The second day of the Wellbeing Challenge on Instagram is dedicated to… getting enough sleep!

Getting to sleep at a reasonable time (and actually rest) has been really difficult. The crazy anxiety and excitement of moving back to Lisbon for a while and do my own thing, while stop worrying about my PhD right now, have kept me awake and binging both on Netflix and on food.

For the past few weeks, I have fallen asleep only when my eyes no longer can keep up and that is usually around… 5 or 6 am. After waking up 3 days in a row with a huge headache I finally became more active on addressing my problem with sleeping and that’s what I want to share with you in this post.

1. Declutter Your Room

I am a messy person (I’m always honest, you know it!) so the room I live in is more often than not a reminder that chaos and war exist. I live in a mansion and unfortunately I can’t use any other room to store anything or even work from – how sad is that? My room gets to be my office, my bedroom, my crafts room, my lounging room, my reading room… Therefore you can find  all sorts of different things in here, from colouring bottles to a pile of dusty shoes, you pick it and I am sure I will have it. If you live in a similar situation, or you simply have a messy room too, it’s really important to tidy it up as much as possible. Besides tidying up, opening the windows for a long bit can do wonders, since it renews the air in the room. These two things together will send a different subliminal message to your mind – instead of chaos and war, you will have more order and peace, which are much needed for a good night rest.

2. Read Or Watch Something Boring

As I confessed earlier, I have been binging on Netflix and in two weeks I finished Girl Boss, The Haunting of Hill House, and followed the latest episodes of The Good Place. One episode was never just only one episode and my brain would be so engaged with the stories that I would obviously not fall asleep. Why do we keep doing stuff like this, when we know the situation is already bad enough, right? Oh well, the answer is that we are always looking for an easy route to confirm our own very dear sense of failure. So if you do need some minor stimulation before bed, don’t choose anything that will keep your mind wired. Grab that old novel that has been lingering on the back of your drawer instead.

3. Have a Good Reason to Wake Up Early

I think what really worked best for me was to wake up to the idea of pursuing what makes me professionally (and personally) happy. This week I started working with my very first international client. Actually that’s not entirely true, I worked with someone from Taiwan before Summer, but it was the traditional face-to-face meeting. Having my first international client through the phone, however, gave me a lot of stamina and made me remember of my purpose. Most times, we struggle to sleep because we forget about our purpose, our life’s vision. I realise now that it was not enough to simply decide to go back to Lisbon, in order to improve my quality of life. I also needed to get back to my purpose and vision which is to go back to my career as a coach and venture myself internationally (meaning… not only having Portuguese-speaking clients).

What’s your favourite way to get enough sleep? Let us know in the comments box. 😉

If you are interested in the 10-day Wellbeing Challenge on Instagram, you can still join in and download my Wellbeing workbook for free.