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RESETTING YOUR RHYTHM
Quite a lot of attention is paid to the psychological reasons why people have problems with sleep, like stress, burnout and anxiety. These are important to address, but first I want you to focus on the physiology of sleep and how vital it is for you to be physically comfortable to welcome the sleep process. That’s crucial.
In this chapter, there are four Sleep Hacks you can choose from. There are two other chapters dedicated to the Physical Sleep Hacks, so remember, you just need to pick one of the six Sleep Hacks in total from this section, to be combined with two from the other sections, Psychological and Hypnomagical.
MY PERSONAL SLEEP JOURNEY
My experience of sleep shows how your sleep patterns can change over your lifetime. These days I enjoy excellent sleep, and as I will show you, you can too. But I haven’t always. Truth be told, it wasn’t until I had a car accident in 2007 that I understood how strongly physiology and sleep are linked.
Earlier in my life, I used to sleep very little, but that was by choice. I had this mantra in my head, which I got from my dad: ‘sleep when I’m dead’. In hindsight, I know that is the wrong attitude (sorry, Dad!), but in my late teens and early twenties, that’s what I believed. I thought I was thriving on five hours’ sleep and I believed I was being super-productive. Now I know that certainly wasn’t the case and by following the mantra I was simply bringing the ‘death’ sleep sooner than fate would otherwise have decided for me. Sure, I was doing TV shows and enjoying success, but if I had been getting the optimal levels of sleep, my work would certainly have been better. My health would also have been better; at the time I was struggling with digestive problems and weight issues. Not getting enough sleep also affected my attitude. I always try to maintain a positive outlook, but if something went wrong in work or in life I was sometimes crankier than I needed to be. The noughties is the decade that I can pinpoint in my head where I was so busy being busy that sleep simply wasn’t important to me. I started my TV career in