When we come to the conclusion that we have to change things in our lives to improve the quality of our sleep we know that change will be involved. But change can be hard at times. Good to know that there is a simple thing that you can do right away that will

• make it far easier to implement change (e.g. a new behaviour)
• quadruple our success rate in implementation

The reason for this is programmed into our genes.

The evolutionary perspective

Not so long ago we were living in small tribes where it was highly important for every member of that tribe to be able to rely on the commitments that we gave to others.

As an example everybody could rely on that the hunter would come back with the food that the tribe needed to survive. Or the warrior would protect the tribe with his life if necessary.

If somebody failed to be reliable this was a threat to the tribe and you can imagine what would have happened to that individual.

The same is still true nowadays – maybe a bit more hidden thought. Do you trust that the mechanics did their job when you step onto a plane? I’m sure you do.

The catch is that by default it is often more important to follow a commitment that we give to the tribe, than following through on ones that we give to ourselves.

Utilize your genes!

We can easily benefit from this. As soon as you know that you want to change something that might be hard for you to follow through on – simply ask a friend, colleague or family member to keep you accountable. This will genetically raise our success rate through giving us an additional source of very elementary motivation.

Applying accountability for your sleep improvement is easy. Simply follow these four steps and you’re up and running:

#1 Identify one thing that you want to change to improve your sleep
#2 find an accountability partner
#3 keep accountable to this person daily (whatsapp, email, phone, …)
#4 acknowledge your sleep improvements during the period of change

Your accountability partner should ask you actively if you performed on the task that you committed to daily. If you want to feel really good, inform your accountability partner proactively. This gives me an additional spike in motivation

Keep accountable and have a superb sleep!

Michael