Sleep feels great – at least if we are blessed with it. It lets us relax – feel comfortable.

But what if we can’t sleep?

The very first thing we need to do is to figure out what is causing our sleeping problems. Stress, emotional challenges, or changes in our environment…

I shared a lot of methods to figure this out with you in the past.

And now that we found out?

Right, we need to change things.

And change means moving out of the habits or environment that we are used to. Guess what – feels uncomfortable! Our brains are wired to protect us from danger AND change means potential danger.

Let’s look into the mirror of time together to get a better understanding of this concept:

If we decided to test a new way to hunt that elephant…guess what – potentially dangerous.

If we tried to eat things that we didn’t eat before…exactly – potentially dangerous.

If we use that fire in a new way…jap – dangerous.

To make this short. We are all wired to protect our habits because they mean safety.

But especially nowadays this can also mean never-ending suffering.

There are so many things that are simply not serving us. Things like

• organisational stress (work)
• a lack of body movement
• (too much) sugar
• unlimited entertainment (tv, smartphone)

can firstly be really addictive and secondly dramatically harm our sleep. They pump us up and leave us in a place where we don’t feel good anymore. We can easily find ourselves in a space where we are in the habit of doing things that let us feel bad and harm our sleep.

The Power Of Seeking Discomfort

Good news – there is a way out of this bad-habits-trap. There is a lot of good literature all around creating new and hopefully better habits.

But today I want to walk you through something that will ease the move from bad sleep habits to good ones extremely.

It is the power of seeking discomfort.

I am a big fan of taking a shortcut whenever possible. Doing things that ease my life. And sometimes this also means to do things that the initial response would be to avoid it. And this is definitely true for seeking discomfort. Having a cold shower as an example. Nobody I know really likes the initial feeling of a cold shower. But we know that is healthy. We know that it will let us start the day energized. That our sleep will benefit.

Furthermore, what we might not think about at first – we push our boundaries. We train our will-power. We will be proud of ourselves. We get used to walking through a certain amount of discomfort.

As a result, other things become easier in our life.

Imagine how much easier it will feel to avoid watching TV before you go to bed, put your mobile into flight mode, have a hot bath, or do other things that will help you to sleep well in comparison to the cold shower that you already had…

And it doesn’t have to be a cold shower. You can pick anything that puts you into a feeling of discomfort (it should serve your well-being though). Anything that expands your boundaries. That will give you a new reference point.

And once you do this a couple of times you can further utilize this by setting up a personal rule.

Example: If I don’t write my journal before I go to bed I will have a cold shower in the morning.

When it comes to the positive change we want to use all the tricks we can get. And there are a lot of them available.

Try to use as many of them as possible to your advantage.

I’m looking forward to hearing all about your story on how seeking discomfort helped you to boost your sleep.

Take care and sleep well

Michael Hildebrandt