take Teemo, our puppy,
out for a walk, half hour walk,
we come back, we take the stairs up, 13 flights
so that we lost some energy
then we’ll get ready for bed.
I’ll make sure that all the lights are dim in the condo
so there’s nothing super bright and in our face,
even going to the bathroom,
only the shower light is on
instead of the main overhead light
’cause the big lights keep you awake.
In our bedroom I’ll just have the nightlight on
instead of the overhead lights for the same reason.
I’ll brush my teeth, I’ll floss, I’ll go to bed
and usually I’ll sit up for a few minutes reading the book.
I’ve got a book by my bedside,
I’ll read 10 to 20 pages of that book,
put my sleeping mask on, and go to sleep.
And that regular routine
starting from 10 o’clock to usually we’re in bed by 11
and I’m reading ’til maybe 11:15, 11:20,
somewhere around there
and that’s when I go to sleep.
That hour 15, hour 20,
slowly unwinds my body,
slowly unwinds whatever stress
or excitement was happening that day.
It gives me a chance to connect with my wife
and just is a signal that okay
now it’s time to go to sleep.
And so I think for you,
establishing a nighttime routine
that’s more than just five minutes
will really help you in unwinding
what was happening during the day
and set you up for a great night’s sleep.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
I made this video because Robert Berrier asked me to.
So if there’s a topic you’d like me to cover
in the next edition of Believe Life,
please leave it down in the comments below
and we’ll see what we can do.
I’d also love to know,
which rule did you like the best?
What did you learn the most from watching this video?
What are you going to take from it
that you will immediately apply somewhere
in your life or your business.
I’d love to learn
and please leave it down in the comments below.
Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Doru Tarita.
Thank you so much, Doru,
for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word.
It really really means a lot to me
and I hope you’re enjoying the read.
So thank you guys again for watching.
I hope you have an amazing day.
I believe in you,
I hope you continue to believe in yourself
and whatever your one word is, much love.
I’ll see you soon.
– I’m the author of The Sleep Revolution:
Transforming Your Life One Night at a Time.
I collapsed from sleep deprivation and burnout
nine years ago now
and that is what started me looking around
and seeing that I was not alone.
Millions of people are suffering from burnout
and that we’ve reached the point
in our culture of glamorizing sleep deprivation.
And yet all the modern science made it very clear
that’s what started me
both changing my own habits
and introducing a sleep section at the Huffington Post
and bringing to our readers and our viewers
as I’m doing in the book
all the latest science around sleep.
Cultures often believe the wrong thing,
I mean in the ’50s,
we used to think that smoking was glamorous
and we had doctors advertising cigarettes
literally in white coats
saying I smoke menthols
because they refresh my throat.
I feel that sleep deprivation is the new smoking
and we glamorize it,
have men wearing it like a badge of honor and women too.
But men really see it as a virility symbol
and brag about how they only got four or five hours sleep
which only works if you have a genetic mutation.
Sleep is not negotiable, it’s not optional.
It is the foundation of a healthy,
productive and happy life.
”
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