4 Tips from a Neuroscientist to Improve Your Sleep
What you can do to relax about your sleep and sleep better
In today’s fast-paced world, achieving a good night’s sleep can be challenging, and the lack of sleep can lead to frustration and anxiety. However, by adopting a more relaxed approach to your sleep, you can enhance your sleep quality and find peace in your nighttime routine. In this article I explore four techniques that can help you break free from negative thought patterns surrounding sleep:
- Relax about not sleeping
- Allow yourself daydreaming
- All-nighters can help!
- Start preparing for your night’s sleep when you wake up

Relax about not sleeping
Putting too much emphasis on the lack of sleep creates anxiety. Your fear of not sleeping enough and labeling yourself as a poor sleeper, can make it more difficult to fall asleep for you. Your negative thoughts about your sleep can contribute to creating a poor sleep pattern.
According to neuroscientist Dr Caroline Leaf, your negative thoughts around sleep can create an immune response and are detrimental to the repair phase of your sleep.
What to do to stop a negative thought pattern around sleep?
First of all, relax about the amount of sleep you have, think about it in the context of a week or month, not just one night. Don’t worry about not sleeping. Worrying stimulates your brain making you fall in a vicious cycle of thoughts.
Run a record of good and bad nights
Within a week’s time you will have some good nights and some bad nights. The good nights will make up for the bad ones.
To help you relax about the bad nights, run a sleep record. Look at your sleep within a month. When I used to have sleep issues, I was taking notes of my sleep times and the amount of sleep I was getting each night. After some time, to my surprise, I realised there weren’t as many bad nights as I thought! Due to my fear of not getting enough sleep, I thought there were more bad nights than there really were. Running a record of bad and good nights also helped me to notice how the number of bad nights was decreasing. Thanks to that record I was also able to observe what I was doing during the day that was helping or disturbing my sleep.
Daydreaming
How can daydreaming improve your sleep?
Daydreaming helps your brain to rest and re-balance during the day. Allow yourself to daydream throughout the day – this will help to calm down your thoughts, so your mind won’t have that much to process at night. It will help you stop overthinking when your’re trying to fall asleep.
All-nighters can improve your sleep
How can all-nighters improve your sleep?
Some of us are very productive at night. You can get some good quality work done or connect with someone you love during the night. Those are the things that can decrease your anxiety and work to your advantage. This links back to looking at your sleep in terms of a week’s or month’s period – don’t worry about the lack of sleep when you have an occasional all-nighter, just don’t do it too often and you’ll be OK!
Your morning routine makes a difference
To improve your sleep, start working on it when you wake up! Manage your mind in the morning, be aware of your thoughts and write them down. A great way to manage your thoughts is a gratitude practice, especially when you write down things you’re grateful for. Another way to put your mind in a positive state is to write down things you are proud of.
Source:
This article is based of the video by Dr Caroline Leaf. If you want to know more about the science behind these tips on improving sleep, watch the full video here:
Summary
I hope these tips gave you some insights to help you relax and improve your sleep quality. By shifting your perspective and letting go of anxiety about not sleeping, you can break free from negative thought patterns that hinder restful sleep and have a healthier relationship with sleep.